26 Dec 2007, Amritapuri<\/p>\n
While I thoroughly enjoyed the entertainment during this year’s Christmas Eve program, I was also very aware of the fact that the anniversary of the tsunami was fast approaching.\u00a0 I remembered how I had experienced exhilarating joy watching the fire dancer during the 2004 Christmas Eve program, not having a clue that thirty-six hours later something so traumatic was going to happen.<\/p>\n
As I sat on the sand at the beach last night (Christmas Day), tsunami memories started pouring into my mind.\u00a0 Tears running down my cheeks I remembered….<\/p>\n
*\u00a0 Being at a bhajan practice at the top of the temple when the screaming began<\/p>\n
*\u00a0 Looking down from the temple balcony and seeing water pouring into the ashram<\/p>\n
* Western and Indian residents and visitors sitting together chanting archana on the temple roof; for me it was with the most focus I had ever had during archana<\/p>\n
* Wading through the water as we were evacuated and moved to the Engineering College, leaving behind all of my belongings include thongs.<\/p>\n
* Surprise at how lunch was served a few hours later.\u00a0 Amma had seen that we didn’t even miss a meal.\u00a0 She was doing the same for the villagers<\/p>\n
* Grief of the villagers as they started moving into the Engineering College<\/p>\n
* Spontaneous bhajans starting as Indian and Western devotees sat together in the hallway of the college<\/p>\n
* Relief and joy of opening my eyes during the bhajans and seeing my daughter for the first time since the tsunami had hit six hours before<\/p>\n
* Awe of Amma’s ability to provide help and solace to everyone from the first moment of the crisis<\/p>\n
* Gratefulness at feeling completly content with a straw mat and a dry floor to sleep on.<\/p>\n
* Amma’s grief as she sat quietly with us in the courtyard the next night.<\/p>\n
* Devasting grief of the parents whose children were pulled out of their arms and taken by the sea.<\/p>\n
December 26, 2004 and the days that followed will be forever in my memory.<\/p>\n
Karuna, USA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
26 Dec 2007, Amritapuri While I thoroughly enjoyed the entertainment during this year’s Christmas Eve program, I was also very aware of the fact that the anniversary of the tsunami was fast approaching.\u00a0 I remembered how I had experienced exhilarating joy watching the fire dancer during the 2004 Christmas Eve program, not having a clue […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,506],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ashram-diary","category-interesting"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}