When Bad Things Happen to Good People: Living Well in the Midst of Suffering As a pediatrician, I have encountered both the healthiest of children and the most devastating of cases. And while I expected to encounter tragedy, I could never have anticipated what it would feel like to herald death. It was late overnight,…
Tag: Spirituality
Why We Tell Stories
Nitya Rajeshuni // “Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it’s an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one…
A Girl and a Neem Tree: Identity and the Belonging of Not Belonging
Nitya Rajeshuni // “[H Mart is] a beautiful, holy place. A cafeteria full of people from all over the world who have been displaced in a foreign country, each with a different history. Where did they come from and how far did they travel? Why are they all here? To find the galangal no American…
A Reimagined Healing: A Reflection on “This is Water” by David Foster Wallace
Nitya Rajeshuni // I don’t understand why wrinkles are blasphemous. I examined her face framed by wisps of smoky hair, captivated by the zigzagging marks traversing her forehead and chin, parables of her youth tucked neatly in their crevices. I imagined these lines etched into place by a magnificent painter, some with delicacy and precision,…
From Rumi to Herman Hesse, A Contemplation on Optimism: Why Uncertainty is When Hope is Needed Most
Nitya Rajeshuni // I was followed only by the clouds, drifting across glass windowpanes, as I passed my regular landmarks—the coffee shop with live music, the endless roadblocks of construction, the redbrick campus then pink with cherry blossoms. While life is now beginning anew, there were many months in the dark slumber of the pandemic…
Sacred Space
Jennifer & April Edwell// Where do medical and spiritual geographies overlap?