namahatta.org - Congregational Development Ministry

Two girls discover
the secret of life
in a sudden line of
poetry.

I who don’t know the
secret wrote
the line. They
told me

(through a third person)
they had found it
but not what it was
not even

what line it was. No doubt
by now, more than a week
later, they have forgotten
the secret,

the line, the name of
the poem. I love them
for finding what
I can’t find,

Here is a picture of hay in New Vrindaban’s winter barn.

Here is a  painting about hay from the 16th century.

We are having a spell of cold and snowy weather. The temperatures are about 15 degrees (8.3 C) below normal which makes them average for late December, early January. There have been snow flakes for the last couple of days but because the ground is still warm they hadn’t stuck until this morning when we awoke to this:

We have completed installing the posts for the 8 foot (2.44 m) deer fence. There were many blocks thrown in our path, each one more frustrating than the next, but eventually we finished.

The first was that the post hole digger I bought more than 30 years ago when I was in charge of the farming at New Vrindaban was worn out and unusable. Ranaka lent us a tractor but it took Gopesh, a professional welder,  most of two days to get it functioning again.

Beware –  the following link may become an obsession for some.

Allegedly if you answer questions about vocabulary free rice gets donated to needy folks and you learn new English words.

Play it here.

Check out their angle here.

Yesterday we had the fire in the cook stove going as it never got above 40 degrees (4.5 C) and was cloudy.  We usually try to make it to the end of October without lighting a fire but the last two weeks of the month were below average temperatures everyday and cloudy so we did have fires the two days there were snow flurries, I think the 28th and 29th. Almost made it. The cookstove is sufficient to heat the house until it gets really cold.

An old preacher was dying. He sent a message for his IRS agent and his lawyer, both church members, to come to his home. When they arrived, they were ushered up to his bedroom. As they entered the room, the preacher held out his hands and motioned for them to sit on each side of the bed. The preacher grasped their hands, sighed contentedly, smiled and stared at the ceiling.

by Elisa Wood

Unlikely as it may seem, a billionaire oilman and the ‘Lone Star State’ of Texas are driving wind to new heights of acceptance and growth in the United States, as the country becomes the top nation for wind power production for the first time. Elisa Wood reports.

“When my body will be thrown into the pit at the cremation grounds, it will simply lie there motionless. Then many crows, vultures, ants, and worms will come and playfully sport there. “

Srila Saccidananda Bhaktivinoda Thakura, The Desire Tree of Auspiciousness, Second Branch, Part 2, Song 4, Verse 10

I have been working the last week on getting a deer fence up. Many misadventures and frustrations which I may detail more later.

Wouldn’t it be nice if New Vrindaban and places like Vrindaban and Mayapur in India could follow this example:

From the Catholic News

As Pope Benedict again called on young people to defend nature from a “correct ecological perspective”, the first solar panels have been installed on the Paul VI auditorium at the Vatican.

Prabhupada’s Disappearance Day was held at the Palace a few days ago.  I know there is now some fancy Sanskrit name for the occasion but I will probably never use it. I think that the next acharya will be someone who follows the preISKCON vaisnava tradition of using a liturgy in the local language, which in this case would be English.

While Prabhupada succeeded in firmly establishing a beachhead in the English speaking world for Krishna Consciousness, the next stage will be to move it from being an anomaly to becoming more widespread.

We born

We live

We die

Our bodies

Returns to dust

This makes dirt

This makes things grow

Along comes some water

And makes mud

So be careful

What you step in

It could be

My life.

The cows have been moved from their summer pasture at Bahulaban to the winter barn and are now enjoying free feeding access to the hay that Ranaka, Ray, and Moses put up during the summer.

“The Bhagavad-gita informs us that in this body there is a proprietor — the spirit soul. I am the proprietor of my body, and other souls are the proprietors of their bodies. I say “my hand,” but not “I hand.” Since it is “my hand,” I am different from the hand, being its owner. Similarly, we speak of “my eye,” “my leg,” “my” this, “my” that. In the midst of all these objects which belong to me, where am I?

.

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Solar power plants and other renewable energy sources are real, competitive threats that neither the coal industry nor the state’s political and academic leaders should dismiss, a consultant warned Wednesday at the second West Virginia Coal Forum.

Yesterday I went and did the early voting thing down at the courthouse. Early voting is used in West Virginia and a few other states so no one has the excuse that on Election Day they were too tied up to vote.

The dead are always looking down on us, they say,
while we are putting on our shoes or making a sandwich,
they are looking down through the glass bottom boats of heaven
as they row themselves slowly through eternity.

They watch the tops of our heads moving below on earth,
and when we lie down in a field or on a couch,
drugged perhaps by the hum of a long afternoon,
they think we are looking back at them,

Excerpted from the New Yorker, check out the whole article here.

Is the world’s food system collapsing?
by Bee Wilson

“The World Bank recently announced that thirty-three countries are confronting food crises, as the prices of various staples have soared. From January to April of this year, the cost of rice on the international market went up a hundred and forty-one per cent…

I have been working on getting a critter resistant fence up around about a 1/4 of an acre (1000 square meters) of garden. I have taken down the electric fence that previously surrounded it and have only some rugs and chicken wire skirting (a fruitless attempt to keep groundhogs from going under the electric fence) to pull out from the entangling weeds and grasses to be done with that.

Yesterday I was off to Pittsburgh, then Blairsville, Pennsylvania for a doctor’s appointment and to pick up some 8′ (2.44 m) high deer fencing, respectively. More about the fencing tomorrow.

The liver examine was routine. The doctor did schedule me for a routine liver biopsy and ultrasound for January, 2009.  A liver biopsy is currently the best way to see the progression of fibrosis, which is basically scarring of the liver, which leads to cirrhosis and eventual liver failure.