Local Defines What Is Local: A 2008 Festival of Inspiration Workshop

HG Tapahpunja Prabhu wants to let you know where we can pick up where Gandhi left off, using our rural communities as outreach powerhouses. You can find out at the upcoming 2008 Festival of Inspiration (May 9-10-11, live at New Vrindaban Dham in West Virginia). Tapahpunja's presentation will happen at 12:45 pm on Sunday the 11th, Mother's Day

Here's the rundown...

True to Srila Prabhupada’s predictions, more and more people are looking for shelter in rural communities. Are we ready to absorb Kali’s environmental and social refugees? Can we demonstrate how to settle people on the land? Can you look a young devotee family in the face and tell them that they must submit themselves to years of corporate wage slavery before they can afford property? The emerging alliance between religion and ecology is not an abstract fact, it’s a growing reality that will either negatively or positively influence how the public perceives the Krishna consciousness movement.

We have all the time tested answers but no working model and no strategy to empower devotees in land based, simple rural living. This workshop explores how to energize our rural communities through charitable redistribution of underused temple owned land. We discuss replacing predatory land policy with a strategy to share Krishna’s resources in an environmentally challenged world. It’s not about “owning land,” it’s about using Krishna’s property in Krishna’s service.

We will blow away the tired stereotype that KC farm communities are havens for philosophical dullards and retirees. The misconception that ISKCON is a predominantly Indian phenomenon will be laid to rest when we begin talking the language of environmental kinship with local neighbors and adjacent communities. Yes, that means actually talking to the American guy next door. Country living minus vigorous preaching is sense gratification. Get over it. Privatization is a lonely dead end. We are—as Srila Prabhupada stated in an interview—“spiritual communists.”

For more info on the Festival, check out http://festivalofinspiration.org/