Card Game: The Fellowship of the Ring

Having previously created The Two Towers, obviously we know the rest of the trilogy has to come along eventually, right? Here’s another.

Cards: 1 standard deck with one joker.

Players: Best with 2, but extendable for 3 or 4 (see variants at end).

Goal: To end up with the most cards of your color (black or red) around the circle.

Setup

• Shuffle and deal out 13 cards in a circle. 
• One of these initial cards should be a joker. Set aside the other joker, which will not be used in the game. (This just makes card draw even.) 
• If one of the initial cards is Jack of Spades, shuffle it back into the draw deck and replace it with something else in the circle. 
• One player is black, the other red, BUT you don’t know who yet. It will be the person who later draws the Jack of Spades. 
• Deal 5 cards to each player, put the rest in a face-down draw pile.

Turn
On each player’s turn, they must:

1. Capture a card (or stack of cards) by placing an adjacent stack on top of it. The two stacks must be opposite colors, and the capturing stack must be strictly larger. 
2. Fill in the resulting gap with any card from their hand. 
3. Redraw up to 5 cards.

A move must be taken, even if it does not benefit the player making it.

Move Details

• Stacks can only move onto stacks of opposite color that are strictly lower in rank (not equal). 
• You may move a stack of either color, not just your own. 
• The initial joker is a wild card. You can place anything onto it from your hand, or move any neighboring stack onto it, though it cannot move onto another stack itself. This isn’t really an advantage for the first player, since no one knows yet which side they’re playing. Basically, just cover it up early and forget about it. 
• Aces are BOTH bigger than face cards AND smaller than number cards. 
• Cards filling in a gap after a move may be any suit or rank.

Jack of Spades: Boromir

• The player who draws the Jack of Spades will be the black player, and the other will be red. 
• The Jack of Spades may be played as a regular card once you have it, but you are under no obligation to reveal that you have it. You may not discard it. 
• At the beginning, since you do not know which color you will be, it may behoove you both to try to keep the colors as balanced as possible. 
• If you don’t have the Jack of Spades, keep a close eye on how many cards are left in the draw pile! At some point you’ll have to decide to move more strongly for red on the assumption that your opponent must be black. 
• If you do have the Jack of Spades, you might try to see how subtly you can tilt the advantage towards black before your opponent notices.

Winning the Game
You will continue taking turns until cards run out. At that point, count how many stacks are black vs. red, and that player is the winner.

The game also ends if all cards around the ring are one color, even if there are unplayed cards remaining, because there will be no legal moves to make. In this case, there are two possible results: 

• If the Jack of Spades has been drawn (even if not revealed) then the player of the dominant color wins. 
• If the Jack of Spades has not been drawn, then the game is a stalemate.

Multiplayer variant

• For four players, each person gets a suit, not a color. Ditto for three players, but leftover suit is neutral and scores for nobody at the end. 
• In these cases, first shuffle the four Jacks ahead of time and deal one to each player, so that they know their assigned suit, but no one else does. Then shuffle the Jacks back into the main deck and set up the game as usual. (No need to remove Jacks if they appear in initial set up.) 
• You don’t need the initial joker if you play with three people, but you do with four.  
• Change the capturing rule to say that you have to capture a different suit, not necessarily a different color.

Card Game: Poohsticks

I played the original stick-racking-down-a-river version of Poohsticks for the first time the other day, or at least I played it for the first time knowing this name for it. I thought there had to be an older and/or better name, rather than one from Winnie the Pooh, but as Lacey and Guy and I were playing at Tryon Creek in Portland, a couple hikers came down the trail towards us and I heard one excitedly whisper to the other, “Look! They’re totally playing Poohsticks!” So they joined in with us, and then I came home and made up this game, since I’ve had card games on the brain recently. Enjoy!

Players: 2-4

Cards: 1 standard deck, no jokers

Time: A few minutes, but perhaps dependent on your math skills.

Goal: Float your stick boat down the river the fastest!

Origin
This is a race game based on the original game of Poohsticks from Winnie the Pooh, in which players drop their sticks over the side of a bridge and watch them race down the river.

Setup
Each player takes an Ace. (I recommend spades and diamonds, for their aerodynamics.) This is their boat.

For a basic game, lay out a river of cards, 1 card per player wide by 6 long. (So 2x6 for two players, 3x6 for three players, 4x6 for four players.)

For a more advanced game, you can experiment with longer rivers or other arrangements, introducing bends, narrowings, etc. A 2-player game may opt to use a 3-card-wide river if they want to add more of these features without making it too impossible.

Remaining cards are set aside for the shared draw deck. Each player draws a hand of 3 cards.

Turns and Movement
Your Ace boat can enter the river at any card in the first row. From there, it can only move to other cards orthogonally.

To move onto a card, you have to discard cards from your hand to exactly equal the card you are moving on to, but you can use any combination of addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division that you want. (And of course, an exact match is also fine.)

Number cards are face value, J=11, Q=12, K=13, Ace can be 1 OR 14

You can make more than one move on a turn, as long as you can do it with only the 3 cards in hand and don’t use any card more than once. Each move is independent. E.g. you can’t play a King to move onto a 10 and then a 3.

You may not move onto a card occupied by an opponent’s boat.

At end of turn, redraw up to 3 cards.

If no moves are possible, you may discard and redraw 1-3 cards. This ends your turn. You may not discard if you already moved.

If the draw pile runs out, flip and shuffle the discard pile and use that.

Winning
Once you reach the final row, you must play a face card or an ace to exit the river and win the race. You may do this on the same turn on which you reach the final row, if you have a card left for it.

Remember which player went first. If multiple players exit the river on the same turn, they tie.

Under the Bridge variant
Leave one row of your river (any row you like except the first) face down. This is the bridge. If your boat lands in front of one of these cards, turn over only that one card and your turn ends, even if you have more playable cards. Next turn you can move onto and past that card as usual. If you can’t do so, you are welcome to move sideways and reveal another bridge card, though again your turn ends. Any flipped bridge cards remain revealed for following players.

Rocks in the Rapids variant
Turn a few random cards face down, representing rocks. Unlike the bridge cards, these cannot but turned over; you simply have to go around them. So make sure you leave at least one accessible path!

(If combining with the bridge variant, you might want to turn the rock cards sideways to distinguish them. Or you could leave them out entirely and go around the gaps. Or put any small object in the space to represent the rock.)

Boat type variants?
You could conceivably give each of the different Aces a special ability of some sort, representing different types of boats. This would probably take some work, though, to keep all the combinations balanced. Or it could be something simple like each Ace gets a free move onto another card of its own suit, but they can only use that once per game (and you’d have to choose your boat before seeing the river layout).

Card Game: The Two Towers

A few weeks ago I sort of randomly made up a new card game. I’ve play-tested it a little bit, and it seems to be pretty easy, quick, and fun. If you want to give it a try, let me know what you think!

Name: The Two Towers

Cards: 1 standard deck

Players: 2

Time: a few minutes

Goal: end up with the biggest stack (“tower”) of cards

Instructions:

• Deal half the deck to each player as a face-down draw pile.
• Each player draws a hand of 5 cards from their draw pile.
• Start a face up stack (the tower) in front of each player with another card from their draw pile.
• On each turn, you may EITHER play a card or draw a card.
• You may play a card on your own tower if it is the same rank or +/- 1 rank (aces wrap around).
• You may trade towers if you play the exact rank on your opponent’s tower. 
• If there are no cards left in your draw deck, you may pass.
• Game ends when one player uses all their cards OR both players pass in a row.
• Any cards left in hand get added to opponent’s tower.
• Winner has largest tower in front of them. 
• Tie breaker is the player who had the fewest cards left in hand (before adding them to opponent’s tower).

Possible variations: 

• Include the jokers as wildcards. (They could take on a specific value when played, or they could match anything to anything else. Can’t use them to steal a tower.)
• Play with more decks and/or more people. (Make sure the cards are evenly divisible to everyone, perhaps adjusting with jokers.) Tower swaps would just be between two people at a time. 

