My siblings
have a family tradition of sending out newsy year's summary Christmas letters to
family and friends. I joined the fun in an effort to bring all possible joy and
gentle light to bear upon what was a severely discordant marriage.
December
2001
Holiday
Greetings to all!
My
husband and I are happily settled in the Land of Enchantment. Amidst the world's
call for both retribution and peace in rooting out terror, we find ourselves
contributing in small ways, rooting out fears with kindness and service to each
other and to others, who are suddently not so different from ourselves.
My
husband's two children, Hari Ras Singh, 16, and Nirankari Kaur, 13, are in
India where they attend Miri Piri Academy. They thrive in the company of
friends from all over the world, united in their spirit of fun, keeping up and
excelling. Hari Ras Singh is a jethadar of his dorm, a leader and inspiration
to the other boys. Nirankari Kaur has decided she wants to make a difference in
the world through innovations in busness and management. She has been inspired
by stories of ordinary people who make great contributions.
My
daughter is in her third year at Pullman College where she is excelling in
Veterinarian medicine. She has been working on the side to make money to go
skiing this Holiday. With all the ups and downs of college life and turmoil in
the world, she continues to instigate good times, getting people smiling and
lifting their spirits. Her latest--inspiring a bunch of classmates and their
dogs to go to the park and play Frisbee!
We have a
couple new additions to our family this year. Besides Nirankari's quiet,
semi-Dalmatian, Makkia (meaning spotted in Italian), we have adopted a black
kitty who is very smart--she closely watches and copies us to do things like
open doorknobs and scrub stains with her paw. Our latest buddy is is a puppy,
Cookie, a brown and blue Heeler mix, found abandoned along the highway. She is
sweet, happy, full of boundless good energy and our ferocious barking watchdog.
I enjoy
teaching at the Khalsa Montessori School where I have lots of creative freedom
guiding 3-5 year olds in their pre-3 R's, constructive play and social graces.
The children have a great love for their morning circle of healing prayers and
are becoming yogis as well as survivalists. They recently gave a demonstration
of survival skills to a local fire department in friendly exchange for a fire
department demo. The firemen said the children were living the techniques they
had come to teach!
My
husband continues to excel as a versatile graphic artist for Kiit Marketing.
You will see his artwork and formatting on Peace Cereal boxes, the Yogi Tea of
the Month Club website and Yogi Tea boxes, where you can view his drawings of
me in various yoga postures. He is also the brilliant formatting mastermind of
our publishing project, Yoga Gems, which is now an official business. This year
we came out with a CD-Rom of all Yogi Bhajan's year 2000 meditation classes,
including music samples of mantras and songs used. There is a lot of energy
building now to make it available in book form with an accompanying CD.
We headed
off to Pagosa Springs over Thanksgiving vacation to soak in the sun and falling
snowflakes and roll in the snow. It was our first real honeymoon. Happy
diversions this year for my husband havebeen Saturday morning treks to Albuquerque with his longtime friend Raja
Singh and, for me, gatka (sword dance) practices as well as attending a Punjabi
course at an extension of the University of Patiala. We both enjoy romping with
Makkia and Cookie in the nearby Sombrillo hills, a cottonwood meadow and to the
Santa Cruz River behind our home. Our world is full of beauty.
As times
passes the pains of our lives are forgiven if not forgotten for their lessons,
and the joys are remembered, enriching our spirits. We heartily wish you all
love, peace and joy in the year to come. May we be blessed to bring kindness
and light to darkness as a way of living happiness.