A FULFILLED DAY

Wednesday, January 7th, 2026

Gainesville, Florida

What was most astounding about my visit to this area is the occurrence of a long lost important document being suddenly found! That document I’ve been missing for years (maybe 25) was an actual book, a volume of letters compiled from our guru, Prabhupada. A woman from the community said, “Is this recognizable to you?” And from her hand to mine was that book I thought was stolen, a book that had broken up my set.

“Where did you get this? It’s precious.”“In a stack of our books in a communal stash,” she indicated.“How is this possible? I come to another country where this treasure made its way. Thinking I’ll never recover it, here is my signature, property of . . . (I wasn’t even known as a walking monk at the time of signing) and the Toronto address is there.”

I thanked her dearly for retrieving this. “You don’t know how much it means to me.”

It was second night of a charming kirtan chant, only tonight we had no drum, except for Devala’s innovative percussion half-filled with water preserve glass, and the use of a guitar, flute, and piano. Those who came to Vasantas and Ram Narayan’s received repeat groups from yesterday’s gathering. We had one of those bhakti blasts.

Overall the day was great. I harvested some oranges and had some homemade bread from Janaka, a disciple and head cook of the local Alachua temple. I played a fun game with an armadillo, couldn’t get a shot of him, but down the road took a pic of his dead brother.

MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU

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