Cyrano de Bergerac in Translation

I first read Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand in August 2015, and absolutely fell in love with it. I had seen the José Ferrer film of it back around high school age or so, and had always wanted to read it. But I’m very skeptical of reading poetry in translation and I’d always put it off, for fear of disappointment. Then finally one day I did some investigation, heard good things about the Brian Hooker translation, and went for it. And I was sorry I had waited so long.

Having Cyrano be both a brilliant poet and a master swordsman could have been enough for a good story right there. But what truly makes it great is how he so completely accepts and owns everything that life brings him. Whether his own brilliance and skill, or his poverty or ugly appearance, or the fact that the way to make the woman he loved happy was to give his words and assistance to her chosen suitor—everything, up to and including facing his own death, he met with all his energy, creativity, and even humor. That is what transforms the plot from merely heartbreaking to upliftingly cathartic. He made everything his own choice before it could be forced on him, and so earned de Guiche’s comment towards the end: “I say, do not / Pity him overmuch. He lives his life, / His own life, his own way—thought, word, and deed / Free!”

Given that it’s such a short book and I wanted to reread it anyway, I started trying other translations, and started recording them in what has since become a rather ungainly GoodReads review. By now, I figure it’s time to promote this to something a bit more formal and organized.

The translations are listed first here, in approximate order of my personal recommendation of them. More will be added as I get around to reading them. You can skip down to the films section for my notes on the (sadly few) video adaptations available. If you know of others, please tell me! I have not yet had the privilege of seeing a live performance, but I hope to some day. UPDATE: There is now a live performances section as well!

[Last updated: April 12, 2025]   

Translations

Brian Hooker (1923)
There’s a danger of a first-read bias here, but the more translations I read, the more I really do think this version stands alone. The poetry is elegant and unforced, only using rhyme where it works appropriately, without wrenching it out of a sense of obligation to the original French (which rhymes much more easily than English). If you manage to get an edition with Clayton Hamilton’s original preface, it describes Hooker’s approach—optimizing for the beautiful flow of words from voice to ear, and limiting alterations to the changing of various classical allusions to ones more recognizable to American audiences. My favorite lines and passages are all at their best in this version. Here’s a short one: 

I—I am going to be a storm—a flame—
I need to fight whole armies all alone;
I have ten hearts; I have a hundred arms; I feel
too strong to war with mortals—BRING ME GIANTS!
(Act 1, Scene 7, though scenes unnumbered in this edition)

Louis Untermeyer (1954)
Untermeyer’s translation is quite good, the first I’ve found to rival Brian Hooker’s. My favorite parts from Hooker are still unmatched, but Untermeyer picks up the slack admirably in other areas. The balcony scene, for instance, is much improved, I think. And this was also excellent:

Don’t scorn the point, my friend. When I must die
I hope to meet death ’neath some rosy sky,
With a good-ringing word for some good cause.
No bed of sickness, no slow failing flesh,
But a quick end—a worthy foeman’s steel—
A pointed laughing word upon my lips
And the sword’s pointed answer in my heart.
(Act 4, Scene 3, though scenes unnumbered in this edition)

The edition I found in the library also includes a few illustrations by Pierre Brissaud, which is a nice touch. 

 

Anthony Burgess (1985, new edition 1991)
The preface here indicates helpfully that Brian Hooker’s translation sticks very close to the French, so that it “can very nearly be used as a key to the original,” which is nice to know. But he then goes on to detail all the many changes he (Burgess) made, to adapt it for modern American stage productions, and I’m not at all keen on his editing or removing of certain scenes. In particular, I think it was a very poor choice to allow Christian to die without being reassured that Roxane loved him, but it would have been hard to fix it, having removed the entirety of the scene in which she visits the army camp. To be fair, of course, it does say on the cover that this is not only a translation but an adaptation. Sigh.

Burgess claims that Hooker “rarely raises a laugh,” and though I disagree with that, I do admit that Burgess’ rhyming worked to good effect in many of the comic lines. And there are even many finer details throughout the play that he brings forward into greater clarity, which I appreciated. However, all of my favorite speeches from Hooker’s version came out more clumsily and less clearly in Burgess’, so I have to say the balance was not in his favor.

I’ll leave it there, but if you want a second opinion that agrees with me, here’s a much longer rant about it. I’ve placed this translation so relatively high on the list mostly because it’s so commonly used for performances now. (Though the ones I’ve seen have replaced the missing scenes, thankfully. Maybe this is what happened in the revised 1991 edition—I’m not sure now which one it was that I read.)


Carol Clark (2005)
This edition from Penguin Classics has an interesting introduction at the beginning and “Historical Note” at the end that are worth reading. There were one or two good lines, but most of the best bits were underdone, and a various moments of foreshadowing felt heavy-handed. I gotta hand it to her for these lines, though:

Your hair was my sunlight, and after I looked away
There were patches of blonde light all over the world.
(Act 3, Scene 7)

John Murrell (1994)

This translation, created specifically for performance, is mostly prose, but more freely adapted and better than Hall’s version (see below). I felt it resulted in some fairly clever lines but no gorgeous ones. I also thought it odd that for no apparent reason he cropped the ending of Act 3, when Cyrano promises that Christian will write to Roxane every day. It was a great end to the scene, and it’s even referred to in Scene 4, so why cut it?

Props to him for managing the entire Cadets’ song as a 32-line monorhyme, though. And here’s a good line that I liked:

It is my pleasure to offer you distinction, or extinction.
(Act 4, scenes unnumbered) 

Howard Thayer Kingsbury (1898)
The Pocket Books “Enriched Classic” edition has a lot of supplementary materials, including historical and biographical notes, excerpts from different critics over the course of a century, and footnotes on various classical allusions. So some of that was interesting (I didn’t realize Cyrano was based on a historical figure until I read this version, for instance). But it never said anything about the translation it uses. Turns out (thank you, internet) that it was the first English translation, in 1898. It’s in unrhymed blank verse, similar to Hooker’s, but I found it considerably less clear, and the poems much weaker. There were only a few places where I noticed a turn of phrase that was particularly nicely done, but for the most part it doesn’t have much to recommend it. Here’s one bit that I liked, though:

The letter I have thought out to myself
A hundred times, so that it now is ready;
And if I put my soul beside the paper
I shall need only to recopy it.
(Act 2, Scene 3)

There is one thing in the “discussion notes” I have to emphatically disagree with (and this is more the fault of Pocket Books than Kingsbury): they assume that in wooing Roxane for Christian, Cyrano is actually attempting to win her for himself. No. Just… no. First of all, Cyrano would never stoop to such betrayal. Second, even if he did believe she could love his ugliness, I don’t think he would want to forcibly or deceitfully wrest her heart from where she’s freely bestowed it. In fact, this translation puts it rather more clearly than many of the others: 

Ah, for your joy I’d gladly give my own,
even if you should never know.
(Act 3, Scene 6)

Christopher Fry (1975)
I read this just after reading Bolt’s translation (see below) so my main reaction was that Fry does a better job of rhyming throughout, though that’s a rather low bar to clear. He gets points, though, for managing a solid ending to the entire play on the word “panache,” which I feel is important but which is rarely done since it’s difficult to rhyme with well. I appreciate having the additional meaning of “panache” available to the reading, beyond just the literal “white plume.”

Here’s one of his rhymes that I particularly liked:

But there’s one crumb of comfort I can savour:
She kisses on his mouth the words I gave her.
(Act 3, Scene 10, though scenes unnumbered in this edition)

Gladys Thomas and Mary F. Guillemard (1898)

This is another one of the earliest translations. It’s in archaic and awkward blank verse, with not much to recommend it. I thought it was particularly bad form to have a line in the duel ballade that basically said “what rhymes with ‘o’?” Especially since it came before the line it needed to rhyme with.

Gertrude Hall (1898)
These last two on the list are completely different from each other except in the dubious shared distinction of being the least recommendable. Hall doesn’t attempt even blank verse, but leaves everything (aside from the explicit poems) as chunks of prose, and not even good prose at that. I don’t know if she was trying to go for a literal, word-by-word translation from French, or if she was just rushing in an attempt to beat Kingsbury to the first English edition, but it’s clunky, unclear, archaic, and studded with footnotes that could have been avoided.


