Om Ganesha, Dec. 1, 2006
Morning Pujas and Prayers
WORLD AIDS DAY
Om Ganesha,
Namaste my chelas all over the world.
In years to come it will be asked How have all those people died?
Did not any one do any thing?
And even though I spend my whole life fighting AIDS, I so many times think it is not enough.
I do not question God or Goddess, I question human beings.
The people I loved so much in this world are now shadows of my existence.
Certainly the hundreds and hundreds are always with us yet I their Guru Mother miss them in my arms.
In my early forties life for so many began to end.
Not only end they were being dejected and ignored.
How could we grow spiritually, we who were left behind, if all we knew were dead and dying.
Yes this is about WORLD AID’S DAY.
And your Guru Mother is making it about Herself.
How about you all making it about yourselves and the ones you love at this moment in time and space.
AIDS IS NOT OVER YET.
Mother’s cry and Mother’s die.
Fathers cry and Fathers die.
Children cry, children die.
And our Ganga has truly become The Ganga with the hundreds and hundreds of our dead’s ashes floating on Her Breast.
I can not even begin to guess how many are not yet being tested.
Please I beg you all to be tested.
I am writing as my tears fall to the key board.
I want to be poetic and yet I want to be truthful before the dawn of WORLD AIDS DAY is upon us and the day after and the day after and the day after.
I am proud to say how much my chelas all over the world serve.
I am proud to say how many are alive and well and living full lives.
Yet how much pain and suffering they went through.
I met a beautiful man on Thanksgiving.
He and his lover were together for 51 years.
No ones left he said as I held him to my breast.
I know I said and heard him whisper to his Ma, i am sorry.
This is the courage I have seen a million times.
My people living with AIDS comforting me.
My Dakshina Kali Jaya always shows off his Ma’s AIDS Ribbon tattooed on my hand.
If I thought AIDS would go away I would tattoo my whole face and body.
And yet what beauty they were all of them in our lives.
As they came to Kashi to live before death.
I loved having them Here.
I tried to understand how they got to this place in this time and place.
An overpowering sense of emptiness and absolute loss began to take over.
And yet the love, how do I write you of the love?
The light shinning in the eyes of those soon to die.
Such courage,
May I always remember them and fight for them and every one who has AIDS.
Please do not draw the curtain on the dawn of AIDS.
For it is with us now.
I know that I am preaching to the choir.
Yet please allow me to.
Tell every one that AIDS IS NOT OVER YET AND THAT WE ALL NEED TO FIGHT.
The living and the dead are so close, just a breath or two away.
I feel the tears run slowly down my face and into my limbs.
Yet there is an over powering sense of joy.
For we have been loved and we who are alive are still loved by our dead.
So this night let us light the candles and ring the bells and commit once again to bring awarness to the millions who have died and the millions who are living with this disease.
I look over our Ganga and embrace them all with my love.
Do not forget them my chelas ever.
This is my Puja and this is my Prayer.
Love Ma
Jai Kali Ma Ki Jai
Always at the Feet Of Our Neem Karoli Baba Ki Jai