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EDITORIAL  Of Squabbling And Barnraising BY SRI NRSHINGHA DASA EDITORIAL, Mar 3 (VNN) — This page sees a lot of controversy. Guru tattva, poisoning, you name it--The Good, The Bad and the Ugly . And in the final analysis, will any of our opinions--ANY of our opinions--mean anything at the time of death? When I go before the Deities these days, I pray for one thing and one thing mainly. I pray for a project which we ALL can rally around with the same enthusiasm and fervor we did before Prabhupada returned to Krishna. Virtually all the devotees who read these pages have something they want to do for Krishna. And that's the problem. They have something THEY want to do for Krishna, not something we ALL want do TOGETHER for Krishna. The critical mass necessary for these projects to evolve from speculation to reality never coalesces. SoÉin truthÉ.very little gets accomplishedÉcertainly compared to when Prabhupada was directing the activities of the devotees. In the early days of prairie America, several pioneering families might arrive in a particular region at roughly the same time. Each of them would have a basic need, to erect a barn. That's a fairly huge task for one family to do itself. But if six families all work on the Smith barn this week, and everyone works on the Jones barn next week, within a month and a half the job is done for everyone. My humble proposal is we organize ourselves into communities where we can all help each other with our projects. Sure, we need to make a livng. But if we allot, say, 15 hours per week for two months to Krishna dasa's project, and then do the same for two months for Caitanya devi dasi's project, then soon it will be time for them to help us with ours. Inspired by the story of Valmiki Muni dasa, the Russian devotee who died of pneumonia homeless in an alley earlier this year, I want to work with the devotees to build a network of retirement communities conducive to remembering Krishna at the last. Hare Krishna will never gain full credibility as a bona fide religion in the eyes of the world if we do not have some mechanism for looking after our aging just as other religions do. And yet I speak to devotees all the time, many of whom are quite senior, who are involved with this and that fruitive activity of little direct benefit to their Godbrothers and Godsisters and which doesn't even make much money!. So what should we do? We should simply abandon all varieties of New Age, holistic, trendy activities and create communities where we can liveÉand die. It makes no difference what 'camp' you're in, we're all aspiring servants of the Vaisnavas and we're all going to die and in that we are One. Interested parties are invited to respond to ChezGovinda@aol.com. Yours in service to the Vaisnavas, Sri Nrshingha dasa Contact VNN about this story  Send this story to a friend
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