Ranjit Bolt (2007)
The ebook version I bought from Kobo contains no introduction or other potentially interesting information about this version, and it isn’t even formatted properly, so I don’t know what the deal is here. Google tells me Bolt has translated a number of plays into English, and has even written a book titled, The Art of Translation, which would seem to bode well. Unfortunately, I can’t say I care much for his take on Cyrano. I admit I’m impressed at how thoroughly he stuck to rhyming verse throughout. But it gets to be just too much after a while. And he often uses rather crude language, or modern-sounding slang, sometimes clearly just to get a rhyme to work (e.g. saying “yup” for “yes” just so it could rhyme with “up”). So I don’t like the feel of it overall, and nothing comes out particularly lovely. Most versions have at least a few exquisite lines, but not this one. He also significantly abridged the “man from the moon” scene, which is too bad. I’ll acknowledge that he does manage a very solid ending on “panache,” but I’m afraid it’s not enough to redeem the whole book. So overall, not recommended.

Film Adaptations

(These are ranked rather less precisely than the translations.)

José Ferrer (1950)
This is the first version I ever saw, and I’m very fond of it, though I wish it had stuck more precisely to the original text. The screenplay was based on Brian Hooker’s translation (definitely a point in its favor), but was extremely adapted by Carl Foreman. Some cuts I think were fairly reasonable (e.g. speeding up the opening), some were probably just for the sake of getting in more fight scenes, and some just disappointed me. There were also various small additions, some of which really just covered for something removed, but worked well enough. And I actually liked the added scene in which Roxane says that if she must be relegated to a woman’s role in society, she would be so on her own terms. A nice parallel there with Cyrano himself. I was a little annoyed with a number of the actors’ voices being much too American. (British at least would have been better if they couldn’t have French accents.) But José Ferrer will always be the quintessential image of Cyrano for me and I also liked Mala Powers as Roxanne.

Kevin Kline (2008)
This is a film of a stage production with a live audience, which I always think is decidedly more fun than just a movie. It mostly uses Anthony Burgess’ translation, though I was glad to see they fixed his two most egregious scene alterations (and I don’t know what text they used for that). I can see how well this version works on stage in front of a live audience, especially in how it highlights the humor, as Burgess was explicitly trying to do. But I felt it might actually have gone a bit too far in that direction. Some of the laughter (part of the fun of a having a live audience, of course) seemed to leak over into moments that I would have preferred to remain more romantic or tragic. I thought Kevin Kline was an excellent Cyrano, though I wanted to see a bit more of a difference in him for the final act. Daniel Sunjata would have been the weakest link as Christian, were it not for Jeniffer Garner who, as Roxanne, was just trying way too hard for it to be enjoyable. Everyone else did a perfectly serviceable job.

Derek Jacobi (1985)
I watched this in low resolution on YouTube, which didn’t show it off to its best effect, but it was still a good production. Jacobi was generally excellent, though he gets a bit incoherent when he gets too overwrought. I appreciated the music, particularly at the end of Act IV. The translation is Anthony Burgess’, which I’ve commented on before, though it does include the cut scene of Roxanne visiting the battlefield. The cinematography was an interesting blend of play-like staging and movie-like filming (forgive my awkwardness of the vocabulary, but hopefully that gets the idea across). And Scottish accents were used very effectively in place of Gascon. 

Gérard Depardieu (1990) (French)
I was actually hoping the English subtitles would be a relatively literal translation, without anyone trying to get poetic about it, so I could see what it’s “really” saying. But I think the subtitles are based on Anthony Burgess’ translation, so oh well. And I don’t have enough French (hardly any) to get much out of the actual soundtrack. I also have to say I don’t care for Depardieu so much as Cyrano. I think the first scene soured me on him for the rest of the movie. He seemed less in control of the situation and more carried away by his anger.

Peter Dinklage (2021)

I went into this one equal parts interested and terrified, and... I was right. I thought it was a pretty neat idea to cast Dinklage in the role, even if it did mean you had to change all the nose references. I liked having someone real, rather than a fake nose. He even has an interesting singing voice, and I think the music was well tailored to it. (He particularly sounded nice in the duets.) But... unfortunately nothing else was good. The script was painful, the music was uninspiring, I kept wondering whether I was supposed to laugh at the dancing or not, and the whole thing was confusingly anachronistic. There were a few lines that I think would have been funny had they not been said over incompatible music. They threw away the opportunity to have a fun song about falling from the moon, in favor of a boring villain song from de Guiche (and especially inexplicable, given that Roxanne specifically tells Cyrano to delay de Guiche and he simply doesn’t.) They even butchered the final scene, removing the murder (why did his wound just decide to take him down now, after three years?), making it way too kissy for the nature of their relationship at this point (not to mention the fact that, hey, he’s dying here), and completely robbing him of his final stand against all his old enemies, Pride, Cowardice, etc. So... sigh. All I can hope is that this rekindles enough interest in Cyrano to get us some more live performances, or a new movie of the real play. 

Steve Martin (1987)
Okay, so as long as I’m piling in everything I can get my hands on, I might as well include the movie, Roxanne. I remember seeing it ages ago, before I knew the book, but I didn’t remember much about it, so I was able to watch it fresh, but knowing the inspiration behind it now. And as horrible as it sounds to turn Cyrano into a modern-day Steve Martin comedy, I actually very much enjoyed it. The complete change to a happy ending for Cyrano is the biggest difference, obviously, and necessarily cuts out some of the most touching parts, but on the other hand, it’s kind of nice to visit an alternate reality where it works out that way. (And the whole movie is far enough removed from the original that I’m more comfortable letting it be its own thing.) Most of the other classic scenes were recognizably included (even the “fallen from outer space” scene), and I particularly liked the listing of insults, which was very well adapted. Oh, and I loved the line: “I was afraid of WORMS, Roxanne!” That can just keep me laughing for days.

Live Performances

Maria Giere Marquis (2025)

I’d wanted for ages to see a live Cyrano production, and one finally showed up practically next door at the Los Altos Stage Company, so naturally I had to go. 

This was very much an adaptation of Cyrano, rather than a translation. For starters, Cyrano is a woman rather than being ugly. I’m alright with that change in and of itself, though it does handicap certain other aspects of the play. (E.g. I think they had to skip the whole “better insults” speech, because there probably would have been no way to do that non-mysogynistically.) I think that trying to shoehorn in the Count de Guiche’s wife with another lesbian subplot was a bit much, though, and complicated some things unnecessarily. (Was this why there had to be the whole confusing bit about Roxanne’s father’s charities? I don’t know.) 

But aside from that one core change, I also felt like they had simply taken the structure of the plot and then rewritten it from scratch. It followed all the main points of the story, but with none of the beauty that so many of the translations had. The combination of period costumes and more modern diction and jokes was funny sometimes, and awkward at others. On the whole, the humor was most successful, and I quite enjoyed the first half. The latter half, when things get more serious, was much more tedious. And none of the lines were as outright beautiful as so many of Rostand’s are, so it didn’t feel worth such a rewrite to me. 

I will say that Maria Giere Marquis did a very good job as Cyrano, and the supporting ensemble cast was very entertaining as well. And there were some clever things done with translucent curtains adding depth to the stage. Overall, it was fun and worth seeing, though I would still prefer to see a more traditional direct translation. 

Israel, Part 3: Jordan River, Qumran, Masada, Mount of Temptation

Wrapping up the Israel posts here with the “miscellaneous” category. Most of these sites we visited on the drive from Tiberias back to Jerusalem, though Jericho we did as a day trip out from Jerusalem.

