What a privilege
The devotees are very merciful and kind. They let me lead today’s Friday night kirtana. I got to catch up on something I’ve been meaning to do for a long time and it was well worth it.
There aren’t a lot of things you can do to have fun on a Friday night that are as enlivening and satisfying as hari-nama sankirtana.
To top it off Adam turned up and played the accordian. He is pretty good at it. He knows how to get a pretty decent sound out of the instrument. Not only does he play the standard chords and melody but he has also expertise in playing the bass notes as well, you know those little black buttons on the opposite side to the keyboard. It is quite an instrument, the piano accordian. Played well and sympathetically, considering the mood of the tune and the leader, you can evoke beautiful, melodiously inspired emotions, which attract everyone except the hardest hearted to the holy name.
You know the kirtana is successful when you witness the edges of people’s smiles irresistibly creeping upwards as their mind is magnetically drawn into the sublime meditation of the sankirtana party; the welcome, smiling faces, atop forms rhythmically and gently swaying to the syncopation of the mrdanga and kartalas, the group absorption in the mellows of devotion, transcendent to physical location.
You know the kirtana is successful when two hours disappears as if only twelve minutes or more. When the young girls standing with their parents enthusiastically rush to the ladies to hold their hands and enter the twirling and dancing as if nothing could stop them. When the mobile phones and cameras all come out and are pointing at you, the youthful men jump into the conga line, putting one arm around your neck, out stretching the other mobile in hand, to catch a selfie with both of you in the picture all the while chanting and dancing along like they belong there all along. When the devotees are happy to keep chanting and dancing long after it’s time to go home.
I am so much looking forward to being out on the street chanting Hare Krishna with the devotees again. There is no more fun to be had in the three world’s than to have the privilege of joining the hari-nama chanting party on a Friday night downtown with the sweetly singing devotees of Lord Caitanya and Lord Nityananda.
What more can I say? What more needs be said?
Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare
