Spring 2001 Somehow, through my rollercoaster marriage and ongoing project, Meditations for the New Millennium, completing and emailing out two synopses a week, I work nine hours a day as the teacher in Amrita’s home daycare. I have known Amrita and her sisters peripherally for years and once overheard Yogiji say that her nephew was born with the light of Jesus. Teaching in her home feels like a privilege. Amrita works at the Ranch at Yogiji’s request, yet dotes on the children whenever she has a chance.
Every Friday children bring special possessions from their homes for Show and Tell Circle. It is their favorite event of the week. One such morning as I prepared juice I noticed that the children were all happily chanting different mantras as they played in different niches of the playroom. When it came time to do circle I said, “Okay children, it’s time for Show and Tell!” Several shouted in unison, “We want to take a Hukam instead!” “But, we don’t have a Guru!” I replied. One of the spirited non-Sikh children in my care, piped in, “Yes we do! There is one in the Montessori room! I’ll go get it.”
This child had devotedly put together a small “Manji” play table, complete with baby doll pillows to lay the Nitnem of Gurus' prayers upon, and pretty scarves as Ramalas to cover the "Guru". She returned excitedly with our child-worn Nitnem that we use to practice reading the Mul Mantra in Gurmukhi. This has been pretty easy for the children to learn because we recite Mul Mantra every day at circle time. They know it by heart.
The children were all wearing head coverings, including two two-year olds with self-tied turbans. We gathered around as one child meditatively opened our “Guru” to a random Hukam.
"It is “Ardas!" I explained to the children, “Ardas is the prayer we are supposed to do before we take a Hukam. The Guru is just reminding us!”
So we stood facing the “Guru” as I read a proper Ardas, asking the ten Gurus to bless the children to fulfill their destinies. After seating ourselves again, the lead child waved a peacock feather from Yogiji’s Ranch over the Nitnem “Guru” while chanting the Guru Gaitree mantra, “Gobinday, Munkanday, Udaaray, Apaaray, Hariang, Kariang, Nirnaamay, Akaamay,” and with great earnest spread open our Nitnem's pages once more. I read the passage she pointed to in Gurmukhi and translated for them. It was a line from Guru Nanak's Japji saying, “The Lord of Himself makes us sing His Praises.”
The children gasped in amazement, exclaiming, “That’s just what we were doing! We were chanting all morning! God was making us do it!” Their faces were aglow with that divine realization, feeling God and Guru’s presence among us.
We pushed our play stove and a child’s clothing rack away from the window where the children lovingly created a small Gurdwara as a sanctuary and place of quietude.
The next morning we arrived to a beauteous surprise. Amrita had hung a lovely Chindoa canopy strung with pink silk roses above the Guru and placed a Persian carpet beneath the little Manji, newly replete with real Ramalas, Guru’s cushions and an actual volume of the Siri Guru Granth Sahib from an eight-volume set. The children know they have a direct relationship with the Guru and hold their Gurdwara in greatest reverence.