Jordan River

We didn’t go to the actual place Jesus was baptized, but we did have a site that was conveniently set up for dipping and baptizing. We figured it’s all the same river, and the water moves anyway, so no big deal. Though actually, the water didn’t move very much—it was very still and calm. None of this “on Jordan’s stormy banks I stand” nonsense from all the shape note songs I’m used to hearing. The weather was cold and a little drizzly, so only a few people actually did a full immersion, though many more of us dipped and waded a bit. We also held a purification ceremony here, which felt very appropriate. Similar to the Galilee, which is its source, the water here feels very good, and just right somehow, even if cold.

Qumran
Qumran is where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, and where a community of Essenes lived, probably being the 2,000-years-ago equivalent of Ananda. There was a cliffside cave we could hike to without much difficulty. (Much less difficulty than the Mount of Transfiguration, to pick just a random example.) It was very small, and more likely used by bats rather than people, but it had a beautiful view of the desert and the Dead Sea, which made it a very expansive place to meditate.

Masada
This was less of a spiritual site, except inasmuch as Nivedita and I agreed it would be a fantastic place to take a seclusion if you could get the tourists away. Masada is an immense plateau towering over the desert, where King Herod built a nearly unassailable fortress. It has even more of a top-of-the-world feel to it than the other mountains and cliffs we visited, being so stark and bare. We had to take a cable car up to it because there wasn’t time to hike “The Snake Path,” though I would have liked to do that.

Mount of Temptation
We took another dramatic cable car ride in Jericho, up to the Mount of Temptation, though we still had a considerable hike even after that, to get to the monastery that is apparently just nailed to the side of the sheer cliff face. In a room above the chapel is the rock Jesus stood on when he was tempted by Satan. This is one of the very few rocks that you can’t actually touch, as it’s enclosed in glass. But I ended up having a very nice meditation just down the stairs from it, where the exposed rock of the mountain forms a wall of the chapel, and I figured I really was touching part of the same rock.

There were also tons of visitors from Africa there that day—Nigeria, Ethiopia, Eritrea, maybe other places. It added a very colorful and exuberant energy to have them all chanting as they hiked up the mountain in their various designs of ceremonial robes, and with all their kids. Because there were a ton of kids with them, of all ages though it seemed weighted towards toddlers. I don’t know if it was some sort of spiritual “family camp” or what, but good karma for the kids, getting to visit such holy places at such a young age.

* * *

Alright, I think that’ll be it for my pilgrimage posts. For those of you in the area, we’re having a satsang on Friday night at Chela Bhavan, in the Ananda Community, if you want to come hear stories in person from many of the other pilgrims. And if you ever get the chance to go on pilgrimage in the Holy Land, do!

Israel, Part 2: Galilee Region

With Israel being such a small country, it was very nice and convenient that we didn’t have to do much traveling. We stayed at the same hotel in Jerusalem at the beginning and end of the trip, and for a stretch in the middle we stayed in Tiberias, right on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, from which most everything else we wanted to visit was easily accessible.

Church of the Beatitudes

One of the things Asha told us at the beginning of the pilgrimage was to be careful of expectations. If you expect to have a deep experience at a particular site, you may be disappointed, or you may simply try too hard and thwart yourself. And if you write off a particular place as being less interesting, you may miss something. Better to practice being relaxed and open and receptive at all times, and then see what happens. And I did find throughout the pilgrimage that there were times when I felt relatively unmoved compared to what people around me seemed to be experiencing, and there were times when I was very surprised.

The Church of the Beatitudes is a lovely church, located on the site of the Sermon on the Mount, and our group also got to reserve a nice outdoor terrace for an hour of singing and meditation. And that was all fine, but I wouldn’t have had anything particular to remark on about it. The “surprise” I had here was actually just in a 10-foot section of the path the goes along the side of the church and heads towards the terrace. Every time I would walk through it, it felt almost like passing a physical barrier, and I would have a sudden rush of shivers and tears, which would be gone as soon as I moved on. After the first couple times of not expecting it, I deliberately tested it, and it was consistent. I spent a while at the end of our visit just meditating there on the path, and while I still don’t know why that particular little spiritual vortex was right there, I hope I absorbed something from it.

Church of the Primacy of Saint Peter and the Sea of Galilee

The Church of the Primacy contains—as we are becoming used to—a rock, and specifically the rock on which Jesus was frying fish when he appeared to his disciples at Galilee after his resurrection. This visit was also the first time we got to actually visit the lake directly, since the church is literally right on the shore. The water was so completely calm and still that it was easy to imagine walking on it, though none of us did, that I know of.

Tzfat

We spent an afternoon in Tzfat, a city that is a center for Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism, and art of all types. The highlight here was visiting the studio of Avraham Loewenthal, a Kabbalah-inspired artist that we all felt and instant and mutual kinship with. I think true mystics everywhere will always recognize each other as spiritual siblings. Many of us bought pieces of his artwork to take home with us. I think it was very interesting also for Rami, our Jewish Israeli guide, to see this interaction, since it gave him a new perspective on what we’re all about to suddenly see such a relatively explicit link between us and a branch of his own religion.

Mount of Transfiguration

Mount Tabor is a much more serious mountain than any others we visited. The bus can’t go all the way to the top, so we had to wait for shuttles to take us the last mile or so. The shuttles were considerably delayed, so someone suggested that a group of us just walk. That sounded nice and reasonable, and then when someone else mentioned that there was a “shortcut” trail we could take instead of the road, we thought why not? Well, that trail turned out to be muddy, rocky, and nearly vertical in places. Luckily the weather and the landscape were both beautiful, but I should definitely not have been making the trek with a guitar strapped to my back. After about 40 minutes, we made a wrong turn and ended up having to climb a wall only to end up at the wrong church (I wasn’t expecting more than one up there!) but eventually we made it. This picture is from the very beginning of the hike, before we knew what we were in for. We don’t know how the light came out so magically, but the apparent source in the upper left corner is approximately where the top of the mountain would be. Transfigured in light!

View from the top of the Mount of Transfiguration

Nazareth

Our time in Nazareth was quite a bit shortened due to our escapades on Mount Tabor. When we got to the Church of the Annunciation, I saw a long line of people waiting to go and see the grotto that was Mary’s home, and I just didn’t want to spend my hour waiting in line. So I went to the neighboring Church of St. Joseph. And this was another case of having a “surprise” experience somewhere that you’re not looking for it. The church was perfectly nice, and the caves beneath it were unremarkable, but when I sat in one of the pews to meditate, I got such a clear sense of Joseph’s presence that it was almost like being introduced to him in person. Joseph mostly just has a supporting role in a story that focuses most dramatically on Mary and Jesus, but it couldn’t have happened without him, and the feeling that I started with was one simply of gratitude to him. And then the feeling I felt coming back from that was of an enormous heart just radiating selfless love and support and strength. I ended up spending most of that hour just basking in that. James came and sat next to me for just a few minutes at one point, but said later that he immediately felt a very strong presence there as well.

When I returned to the Church of the Annunciation, a few minutes before we had to leave, I found it empty and I was able to just walk right up to Mary’s grotto, though you aren’t able to go inside there. I was actually more moved by the statue of Mary outside. He has her arms outspread, as in many of the statues one sees of her. But she’s large enough that you can hold her hands and look up at her face as if she were your own mother and you still a child. Her hands have had the paint worn off of them by many pilgrims doing just that.

Final post coming up next....

Israel, Part 1: Jerusalem and Bethlehem

I recently returned from two weeks in the Holy Land. This was actually the first time I’ve ever been on a major, dedicated pilgrimage with an Ananda group, and it was glorious. I’m not going to even try to touch on everything here, but I’ll at least aim for all the highlights (which, honestly, is still most of it). For photos, I’m going to piggyback on sharing Karen’s album, which is larger and better curated than my still-unsorted pile of photos.

But first, a word about rocks.

Israel is full of rocks. Everything is built out of stone. It’s incredible. I can’t imagine building a single wall out of stone, much less a city or a country. And this is true of all the ancient, holy sites we visited. It became almost a joke: “And today we’re going to see... another rock!” And if it wasn’t a rock, it was a cave. But I soon realized that this is absolutely perfect. How many holy relics will last for 2,000 years intact the way a rock or a cave does? It’s an immense blessing to still be able to have such a direct physical connection, to be able to touch the very same stone that Jesus, Mary, and others did all those years ago. So if my writings seem to develop and overly petrological focus, that’s why. It’s hard to convey when you’re not actually there, but these are all much more than “just” rocks.

