Spring Has Arrived

Sharani Posted on by

The season of Spring officially arrived yesterday, Saturday March 20th at 5:37am. While it was sunny, when I went out on the bike path that I live along on Saturday it was very windy and there was a chill in the air. One day later however when I ventured out again on the bike path, it was sunny, much warmer and less windy. So the second day of Spring felt like its arrival from my vantage point. Especially when I saw my first dandelion of the season alongside the bike path!

Question: What is God’s favourite season?

Sri Chinmoy: God’s favourite season is spring, when new hope, new life and new creation dawn. What God always wants from Himself is transcendence. This He can do only when He exercises new hope, new life and new creation constantly.
–Sri Chinmoy, God the Supreme Humourist, part 1, Agni Press, 1974.

I relished going outside to do a 2 mile virtual race in the warm sunshine where for the first time in months I didn’t even wear a jacket. The race was the 10th in the Sri Chinmoy Grand Prix Series of thirteen 2-mile races (one per week) that began on January 19th. Since the pandemic began last year, the Sri Chinmoy Marathon Team has added regular virtual race series that people from across the globe can participate in. Participating in these virtual races has been the one silver lining to how radically life has altered since a year ago. This is the second 2 mile Grand Prix Series and I have also done 5k, 10k, half-marathon, 1 mile, and relay events in the virtual series sponsored by the marathon team. To my wide surprise, I did my fastest time yet in this series that began in January. Because Sri Chinmoy advocates that inner and outer running can blend together and support each other, I typically offer a couple of minutes of prayer and meditation before it starts. I time myself and measure the distance with the Runkeeper app on my smartphone. I was in good company on the East Bay Bike Path today with many enjoying the spring weather. I spontaneously got inspired to intentionally smile at 9 people as I did the race as gestures related to Sri Chinmoy’s 90th birth anniversary this August have me preoccupied with the number 9!

When I sat to offer gratitude for a couple of minutes after finishing the race, I turned on the voice recorder on my phone to try to capture the cacophony of birds chirping up a storm. Listen here for a taste of what I enjoyed!

birds and geese on the bike path

Peace Run Rhode Island August 2020

Sharani Posted on by

I wrote about the Peace Run being a virtual event this year due to Covid and a wonderful surprise changed that here in Rhode Island. We were far enough along in phased reopening to have an actual Peace Run event (no more than 15 people) which included two ceremonies and several runners carrying the Peace Torch between the two locations. We were included in a local TV early morning news segment and a local newspaper did an article on the event. It was an inspiring culmination to all the virtual miles some of us had logged here in Rhode Island since the virtual run began in the Spring. My personal victory was to run the 2 miles along with the others carrying the torch and more or less keeping up with them for the distance! Here is a picture of me holding the Peace Torch on that special day! Read all about it on the Peace Run News from the Road section of the website.

Peace Run 2020 – a virtual journey!

Sharani Posted on by

Every two years starting in 1987, the Sri Chinmoy Oneness-Home Peace Run (an awesome global torch relay for peace founded by Spiritual visionary Sri Chinmoy) travels across America along with hundreds of other countries spreading a simple message – peace begins with me. By sharing the peace torch in ceremonies and activities with children, politicians, notable world figures and ordinary folks like you and me, seeds of peace and harmony are planted in countless ways.

This year the North American core relay team was going to run through my home state of Rhode Island on Wednesday August 12th. When the global pandemic took hold in mid-March, the actual running of the torch across the U.S. and Canada had to be canceled but like so many other activities during Covid times, we quickly launched a virtual run where the team that would have run decided to do miles in their own neighborhoods, carry the vision of the Peace Run in their hearts while running and walking and tally up the total to see if we could reach the same number of miles that would have been run in real-time.

Since only a couple of weeks ago, I got the Peace Run bug and decided that even though I hadn’t planned to travel across America with the core team that I could dedicate my new-found love of running on the East Bay Bike Path to the Peace Run. I wear the t-shirt (God I wished I owned more than 2 of them!) and sometimes chant or silently sing some of the songs that Sri Chinmoy composed that are like anthems of the run.

In small quiet ways, I feel that imperceptibly this humble effort might be making a difference. I’m much more likely to greet and say hello to the people I pass and them to me. I find myself spontaneously feeling more hopeful and optimistic about the world even though so much is happening in the world right now that is challenging. And I like to imagine that maybe even the trees, flowers, geese, swans, rabbits and deer that I see can share in a spirit of oneness to really bring home the message of the Peace Run into a reality – minus the word virtual despite these different and difficult outer circumstances underway in the world these days.

Photos Taken With My Phone on the East Bay Bike Path Spring and Summer 2020

My precious deer

Since the end of January, I work at a new branch of the same library system where I have worked for many years. It was built amongst some woods and I took this picture of a deer through the window of my work and paired it with this inspiring poem … Continue reading →