Engaged Bhakti podcast with Rukmini Walker
featuring Rukmini Walker in an interview with Krishna Kishore Dasa
In this Engaged Bhakti podcast episode, Krishna Kishore Dasa (Dr. Christopher Fici) holds an enlivening discussion with Rukmini Walker on the meaning of women's empowerment in spiritual life and how we can understand and express the ideal balance of the sacred feminine and the sacred masculine in our everyday lives.
Please click on this link or on the image below to listen to the talk.
You can follow Rukmini on: https://www.facebook.com/rukmini.walker/; https://www.patreon.com/RukminiWalker, and Instagram under Rukmini Walker
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bdqk2JfN4Q[/embed]
The Engaged Bhakti podcast is hosted by Krishna Kishore Dasa (Dr. Christopher Fici). Krishna Kishore is a lapsed Catholic kid from Detroit turned Vaishnava/ambigious Hindu. Krishna Kishore spent five years studying and living as a monk in the New Vrindavan community in West Virginia and in the Bhaktivedanta Ashram in New York City, where he remains associated with The Bhakti Center community. At the Bhakti Center he helps to facilitate the Sacred Ecology Forum.
A Poet on Faith
Anna is a dear sister on the Bhakti path. Here is an inspiration from her...~ Rukmini Walker
By Anna Cooperberg
I was meandering around Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia when I came upon a man seated behind on a small stool behind a tiny rickety table. On the table was a typewriter. “Pick a topic, get a poem,” the sign said. Intrigued, I walked over. “You can write a poem about anything?” I asked. "Anything you want," he responded. I thought for a moment. “Faith. Write a poem about faith.” Immediately, he started typing. Clickety clack--you know how those old typewriters sound. I was strangely nervous to read the final product. Would the poem be any good? After a short while—and without pause—the poet removed a small piece of paper from the typewriter and presented it to me with a flourish.Wallace Stevens wrote that “the poet is the priest of the invisible.” Poetry is so considered; it packs so much into just a few words. And that's what makes it beautiful. It means different things to different people, because there is room for personal interpretation.That park poet, Marshall James Kavanaugh (known as the Dream Poet for Hire), truly captured the invisible. Take a read, and see what this poem, written with wisdom and tact, means to you.
Ode to the Holy Name
by Jahnavi Harrison
Whisper it beneath the summer oakswhile swallows dive aboveShout it in your morning shower,share it with the ones you love.Sing it loud, groups of ten,three or seventy-five,brand it on your beating chest andkeep your heart alive.In the garden, on the bus,before exams and interviews,at joyous birth and bitter death,sing this name, loud and true.Call it when your days are long,breathe it in and out with heavy head,cry it over your morning tea,and into your pillow before bed.Wash this name through every fibre,rinse and repeat, rinse and repeatsing with everything you have,soft, sweet, subtle, deep.
(This poem originally appeared in Bhakti Blossoms: A Collection of Contemporary Vaishnavi Poetry, Published in August 2018, with Golden Dragonfly Press)