Church of the Holy Sepulchre
I’m starting this post here because this is where I started my first morning in Israel, pre-dawn, on no sleep. And it’s also the place that felt the most like my spiritual home base for the entire trip. Every morning that we were in Jerusalem I would get up, usually around 4am, make the 20-minute walk over, and spend an hour or two meditating there.

The Rock of Anointing, where Jesus’s body was prepared for burial, was perhaps the most powerful place for me in the conglomeration of sites that make up this giant combo-church. I never cease to be amazed that it is just right out there in the open, in the entryway no less, for all the thousands of pilgrims to touch, and I never went past it without touching it, or sitting with it for a while. There’s a feeling of awe and sanctity there that’s different from anywhere else we visited.

It was hard to actually get in to the tomb itself, due to masses in the early mornings and crowds in the afternoons, but I did manage a few times. My other favorite places were the hole that the cross stood in, and the Chapel of the Apparition. The latter has a portion of the column Jesus was tied to when he was scourged, and which you can also touch. It sounds macabre, but this was also a beautiful spot to meditate.

The lowest level contains the Chapel of the Finding of the Cross by Saint Helena. For the first week of our trip, a group called Harpa Dei was in there each morning singing, and it was an absolutely exquisite experience to listen to them.

On two separate mornings we walked the Stations of the Cross, which of course leads up to and has its final stations in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The first time we did it, it was early and dark and rainy, which was really just perfect, because you can really be in a different reality then, compared to the hustle and bustle of the daytime. I’ve never “done” the stations elsewhere, as many people have, but it was still stunning to realize that these are actually THE stations. Station V includes a rock, supposedly with Jesus’ handprint in it from when he fell. It’s now worn beyond any recognition as an actual handprint, but the feeling of it is strong enough to be true.

Church of the Pater Noster

On the Mount of Olives is the Church of the Pater Noster, which is famous for having large, beautiful plaques throughout the grounds with the text of the Lord’s Prayer in 140 different languages. (I even found a few different varieties of Braille, though disappointingly no sign language.) This, I realized later, is kind of a theme around the Holy Land. Many churches have similar displays of many different countries and languages representing their own particular themes, though this one was perhaps the most extensive. It’s sweet to see such a coming together of the whole world in these holy places.

Ein Kerem

Ein Kerem is a suburb of Jerusalem and has several sites related to John the Baptist. The Church of the Visitation is where Mary and Elizabeth met while both were pregnant, and I always thought the “belly bump” statue was kind of cute.

The upper church here has a huge painting on the back wall of Mary as the Lady of the Apocalypse, which isn’t a term I’d ever heard before, and which I still need to learn more about. But it’s a beautiful piece of art, and strikingly modern, especially facing the more traditional depictions over the altar.

We also got to visit the Monastery of Saint John in the Wilderness (it’s called a monastery, not a convent, though I believe it’s all nuns living there). The main road was washed out, so the bus took us up a winding village road to a place from which we could hike down to the monastery, which made it feel even more remote. The grounds are beautiful, and I would have loved to have more of a tour of monastic life there. But we did get to spend some time in Saint John’s cave, where he spent years in seclusion and meditation. “Long years he spoke only with God,” as Swamiji puts it in the Oratorio.

Bethlehem
Bethlehem is also very close to Jerusalem, but feels farther away, since it’s in the Palestinian territory. Our fantastic Israeli guide Rami couldn’t actually come with us because of this, so we went on Shabbat when he wouldn’t be working anyway.

The Church of the Nativity had probably the longest line of anything we went to, and it wasn’t even a big day for them. Passing through the cave and bustling past the official marker of the spot was a little too busy for me to get much of a feel for it. Though I do like how this photo shows us all looking down into the cave, with a light coming up out of it. But we got to explore some adjacent caves at more leisure, and do a bit of singing there. And we were told that the caves were actually artificially separated a few centuries A.D., and the exact spot of Jesus’ birth could have been anywhere in them because no one is certain.

After that we went to Shepherds’ Field, which surprised me because I’d had no idea that there was a specific, known field we could actually visit. It’s a park now, and there’s a church on it, of course, and some caves where the shepherds would sleep at night. And most dramatically, you can turn around from the top of the hill and see the Church of the Nativity on its own hilltop across the way, and realize that that was exactly where the angel pointed them on that very night. Wow.

We also made friends there with a big group of Nigerian pilgrims who liked our singing, and we ended up singing a bunch of Christmas carols together and having a fun time.

The Western Wall

On our first Friday evening in Jerusalem we visited the Western Wall. It’s just heartbreaking to see so many hundreds of people coming together to pray there, but being unable to go all the way to their holiest site on the Temple Mount. But simultaneously there was also such a joyous feeling of celebration. At one point I was standing at the edge of a group listening to the song they were singing, when it suddenly just exploded into an exuberant, bouncing, spinning dance that spread out like a nuclear chain reaction, pulling more and more people into it and sweeping aside tables and chairs as it went. Very fun.

It seems a little ironic given that this was a Christian-focused pilgrimage, and a little silly in its obviousness, but I just loved how Jewish Israel is. I love that everything shuts down on Shabbat so that people can actually observe and celebrate it. I love seeing the ultra-orthodox in their garb that just proclaims their religious dedication, like seeing brahmacharis and nayaswamis around Ananda. As David G put it, for the Jews, this is their Ananda, their spiritual home and family, and for all the difficulties and conflicts and politics, it’s still beautiful.

Further posts to come, as I manage to get them written....

War and Peace

This is a long book so I’m going to let myself indulge in a long review. Consider yourself warned: you can either settle in or skip out.

First, how did I decide to take this particular plunge? Well, basically it all started because I didn’t read (or watch) Game of Thrones. With the show recently wrapping up, it’s been on my mind, because I had really wanted to get into it, just for the huge, complex, sweeping expanse of epic fantasy. But I read the first couple books years ago and, while yes, they were completely engrossing and addictive, they also just felt horrible and made me feel horrible. There are still icky images burned in my mind that I wish I could get rid of. So anyway, I was again wishing it could have been something I liked, and it occurred to me that if I was in the mood for something sprawling and epic, I could finally tackle War and Peace. I didn’t expect there to be any dragons, but still….

The biggest hurdle, aside from the mere decision to read this at all, was deciding on a translation. I picked up the Maude translation first, because the Maudes were friends with Tolstoy who liked their work (though he didn’t live to see this particular translation). But honestly, the anglicization of names really annoyed me, and so I moved on to my other top contenders: Dunnigan, Briggs, and Pevear & Volokhonsky.

P&V are very clear about their approach to translation, in which they really try to nail the word-by-word meaning, and maintain as much of the original sentence structure as possible, even if it seems unusual or awkward. Many translators try to even everything out into what they generically think of as “good writing,” thus losing the original author’s peculiar style (which, in Tolstoy’s case, includes more convoluted sentences and more repetitions than some people are comfortable with). The downside often attributed to P&V is that their translations aren’t as “readable.” Dunnigan seems like a good balance in that respect, being a more traditional translation but maybe not as archaic as Maude, and somewhat more accurate. Briggs is much more modern and takes many more liberties with the text.

So… I started reading all three. Yeah. I would literally read Chapter 1 in each version in turn, then rotate through them all again for Chapter 2, etc. Thank goodness for ebooks, and luckily the chapters are very short. I actually went about 10% of the way through the book like this before I decided to jettison the Briggs. It felt like he was taking too many liberties and I didn’t feel I’d miss him.

At about 25% through, I decided I finally needed to narrow it down, largely because I was becoming so engrossed in the book that I didn’t want to reread chapters anymore but just wanted to keep going (even though it was interesting to see how I would notice different details in the different versions). I dithered a lot, but finally stuck with P&V. I had found by then that I like their style perfectly well, and I can only assume it’s closer to Tolstoy’s. Plus, they have some helpful footnotes. I also found it was relaxing to finally settle into one style and not switch back and forth.

