Monday 23 October 2017

Saturday, October 21st, 2017

Milton, Ontario

God’s Rope

Most shamefully, I did very little walking today. Cleaning–yes–lots, in fact. I trekked on the main street of Milton after participating in a Diwali program at Grace Anglican Church for a group of devotees of South East Asian origin. I gave the talk and shared in leading the kirtan.

It’s actually a new Krishna community shaping up. We are expanding. We are growing.

In the meantime, Kevala was conducting his monthly “Evening of Bhakti,” at our downtown ISKCON centre in Toronto, to a more Western crowd. Different audience. Same message.

The message for this month, known traditionally as Kartik, is the exciting time of reflecting on a rope, and not just any rope.

When I was a teen, a post-war baby-boomer, people of our generation were spooked by the work of Alfred Hitchcock, the film director. He was a master of suspense. I was a fan. One of his suspense movies was a 1949 film called, “Rope.”  I need not give an account of the murder story, but it involves a rope. You can guess how that rope was used.

I joined the Hare Krishna movement and became a monk and hadn’t seen a film in years. In the fall of 1973, six months after I joined, I heard about a rope—God’s rope. It is a pastime that involves Krishna as a young child. He would be a bit menacing at times. To exercise a touch of discipline, His Mother, Yasoda, bound her young child to a wooden, grinding mortar and the rest is to be read about. She made the use of a rope.

It’s a charmer of a story.

May the Source be with you!

4 km

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