Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Jingle bells! Jingle bells! Jingle all the way!

It’s that time of year again! Yes, Christmas! And as per tradition we held our annual youth group “Christmas Party”. The theme this year was “Old meets New”

Many of our “old” members have grown up and moved into different spheres of life (marriage, babies, and from there the list goes on :o) )while we’ve gathered other young members who’ve added a different kind of spice to our youth.


For all our parties we dress up to match our theme, once we had dressed up as Italians (soccer stars, painters, chefs, gangsters, fashion designers, etc) and last year we all dressed as either demons or demigods! Click here to view the pics from this party.

This year we all had to dress according to the olden times whatever our perception of that was.


The party was held at Mandira and Nashin’s place and to start of we had a very competitive game of 30 seconds. The boys totally whipped the other 2 teams only because they had about 20 people in there team!

After that we had something called cRaZy professions. We were divided into 8 groups, we then had to give another teams members’ crazy professions that we think would suit them. Thereafter we were called up and we’d mention the profession and everyone had to guess who we were talking about. Amidst much laughter, some really perfect and some really ridiculous professions came about. Thereafter it was prasadam time and then we just chilled out playing volley ball and soccer.

Thank you to Mandira Matajee and Nashin prabhu for so kindly lending their home to us and thank you to Sunaina for organising everything so nicely.


Click here to view all pics

:o)

Monday, December 29, 2008

Books! Books! Books!

Syamarani, Pooja and I have been meeting on every free evening possible (and there haven’t been that many much to our disappointment!) to distribute Srila Prabhupada’s glorious books.

To gently let ourselves in the mood we started off at a block of flats and the response has been great. Most people are happy to see us, and those that slam the door in our faces are there for our purification.

Oh yes, book distribution means purification, but still it has a nectar that keeps us going. We love meeting new people and even thought some may initially be wary of us, “beggars”; I feel that they are a little inspired by seeing 3 young girls sacrificing their evenings to do this work.

Some start off being all cagey but by the end of our visit they tell us to please come again. We appreciate this because it means we, teeny weeny representatives of Srila Prabhupada, have made way in to their hearts.

Why are we doing this, some of us going against our very introverted natures? For the mercy! We want the mercy and we want you to have the mercy too. Spread the mercy of Srila Prabhupada and Lord Caitanya. Whether you distribute one book to a hundred books all your efforts are being noted by the Lord and no doubt His mercy will flow on you more and more!
.

Monday, December 15, 2008

The living force of immortality, Sri Caitanya

After 3 months us blue lotuses were sorely missing each others association and so with great anticipation we all gathered at Gita Govinda’s place last Monday to discuss the transcendental message of the Teachings of Lord Caitanya.

“Caitanya” means the living force of immortality - impressive or what?!



To get into the right mood we sang the beautiful prayer “Sri Sri Gaura-Nityänander Daya” by Locana Dasa Thakur, which means The Mercy of Sri Gaura and Nityänanda. This beautiful prayer describes how Lord Caitanya and Lord Nityananda are the most merciful incarnations of Krishna because they are giving a process of self realization that is simply joyful! (Chanting and Dancing)

This is quite a lengthily book and while we all did not finish reading it, the bits that we did read increased our appreciation for Srila Prabhupada, the six goswamis and Gaura Nitai so much more. Srila Prabhupada’s sarcastic descriptions of the Mayavadi analogy of the water pot had us all laughing.

All glories to Srila Prabhupada’s transcendental books! We pray we may be able to dive deeper and deeper!

Your servants
Blue lotuses desiring the lotus feet of the Lord