Okay! So I actually read the book! What did I think?

I loved it. I was rather surprised, really, because I thought it would be the sort of book that we all know has merit but is still a bit of a slog. Instead, I found it to flow along beautifully. If you had just told me the subject matter, I would have expected it to be boring, but the actual experience of it was as an absolute page-turner. I can’t even say precisely why, maybe because I didn’t want to analyze it as I went along. But it was great, and I continually wanted to know what happened to everybody.

Speaking of “everybody,” I’ve heard the complaint that there are too many characters to keep track of. I didn’t feel that at all. Though there are lots of people, the core, primary characters are kept to a perfectly reasonable number. Also, Tolstoy uses a leitmotif sort of technique, having short, characteristic descriptions for many of the characters that are repeated many times, e.g. referring to someone’s “small, white hands,” or “downy upper lip,” etc. Far from being tediously repetitive, this actually feels completely natural, and instantly conjures up the right person in your mind, even if it’s been many chapters since you saw them last.

(I also enjoyed all the variations on people’s names—formal name, intimate or family name, French name, patronymics, etc. Once you get the hang of it, it’s not confusing. Makes me wonder what all my names would be.)

Also along the lines of describing people, Tolstoy takes a very expansive, non-judgmental view, throwing in positive and negative qualities alike for everybody, with seeming disregard to leading us to a particular opinion. Because, of course, everybody is a complete mix of qualities in real life. He will often describe thoughts and behaviors very sweepingly, in terms of someone manifesting something that “everybody” does. Again, if I just try to say what he’s doing, it sounds bad, overly generalizing or stereotyping, but that’s not how it comes across. I find these are always statements, as broad and sweeping as they are, that I can actually relate to, and therefore they ring true not just to the person described, but to humanity.

I’ve heard Tolstoy described as a “miniaturist,” which sounds ridiculous in the context of such an enormous book, but it’s true. He has so much ground to cover that in every moment he has to zero in on just the exact right details to make a character, event, or image “click.” In that sense, it’s a good study for poetry—how to notice the perfect individual details and focus on them.

Historically, it was interesting to read. I thought I had a general understanding of Napoleon’s march to Moscow, but it turned out I really didn’t, so I learned a lot about that. Tolstoy also gets into a lot of what you might call the “theory” of history—analyzing what historians typically take as cause and effect and why it’s inaccurate, and offering his own take on it, which the whole book is really an attempt to embody (though with the understanding that nothing finite could really do so).

Often these sections begin to sound rather fatalistic. But I find that they don’t feel that way, perhaps because his viewpoint just feels so expansive. It’s really the cosmic interweaving of karmic cause and effect that he’s describing, which we are each subject to but also an integral part of. And it’s good to understand our place in it all.

I’m going to say a few more specific things about the story here, so if you care about spoilers for a 150-year-old book, here they are. In particular, I’m going to talk about deaths and marriages.

First of all, not everybody dies. Yay! And those who do die don’t have gratuitous, GoT-style, kill-off-everyone-you-like deaths (I think I was subconsciously worried about that). Of the major characters who die, I think all of them have some sort of transcendent, uplifting experience shortly before their death. This is beautiful, because of course we know that everyone ultimately dies, but Tolstoy always shows us how it can be a positive transition, with everyone heading in the right direction. The next step in that direction is different and appropriate for everyone. (So some might not necessarily seem “transcendent,” but relative to where they are, it’s uplifting to some degree.) I also noticed that Tolstoy never lets us see the actual moment of death directly, as if death itself isn’t as significant as the personal transformation he does describe. Let’s look at the primary examples.

• Prince Andrei Bolkonsky: After having been so focused on achieving worldly glory earlier in the book, he has a period of a few days before his death in which he is explicitly detaching from the world. From a yogic standpoint, this is very good. Then he has his dream in which he experiences death as an “awakening from life.” (Again, very yogic!) (This is a death which we almost observe, but at the last moment, Tolstoy simply tells us that Marya and Natasha “were there” when it happened.)
• Old Prince Nikolai Bolkonsky: After having been such a horrible jerk to his daughter all her life, he is able to finally be kind and loving to her after his stroke and just before he dies.
• Petya Rostov: Petya was completely gung-ho to go to war and kill Frenchmen, but the night before his final battle he has that transcendent experience of a symphony of oneness in the forest. He still goes into battle, and we sort of observe his death, but at that moment we’re removed to someone else’s vantage point, and don’t realize at first what has happened until the almost casual statement that he had been shot. (As explicit as that final statement was, I had to go back and reread the whole paragraph to believe it.)
• Platon Karataev: A relatively minor character in terms of page time, but very significant to Pierre’s personal transformation. All we ever see of him, really, is a figure of sweet, simplistic enlightenment, but the night before he gets shot we get to hear him tell his story that ends with “God had already forgiven him—he was dead.”
• General Kutuzov: The commanding general died after “Russia was delivered and placed at the highest degree of her glory,” as he saw it. “And so he died.”
• Countess Helene Bezukhova: She’s a little trickier, but one could make the argument that her conversion to Catholicism was a positive step in spite of it being done cynically, to forward her own agenda. I’m thinking here of all the ancient Vedas of India that give prayers and rituals for every situation in life, even the fulfilling of selfish ends, on the theory that people should at least get used to turning to God for help, even if they aren’t ready to lead an otherwise more spiritual life.
• “Little Princess” Lise Bolkonskaya: Again, somewhat tricky, in this case because she died in childbirth, and it’s not clear that she herself had any sort of transcendent experience here. But the birth itself is received by the whole household in a spirit of awe in the presence of a sacred, miraculous event, so that’s the context in which we the readers experience her death. (If you wanted to make more of an effort, you might also say that, for someone consistently described as so childlike, giving birth was a particular rite of passage into womanhood for her.)

As for the marriages, Natasha and Nikolai are the ones we’re following the most in this respect over the course of the whole book. Honestly, I was a bit annoyed with them much of the time, with Natasha for so easily falling in love with everybody, and for Nikolai for so easily falling out of love (especially, repeatedly, with Sonya). I was really worried when he started getting interested in Marya, who I felt deserved much better (as did Sonya, but at least she knew what she was involved in). So I was actually pleasantly surprised when Tolstoy managed to bring us to the final pairings with everybody matured enough to be believable and to leave me content and satisfied in both their cases. Sonya is the only one I’m really sad about, and I wish things could have worked out better for her. I guess she was never enough of a “main” character to get more of her own arc, but I always felt she should have been.

Other beautiful things:

• Natasha’s singing, gorgeously described in several different scenes. “She did not think of anyone or anything at that moment, and from her lips composed into a smile sounds poured forth, sounds that anyone can produce for the same lengths of time, at the same intervals, but which leave one cold a thousand times, then for the thousand and first time make one tremble and weep.”
• The chapter describing the results of Pierre’s spiritual transformation—his inner state of consciousness, other people’s reactions to him, and even how it manifests in practical matters. “[H]e did not wait, as before, for personal reasons, which he called people’s merits, in order to love them, but love overflowed his heart, and, loving people without reason, he discovered the unquestionable reasons for which it was worth loving them.”
• The nearly divine rapture with which the army receives their emperor. “He stopped, looked about, and illuminated everything around him with his gaze.”
• Denisov dancing the mazurka. And in spurs, no less! “Only on horseback and in the mazurka did Denisov’s small stature not show, and he looked like the fine fellow he felt himself to be….”
• The simple elegance of the shortest sentence in the book: “Drops dripped.”

Swami Kriyananda talks about having an impression of the spiritual light emanating from the works of great authors. He never mentioned Tolstoy in that context, but in reading War and Peace I feel for the first time that I’ve experienced a bit of what he’s referring to. Throughout the book I very often had a sense of a sort of white-blue glow behind everything, which I feel is perhaps Tolstoy’s consciousness guiding the whole experience. This book is truly remarkable.

