Category Archives: Uncategorized

An Angel’s Bedtime Song

Hi Sis,

I’m in my rocking chair with my little man sleeping on my lap. He’s in a deep sleep otherwise he would prosecute me for typing on top of his air space! He is not fond of the tic tic tic tic noises of technology. Instead he prefers eye to eye human contact when awake and the perfection of silence when asleep. It makes sense.

I just typed up the bedtime song I sing to him every night. It is nothing extravagant but it is straight from the heart. It has taken form organically over the last 3 months – the words strung together by smelling him, holding him, observing and watching him. He has elevated the meaning of love for me, his perspective is a breath of fresh air, he constantly teaches me.

Little-est Little One

We love your curious gaze,
We adore those bouncy little feet,
And those Sherlock little hands,
We love your explosive smile,
We adore the expression in your language,
How we do,
Yes we do,
We rejoice in your every little progress,
You are the sunshine in our smiles.

Chorus:
You’re our darling little angel,
You’re our little-est little one,
Oh my goodness,
How we love you,
Oh my goodness,
Yes we do,
You’re our every little thing.

You’re our angel,
You’re our gem,
You’re our temple,
You’re our heaven,
You’re our every little thing,
You’re in our every single prayer,
You’re in our every single thought,
You’re in our every single dream,
And every single little goal,

Tomorrow when the sun will shine,
The grass will grow,
And the flowers will bloom,
The trees will leaf,
And the birds will sing,
The wind will blow,
And the oceans will flow,
The seasons will change,
The minutes will pass,
And the hours will too,
All the way through,
All the way through,
We love you,
We love you,
All the way through we love you.

- SKDS

The Right to Choose

On June 13 2010, France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy was determined to introduce a bill to ban Muslim women from wearing burqas or niqabs, despite warnings from France’s highest constitutional body that the ban would infringe constitutional rights.

Under the guise of liberating Muslim women from the full veil, the bill passed in France’s lower house with flying colors; 335 votes were in favor of the ban, while 1 vote was against the ban.  If the bill passes through the Senate in September, which Sarkozy believes will not be a problem, our Muslim sisters will face a 150 Euro fine if seen covering their face in public.

Whether you agree with women wearing full burqas is not the point.  The point is that the government of France is targeting Muslim women and criminalizing them for the way they practice their faith, all in the name of gender equality.  When has revoking women’s basic freedom to choose ever resulted in gender equality?  Imagine the heavy decisions that lay ahead for our Muslim sisters.  What will they feel on the day that the law is implemented and they are forced to decide between the law and their faith? Continue reading

Bridging the Gap between Radical & Tradition

I recently watched Kavita Ramdas’ engaging TED talk on Radical Women, Embracing Tradition and haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since.  Ramdas, the president & CEO of the Global Fund for Women, explains how the concept of ‘tradition’ can be brought into radical thought and be used as a tool to create social change.

She calls this solution a ‘third-way raga’ that challenges some of the most common Continue reading

Power & Memory

By Guest contributor, Sara Andha

“The struggle of [wo]man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”

-Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

Some thoughts and feelings at the intersection of race, gender and memory…

To some, feelings are momentary. The emotion comes over you, like a wave, it consumes and throws you around. Mercy to the power of your physiological response to an external stimulus…  and then it recedes. The wave has been felt and passed. To others these feelings still haunt. Not always, but its there. Waiting. Hiding behind corners until something triggers that feeling again. As Southasian women I believe we carry more than our fair share of emotional baggage. Growing up, the violence, whether covert, overt, emotional or otherwise are enacted on us. Continue reading

Reaching for the stars? No, just a little lower

Reaching for the dust of the feet of the saints

The line above is a common expression in gurbani, which relates to a state of utmost humility.  Although I have read this expression many times, I must admit that I recall once scoffing at the literal translation thinking that it was unattainable and perhaps even a little dramatic. Luckily, I had the opportunity to revisit my negative judgments during a conversation with a close friend, who recently brought this state of humility into my reality and day-to-day experiences.

We came upon this topic as I reflected on how I was struggling to find validity in my work and career. Despite working in the field of my desire, I have found myself at the ‘bottom of the pyrimad’ with little room to apply my knowledge and experience in meaningful ways. My ego was suffering, to say the least. Continue reading

Let’s talk about stress, baby…

How to Live a Less Stressful Life: 10 Simple Tips

The American Psychological Association (APA) reports that 54% of Americans are concerned about the amount of stress in their lives.  So with stress still on the rise, I found the following 10 tips helpful on how we can reduce the amount of stress in our lives, courtesy of The Positivity Blog by Henrik Edberg.

1. Accept the situation.

Stress is often to a large part resistance to what already is. You may be in a stressful situation and think to yourself that this situation shouldn’t be, that you shouldn’t be here. But the situation has already arisen, is here, and so are you.

So to decrease the stress and resistance you accept the situation. With your resistance gone or lowered you can now direct your mental energy and focus to finding a solution in a level-headed manner instead of trying to do it while panicked or confused. Continue reading

Still I Rise

I came across this beautiful and empowering poem and thought that, since it was International Women’s Day, I would share it with you all. It is by Maya Angelou, and has been one of my favourite poems – especially when I was a teenager growing up. Recently, I came across it again and it touched me in a whole new way…

Still I Rise

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise. Continue reading

“Skinny me” made promises for “Fat me”

I’m less than 20 pages into the book (The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It) and have already had an enlightening revelation that is really quite a simple concept – The Skinny me is making promises that The Fat Me can’t keep.

reflection

There’s no doubt we all have multiple personalities that surface in our daily lives – and I agree with Michael Gerber when he says we all have a skinny guy and fat guy in us somewhere*.  Continue reading

brown bodies

I have recently rediscovered the beauty of my body, after resenting the skin I am in for years. I love my body now, the curves, the colour, the contour. But somehow, this newfound love also comes with shame, guilt, and a feeling that I shouldn’t be so accepting of the skin I’m in.

These feelings have come from a number of places… firstly, when I try to verbalize the newfound love for my body, I cannot, like my white* counterparts, discuss my body as a sexual instrument. I have found that I get strange looks, ignorant comments and petty assumptions thrown upon me when I discuss my newfound sensuality, while my white counterparts get recognition, ackowledgement and validation for their experiences. Continue reading

Politicizing the Sacred

I was recently thinking about a teacher of mine, who had an incredible impact on my life.  I was reflecting on what it was in particular about her that was so unique from other professors and teachers.  Beyond impacting us with her deep knowledge, wisdom, honesty and unfaltering discipline, she taught us how to politicize the sacred.

This process gave us something that we had never experienced in an academic or spiritual setting.  It involved tearing away our ego and finding ourselves in the Other.  After discussing some of the most horrific violences in society, we were assigned to find ourselves in that violence.  I had no idea what that even meant when I was asked where I was located in the murder of Pamela George.  I remember being bewildered, even dumbstruck, alongside everyone else.

How mystical it was! Continue reading