Mother Kwan Come to Me

Recently my Mom and I have been taking a day trip every couple of weeks. It helps us get through the isolation of this pandemic. We choose a place we can get to within two hours of our home.. Before we go, I download a book on Audible that we would both enjoy. We've listened to Michelle Obama's, Becoming, Alicia Keys' memoir, More Myself, and Ruth Badar Ginsberg's book My Own Words by Mary Hartnett, Ruth Bader

Ginsburg, and Wendy W. Williams.

I jokingly refer to these trips as an opportunity to walk around somewhere else in our masks! In North Carolina we we've been to Blowing Rock, Boone, Morganton and in South Carolina we went to Columbia to the Columbia Museum of Art.

While at the museum we saw a statue of Kwan Shi Yin, which dates to the

Late-Yuan Dynasty (1271 – 1368) or Early-Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).

Kwan Yin is associated with compassion and kindness. Her name translates as “one who hears the suffering of the world". Kwan Yin is said to have declined entrance into heaven to remain and help others. She has been compared to the Christian Mary.

I like Tara Brach's storied description of her:

"It is said that Kwan Yin hears the cries of this suffering world and responds with the quivering of her heart."