New Online Harmonium Course

I’ve just recently launched a project I’ve been working on for the last several months: a new online beginner’s harmonium course! Find out all about it at www.HarmoniumChanting.com.

The course includes 5.5 hours of video, 33 pages of PDF handouts, and seven complete chants to learn, with both melodies and chords. Full contents are listed here. And here’s the trailer:

Also on YouTube you can find the first introductory video and a demo video of Door of My Heart in four languages.

Happy chanting!

Transition Time

Those of you who have been following the East West saga know that for the past year and a half Ananda was considering selling the store. In a sudden plot twist, barely a month ago, several puzzle pieces fell into place for several people and we now have a new plan: Ananda will be keeping East West, David G. will be the lucky new manager, and I will be moving on to work at the Ananda Palo Alto Church itself. Everybody involved feels extremely positive about all of this, and doubly so after such a protracted period of uncertainty.

The past 6 years have been a great adventure, both fun and challenging. I am immensely grateful to all the wonderful co-workers and customers and friends and advisors who have helped me through it. I learned a lot, and I think if I were to do it over I would do many things differently (and hopefully better!) but for the current run, I feel like I’ve about maxed out with what I could do. It’s a good time for a change, both for me and for the store.

My last day was yesterday, on our annual Inventory Day, which makes it the exact 6-year anniversary of when Nooshin and I took over as co-managers from Tushti and Surendra. I find that very satisfying and orderly. I will continue to help out, of course, such as maintaining a few small website duties in the short term, but that’s fine and I’m happy to do it.

Everybody has been asking me what I will be doing at the church, but for now the answer is still pretty vague. Shanti has lots of ideas for me—and apparently lots of other people have been sending her ideas for me as well!—but we will keep it pleasantly fuzzy until I actually get there and see how I fit in. (On a side note, my angel card for the year was “Trust.” So I’m sure it will all work out fine.)

Before I get there, though, I’m taking a bit of a sabbatical—at least for the month of January, and probably some amount of February as well. I probably won’t really go away, except for maybe a short seclusion, but a protracted staycation really just sounds pretty nice right now. I hope to do more writing (probably poetry, more blogging, maybe even some stories), I want to start drawing and painting again, and I’m going to start re-learning 5-string banjo for the upcoming school play that I’m accompanying in March. So there’s all that for starters. Plus, I’m still teaching Raja Yoga, meditation, and Kriya prep classes as they come up. I don’t believe in being bored!

Rereading Autobiography of a Yogi

Paramhansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi is a quintessential “desert island” book—one to be read and reread, enjoyed and re-enjoyed, with always something new to learn or experience from it. For those of us who are disciples of Yogananda, it can become almost his very living presence.

I’m not a big re-reader of books, usually being more prone to feeling panicked about how many books there are out there to keep up with. But I’m on about my 12th time or so through the Autobiography now, and it’s interesting to look back and see what the rereading experience has been like so far. Each time through is unique, often surprisingly so.

On one reading, I was particularly struck by this passage early in the book:

[Lahiri Mahasaya’s] picture had a surpassing influence over my life. As I grew, the thought of the master grew with me. In meditation I would often see his photographic image emerge from its small frame and, taking a living form, sit before me. (pp. 9-10)

My reaction to this was to think, “Hey! I have a photo of Lahiri Mahasaya on my altar!” Initially this was in the sense of “Why doesn’t this happen to me?” but luckily it didn’t stay there. Aside from being a reminder of the importance of our gurus’ images, this also inspired me to read the entire rest of the book differently. Instead of thinking of the “I” in this autobiography as someone else telling me his story, I decided to hear these words as coming from myself, actually being the first-person narrator and experiencing these stories, rather than just hearing about them. That can be a very powerful attunement practice for anyone who wants to try it.

The more obvious opposite approach works perfectly well, too, of course. Let Yogananda be the “I,” but really try to experience that as a direct, living reality, as if he were sitting down with you, telling his story in person.

On other re-readings, I’ve found other themes to naturally arise within the first few chapters and color my experience of the rest of the book. In one case, I simply reveled in the delightful use of language (his style can be a bit of an acquired taste, but I absolutely love it). In another, I became very keenly aware of the humor, and laughed my way through all the nearly 500 pages. In still another, I found myself feeling comforted and loved.

This year’s Living Wisdom School play was on the life of Yogananda, and having attended all three performances (and some rehearsals) not long ago, I still have it fresh and clear in my mind. Many of the lines were taken verbatim from the Autobiography, and I find myself rewatching those scenes in my mind as I come to them in the book. Though the play might seem to be an extra step removed from the book itself, I find it adding an extra joyful dimension to the reading, not only from the love I feel for the kids performing it, but from the experience of Yogananda’s life as a continuing, vibrant reality, all these years after the death of his body.

Over time, the relationship with the book takes on a reality of its own. As with a favorite movie, I can recite from memory many of the best lines as they come up, and find them more, rather than less, delightful for the familiarity. Various scenes will resonate back to the point in my life when I last read them. Particular teachings will stand out as having been applied in new ways since the last reading, or perhaps as being particularly pertinent at the moment. The book, the guru, and my own life weave together into an ever richer tapestry with every turn of every page.

If you haven’t read this book, read it. If you’ve read it, read it again. I think that should cover everybody.

Assisi Gathering

Forty-five years ago, there was a very clear first generation of Ananda—the devotees who “grew up” spiritually with Swami Kriyananda, founded Ananda Village and the various colonies, and now lead the work around the world. Many more have joined the movement since then, of course, but I’m told that there has never been quite so obvious a “batch” of souls incarnating together. Until now.

That first generation was able to spend a lot of time together in the early days of Ananda, forming bonds of spiritual friendship that held strong even after they dispersed around the world. The current generation is starting out already dispersed, and while it’s great that we’re already global, it also means we need to make an extra effort to bring our magnetism together and carry Master’s mission forward with all the harmonious energy it requires.

And so Narayani and Shurjo had the inspiration last year to create this gathering, with dozens of devotees coming together from three different continents. We were mostly in the age range of 25-40 or so—folks who have had a chance to get some experience on the spiritual path but are still fresh and enthusiastic about bringing a new wave of energy to carry Ananda forward. The 10 days we spent in Assisi, Italy, were a chance for us to build friendships, share magnetism, and really start to cohere as a group so that we can do this together. (Side note: We still haven’t come up with a good name for the group that doesn’t feel limiting, since the group itself doesn’t have a hard delineation. It’s really just more Ananda, manifesting in more ways through more people.)

There’s a lot more writing coming up, so if you’re the sort who prefers to skip right to the photos, there are a bunch here, mostly snagged from an even larger album here (which you’ll need to be on Facebook to see). There’s also a great video of highlights you can watch.

Ananda Assisi

The Ananda community outside Assisi was really the perfect place for this to happen, I think. It already has a very international feel, being the main Ananda center for all of Europe, and the home of devotees from many different countries. I also liked the fact that the retreat center serves three meals a day, like the Expanding Light, but it’s not just for visitors: many or most community members eat there every day as well. So even though our group was usually together, we still felt very connected to the community as a whole, rather than separate or isolated.

Similarly, the morning meditations at the temple are very well attended, and have a great, concentrated energy. I made a point of going to the energization and yoga sessions beforehand as well, which means my Italian vocabulary includes rather more body parts than is probably typical for beginners.

Sharing

On the first evening there, we actually did all our introductions in the main temple, with the whole community invited, because so many people are interested in what was going on, and because it was just a fun way to introduce ourselves and meet everybody. We got a video of it, too, if you want to see who all was there.

On the following days, though, we had our own space in the common room of the Agriturismo (where many of us were staying), and we had a lot of time there just spent in sharing and discussion. (Okay, and foosball and ping pong, too.) Aside from sharing our own personal stories, we also had focused sessions on Education for Life, farming and sustainable living, music, Ananda businesses, and more. We got to hear about what our friends around the world are doing in all these different areas, and brainstorm new ideas.

