< ?php the_ttftext ($text = \"How extraordinary is the mercy of the Lord?\", $echo = true, $style=\"English\", $overrides=\"\"); ?><\/p>\n
By Lalita Madhava devi dasi<\/strong><\/p>\n After living in the Alachua community for more than 25 years (it is now funny to think that as one of 7 or 8 people living on the New Raman Reti Farm in the early 80’s, I was singlehandedly 15% of the community!) I recently moved back to New England with my children and granddaughter. Though we loved (and desperately miss) the Deities, the temple and the devotees and are now actually gearing our lives and business to where we can spend half the year there, we could no longer handle the intense, overwhelming Florida climate year round. And although I am originally from Boston and we’d at first intended to move there, we ultimately chose to live in the gorgeous, historic, cultural, intellectual and art-centered town of Brattleboro, VT because we felt it would be a more sattvic environment for a child. <\/p>\n And here we are. After some initial challenges, which included an ankle broken during the move (and subsequent hysterical scene in which I lay at the bottom of my back stairs, cursing and sobbing in the azalea bushes), a 16-hour flight-from-hell courtesy of USAirways and, stupidly in retrospect, taking an apartment sight unseen due to the time constraints created by the immediate sale and 30-day closing on our house in Florida (and having that apartment turn out to be a very bad choice) – deep breath, everyone! – we are now finally settled in a lovely Victorian house with hardwood floors, southwest facing bay windows and 10′ ceilings. And as an artist (a jeweler specifically), my studio has amazingly opulent floor-to-ceiling windows which overlook beautiful downtown Brattleboro. <\/p>\n So there I was last night, sitting in my beautiful studio at my work table, thinking about new designs. I make hand-fabricated bracelets, brooches and necklaces set with rare and unusual gemstones and individually hand-stamped with Bhagavad-gita verses, which I sell in upscale mainstream art galleries. With my workspace freshly organized after the second unexpected move, I was meditating on green Mali garnets and spectacularly swirling Sierra Madre agates, imagining what I might do with them.<\/p>\n My contemplation was interrupted by a knock on my studio door. My daughter, Krishna-darshan, was urgently saying, “Mata, come here! Come here right now!” I followed her into the living room, where she put her finger to her lips, saying “Shhh”, and pointed toward the ceiling, indicating that I should listen to the faint, muffled music coming from the upstairs apartment. <\/p>\n When I did, I could not believe my ears. “Govinda Jaya Jaya” from the old Radha Krishna Temple recording?!? Stunned, I stood still as a statue and just kept listening. Next, my neighbor cranked up the volume and began exuberantly singing along with Mother Yamuna’s “Govindam Adi Purusam,” the intimately familiar song that is played in temples each morning at Greeting of the Deities! Wow. I was speechless. I was so blown away by this – by how it was such an amazing manifestation of Lord Krishna’s mercy toward us, living in a town with no devotees and no temple – that I just stood there crying in my living room! <\/p>\n A little while later, when I finally composed myself, I called my upstairs neighbor, Maria. Prior to this I had had only 2 or 3 brief conversations with her and knew only that she was from Caracas, Venezuela and that she was a vegetarian, something she’d mentioned previously in the context of informing us about a community Thanksgiving event taking place in Brattleboro. <\/p>\n “Maria,” I said, “I couldn’t help overhearing the music you were just playing.” She was immediately apologetic and begged my forgiveness for playing music too loud. “No, no,” I interrupted her, “it’s not that. It’s just that that music is very special to me and I was surprised to hear you playing it.” I then went on to explain that I was a Hare Krishna devotee and that the Radha Krishna Temple tape had special significance to me and I wondered where she got it. “Oh my God, oh my God! You’re a devotee?” she exclaimed. And the amazing story Maria proceeded to tell me blew my mind even more than it already was. <\/p>\n Growing up in Caracas, her father was a hunter and she had a vivid and disturbing memory of him bringing home a deer that he’d killed when she was 4 years old. By the time she was 7, however, he’d converted to Hinduism and become a vegetarian, aggressively preaching to his children to stop eating meat and telling them that it was “poison.” By her early teens, Maria herself had become a committed vegetarian. <\/p>\n Several years later, Maria left Caracas and moved to New York City. During her early years there, she received word from her parents that her 13-year-old brother had left home and joined the Hare Krishna Temple, where he lived for more than 10 years – a decision her parents were favorable toward since they appreciated the beliefs and the philosophy of the Hare Krishnas. Eventually, Maria herself began attending the 55th Street Temple and came very close to joining the Movement. <\/p>\n For whatever reasons, she did not move into the temple at that time, and eventually moved to Brattleboro, Vermont, where she has continued to pursue her education and professional life. Maria described the Radha Krishna Temple tape as being “so important” to her and said that she usually “plays it early in the morning.” She said that to her it is “sacred, beautiful, enlightening and enduring” and that in listening to it “a very powerful energy is transmitted to you.” “Elevating” and “empowering” were adjectives she also used to describe the chanting. “So purifying,” she said, “it connects you to Him, to the real Creator.” <\/p>\n Maria went on to tell me that she “feels very bad” that she didn’t join the temple back then and that she often wonders “how her life would have been different” if she had. When I told her that we try as often as possible to make the 2-hour drive to the Boston Temple, she said she deeply missed the Deities and the temple and wanted to go with us whenever we went. <\/p>\n Another interesting and quite comical twist on the whole situation was that I have repeatedly offered Maria prasadam – such as chocolate cake and gourmet homemade pizza cooked from scratch by my daughter, Krishna-darshan – and she has repeatedly politely refused. I could never understand why. It turns out that she is an ethical vegetarian and was afraid to accept our food because it might contain rennet cheese or other non-vegetarian ingredients! I almost fell over laughing! <\/p>\n So, as I said, here we are! In gorgeous Brattleboro where we thought there were no devotees, but where we have a devotee neighbor and an on-site manager whose partner manages the Natural Living department of the famous Brattleboro Food Co-Op and, inspired by my daughter’s name, ordered Krishna “statues” to sell in the gift wares section of the store when we moved in! <\/p>\n The Lord is amazingly kind and merciful!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Lalita Madhava devi dasi<\/strong><\/p>\n Maria described the Radha Krishna Temple tape as being “so important” to her and said that she usually “plays it early in the morning.” She said that to her it is “sacred, beautiful, enlightening and enduring” and that in listening to it “a very powerful energy is transmitted to you.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-iskcon-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5102\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}