20 November 2020
Dearest friends,
What a jumble of a letter! I started it in early November, I have added a paragraph or two every once in a while. Since I started it, circumstances have changed dramatically. From a simple lockdown to a stricter one, from a gorgeous autumn to the crispness of early winter. In fact, we had our first frost last night: minus one degree Celsius which I think is around 30 degrees in Fahrenheit. Yesterday we covered the young lettuce and chard with felt to keep it warm. I’m happy to say everything survived and looks vibrant. It is sunny today and definitely a 2:00 pm afternoon walk when the temperature is at its warmest.
Now it’s almost the end of the month. It’s foggy and dull today. We worked on the compost for a little while after picking cabbages and lettuce to share with the local sangat. Discipline is so necessary. It is so easy to drift into a Covid-coma and only put half-effort into life. I just had a WhatsApp from a young sevadar who does drawings for different projects. He was writing because he was concerned that for the last two weeks he’s done no seva at home, as he’s lost his enthusiasm. I had just written this Winston Churchill quote to a group of sevadars: “Success consists of going from failure to failure without the loss of enthusiasm.” Enthusiasm is underrated. It’s a warm and positive quality that is essential to motivate us to walk the road to heaven.
I didn’t think I’d be writing another letter but two things happened some weeks ago that pushed me to take pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. We entered a new lockdown and I cut Ann’s hair.
Ann mentioned a few times that she wanted me to cut her hair, the back only – not a full haircut – but I ignored her out of fear. However, when I asked for a haircut she very cleverly suggested I could cut hers at the same time. So, I bravely said yes. To my surprise, when I began, I wasn’t afraid at all. I realized that although I had no technique, how to do it was common sense and not a mystery that was beyond the comprehension of someone as inept as me. No one would pay me to cut their hair but no one who saw Ann in the days that followed laughed at her hair either. If lockdown continues, I’ll be happy to cut her hair again. As long as it's only the back, I can cope. I don’t recommend it to most of you, as the potential for marital disharmony is hiding behind a slip of the scissors. However, it is definitely doable in a pinch.
As you know, Covid cases have been skyrocketing around Europe. Italy was doing better than most countries until about two weeks ago. Now cases are rapidly increasing here also. But the spikes are in certain areas only. Milano, for example, is exploding. The government response is to create three types of regions – red, orange, or yellow – red being the worst, yellow for the areas with the fewest cases. Every ten days they will review the situation to see if the status needs to change. We are in a yellow zone so our lockdown this time is lighter.
We have to stay in our region and can’t go into an orange or red zone. There is a nighttime curfew and shopping centres are closed on the weekend when they normally would have the most traffic. Masks, of course, are mandatory.
This means that we have cancelled satsang at our centre and are shrinking weekend seva to fifteen people a day from the local sangat only. They’ll bring their own lunch as an added precaution. It’s not an onerous lockdown and we hope we stay in a yellow zone. Those in red zones can't leave their local village, so we wait for them to be able to join us again at the centre.
Today, Saturday, there are twelve sevadars. It’s great to have their company and to see love in action. I’m always surprised that I have this opportunity to experience such service to God.
The other day we went into the village about ten minutes away. It is the largest village in our area, probably about fifteen to twenty thousand people. We went into a store and bought a few small things for our house. We realized it was the first money we had spent other than for food in 2020. It was fun to buy something because it was a novelty and not a normal occurrence. It must be the first time in our 50 years together that we hadn’t spent money over a ten-month period. It takes a pandemic!
Now it is the 14th of November. Cases are increasing dramatically. We start orange lockdown tomorrow. We can leave home to food shop but only in our local village. Today is the last day of seva and from tomorrow it will be like it was in March, April, and May. The two of us only. Back to an enforced quiet life. We are going to the natural food store today, it’s about 30 minutes away, where we will get some basics to see us through. But it’s okay. There is nothing to complain about. We have enough, food, shelter, and Baba Ji’s Q&As to watch. Life might be a little boring, but isn’t that grace!
Milano and Napoli are the worst hit areas. In Italy, there is a north/south divide. The north is richer, more industrial, while the south is poorer and has a much weaker health system. It’s a mess. This is Kalyug in Technicolor: Pandemic, American election mess, Brexit, China/Hong Kong, kidnappings, the list could go on and on. Not much different than it is usually but somehow seems worse. Probably because I have enough time to read the news, so obsessions set in.
But at the same time, again, it’s a lovely autumn day; the colours are exquisite as is the light. Ann is outside planting and pruning with two sevadars while I’m a lump sitting at a computer. But she needs to work hard because she is getting chubby. Many of you know that she is a great cook. However, you might not know that she is not a great baker. Well, in the last two days she has baked an apple cake and chocolate-coconut walnut cookies. She had never baked a cookie in her life before yesterday. After taking them out of the oven last night and tasting them she was like a teenage girl in her enthusiasm for how good they were. She was the mastana of cookie baking. Every conversation I had on the phone was interrupted by her telling whomever I was speaking with about her cookies. I haven’t seen her so excited since she had a concussion after falling off a horse about 25 years ago. It was a pleasure to watch – not the fall from the horse but her joy of making a good biscuit.
Then she was up all night from sugar shock. She rarely eats any sugar but licked the bowl, the mixer blades, and also had one of her baking ‘works of art’ before going to bed. A few minutes ago she had another with morning tea. Will her sevadars be able to keep up with her? Not sure, but eventually she’ll crash and have to rest from sugar overload. Then they will have some peace. I do have to say that the cookies are delicious. I’m eating one as I write this. I vowed to eat it slowly but that seems to be impossible. It disappeared in my mouth in a frenzy of pleasure.
On a more important note, I hope all of you are well. At the moment, we have two families with Covid. All of them are doing ok. At the same time, we are doing our best to strengthen the message to the sangat and sevadars that at this moment our seva is to take care of ourselves and our fellow members of the sangat. Covid fatigue is definitely setting in, even though masks are now part of our everyday routine. To see someone without one is shocking. I feel all of us are longing for the good old days. And, of course, they will return, but not for a while. I hope we have learned something in this period and will stay more positive in the future.
I have given up on travelling this year and even the first quarter of next year. But I live in hope that I will be able to travel and see sangats and do Naam Daan for those who have been waiting so patiently. It makes me happy to know, though, that they are under the care of the Satguru. However, occasionally I have a strong longing to get on a plane and go somewhere. Maybe it’s a need to feel more useful. Lockdown definitely feels like a combination of prison and opportunity. It’s so easy, though, to run away from opportunity.
Some of you have asked where we live. We are about an hour south of Verona and about 30 minutes north of Reggio Emilia, in the north of Italy. We are in the Po river valley so the terrain is flat. We can see the Appenini Mountains to the south and the Dolomiti Mountains to the north. So our distant landscape is lovely but our immediate one is boring. Local people ask us, with surprise in their voices, why did you move to this area? No expats live around here; they are in the next province south of us, Toscana (Tuscany). Firenze (Florence) is about a one hour 45 minute drive from here. We tell them we are here as we do volunteer work in the area. That usually ends the conversation.
It’s Sunday morning – no satsang, no sevadars, not even reception/gate sevadars. Only the two of us. I can hear the stillness. I’ll have to get used to the quiet again, the isolation, the separation, and start using the stillness for its purpose. Good luck to me!
We’re both chugging along, definitely not limping but not sprinting either.
Please take care of yourselves. Be cautious, be happy. Won’t it be lovely when we can all meet again?
Love,
A&B