It’s a testament to the magnetism of the group that we all could have been completely carried away into any of these areas of service. After Zach and Hailey spoke, I think we all wanted to be farmers. After the EFL sessions, we were all ready to go out and become teachers. When this group gets together, we can probably do anything.

Music

Music is always one of the most joyful and miraculous things about any Ananda gathering. We had been doing some chanting together, of course, but we hadn’t had any proper choir rehearsals yet when we found ourselves at 10:30pm on the steps of the Minerva Temple in Assisi, about to sing for various assembled passersby and late-night al fresco diners. Narayani wanted me to lead the choir, so there I am with no previous conducting experience, not knowing what songs we all know in what languages, facing a 40-person choir with an audience already gathering around us because we sure looked like we were going to come out with something good. And wow, we did. We ended up singing about 6 songs, to the great satisfaction both of ourselves and of our audience. And conducting it was really quite an experience, because you get so much more of the complete choir focused on you when you’re right in front, rather than buried away in the tenor section.

One of the evenings early in the trip, our group led a kirtan for the community. I don’t think we got it on video, but here’s a recording of the last half hour or so of it. They have multi-lingual chant books in the temple there, so we took some shots at singing in Italian as well as English, but a lot of folks also just opted to skip that whole issue and focus on Indian chants instead.

We also put on a choir concert, for which we had one single rehearsal, the afternoon of the concert (and the day after our first singing on the streets of Assisi). And this was truly one of the miracles of music, because we only had a rough plan, and didn’t even know who we’d have in most of the solos or ensembles. And yet somehow, the music, as it does, pulled us all together and the concert was really a surprising success. We got the whole thing on video here (though the video and audio get pretty out of sync, so you might want to just listen).

Just as much fun, though, is all the random informal singing that happens when gurubhais are hanging out together. On one long drive to La Verna, our van sang nearly the entire Oratorio—including some of the instrumentals—and then just kept going with whatever else we could think of. Then more singing on more car trips, singing around a campfire one evening, singing for spontaneous lunchtime entertainment, singing because you got sucked into the group performing for the newly arrived visitors… it was great.

Here’s a video of us singing in Santo Stefano.

Seva

We also had a chance to earn our keep with a few seva opportunities. I think most people probably got a shift in the kitchen at some point, and we also spent a morning working at the Terre di Luce farm (I got to weed and mulch around the rose bushes). And on the last Saturday, we joined in on the Rajasi Day—an all-community work day.

I had gotten pretty sunburned the day before, so I was looking for an indoors job. Plus, I was completely enamored of the Awakening Arts Academy that we’d gotten to visit earlier. Plus, Dana’s a hoot, so what with one thing and another, I managed to finagle my way on to her team.

I got spider duty. Those glorious high ceilings and skylights in the art gallery are apparently spider heaven, so I got to stand on a ladder, reach as high up as I could with a long broom, and sweep spiders and cobwebs right down on my face (because I couldn’t reach far enough to angle out much away from myself). Then scoot the ladder forward a foot and do it again. For several hours.

Luckily I had a helper, because apparently I have to start collecting my tribe of toddlers no matter where I am in the world. Little Xavier was there with his mom who was also working in the art academy that day, and he needed something to do, so I trained him to run around on the floor catching the spiders I knocked down and taking them outside. We both learned that if you grab a daddy longlegs by one leg, its whole body freezes still, which is pretty cool, and we both ended up having a lot of fun with the disarachnification of the building.

Swamiji

I hadn’t considered this trip as a pilgrimage, but as it turned out, it very much was, with the heart of it being in Swamiji’s house. It’s amazing that it is so open and available to be visited and meditated in, and we were blessed to share a meditation there nearly every day.

I don’t tend to go into such places expecting anything very dramatic. I know God and guru are everywhere, and so I figure I’m going to experience Their presence to a greater or lesser degree more on my own merits than anything else, like just being in a particular location. But some places really do have a special power.

It was sweet to walk around the small house, and see Swamiji’s favorite tea cup and whatnot. But then I went into the bedroom where he left his body, knelt down by the bed, and suddenly it was as if he were just there. It felt exactly the same, and every bit as vivid and immediate, as the first time I ever met him, and I spent most of that first meditation crying in the same way I did back then, nine years ago. Even just thinking about it days later, the same feelings come back.

I felt like our group as a whole was also very attuned to Swamiji, and I spent a lot of the trip trying to practice tuning into him more and more. But every visit to that bedroom was always special in its own particular and intense way.

St. Francis

We also, naturally, got to spend some quality time with St. Francis. San Damiano was our first visit, and was most notable for the spot where St. Clare left her body. I felt like I could have pinpointed that location even without the signs. Even just a few steps away in the same room, the energy felt different. After San Damiano, we went to the Porziuncola, but that was a bit too overwhelming for me. The original little church was very dear, but there was so much built up around it that I just couldn’t get centered and tune into it.

Unfortunately, we got to the Basilica of St. Francis just before it closed, and so we got in but not so far as to get to go to his tomb. We were also too late to get into St. Clare’s. But Santo Stefano was a cute little church, whose bells are said to have tolled on their own accord when St. Francis died. It was completely empty, so we meditated in there for a bit, and even sang a few songs in the lovely acoustics. Here’s a recording of us singing St. Francis’ prayer there, which became somewhat of a theme song for the whole trip. (This was the first time we sang it together as a group.)

Towards the end of the trip, we also spent a day at La Verna. For me, this started out as another case of too much stuff and too many people. Tourist energy is hard to meditate in, and even with us yogis, it can be distracting having 30 of us trying to get in and out of small chapels and whatnot. So I spent the morning hiking around the gorgeous mountain top and enjoying the stunning views of the valley. But then after lunch a lot of the rest of our group went up the hill, and many of the other visitors were in a service in one of the chapels, and I found myself alone with the rock that Christ sat on when he would appear in visions to St. Francis. I put my hands on it and suddenly all I could do was just stand there and be with it, unmoving, for 20 or 30 minutes. Eventually someone else came in and I slipped out to go visit the cave where St. Francis slept on a rock, and again I had some nice time there alone and moved on when other folks came by. Ditto for the tiny cave where the cliffside folded itself inward to keep St. Francis from falling. Those kinds of places, where you can be with the actual rocks St. Francis touched, were so much more moving than all the extra fancy stuff that got built up around it all later. Though I did go do my kriyas later in the chapel built where Francis received the stigmata.

Roaming Home through Rome

Okay, so our program ended on Wednesday morning, and seven of us had morning flights out of Rome on Thursday. Rome is about a 2.5 hour drive from Assisi, so someone (I don’t actually know who) had what seemed like a good idea at the time, which was for us all to go to Rome Wednesday night, drop all of our bags in Katelyn’s hotel room (since she was staying an extra day or two) and then just stay up all night wandering around Rome in the dark until it was time to get a taxi to the airport. Apparently jet lag can’t touch you if you completely mess yourself up first.

Well, as we finished dinner at about 10:30, some of us started realizing that it had been a pretty long 10 days, and we weren’t exactly caught up on sleep to begin with, and it was going to be how long until we could sleep on the plane? But we ended up having a very nice stroll all around Rome in the dark, seeing the outsides of various places that were, of course, closed for the night, like the Pantheon, the Coliseum, etc. After a couple hours we went down by the river to energize and meditate, which helped. And around 3:30 we finally went back to grab our bags and get a 100 mph (no traffic!) taxi to the airport by 4am.

My own saga continued with more details than I need to get into, but after various other delays and missed flights, I eventually got home, having gone about 48 hours without seeing a bed. Oh, and staying up all night totally did not scare the jet lag away. But I’m feeling better now.

What’s Next?

This gathering of people and energy was a beautiful experience, and really perfect for what we needed at this stage, I think. More gatherings of “this group”—however we define it and whoever wants to be in it—will definitely happen, but probably not in the same way. The energy needs to start heading out into more service and expansion sooner rather than later. Perhaps the next time we gather this “batch” of devotees together, it will be for a reincarnation of the Joy Tours, or a manifestation of something else fun and creative. Stay tuned!