Archive: January 2008 | View all recent posts | Back to main site
Rebecca & Robby Get Married
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A sweet charm necklace with Robby's baby photo:
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Susanna writing her toast....
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Before the ceremony, the bridesmaids drank from a
quaich, a traditional Scottish drinking cup. It was partly to celebrate Robby's Scottish heritage, but also to remind Rebecca and Susanna of their time together as students in Scotland. You'll see it again at Susanna's wedding:
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I love this shot of Katie Klein -- we had just started shooting together a few months prior to Rebecca's wedding, so it's fun to look back and realize all we have done and experienced since. What a shutterbabe!
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Rebecca and Robby wanted to talk before the ceremony but not see each other, so they touched hands around the trunk of a tree. There's Susanna on the right:
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Rebecca and her mom just moments before the ceremony:
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A triumphant and joyful departure -- notice Susanna and J.B. in the background!
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Susanna & J.B. Get Married
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A friend of mine gave me a book, the Bhagavad Gita, because he was also searching. At first I didn't understand it, but I felt like I knew it. Then I went to the temple. I felt so connected, although it was strange and the people were walking around chanting. That was really hard for me to accept. But I stayed, and the more I stayed and I chanted "Hare Krishna" I felt my heart opening up and I was awakening to something I never knew before. Knowledge was being revealed to me through the scripture and through chanting. It was purifying my heart. It was cleaning off the dust.
At the time, I asked my father if I could join the Hare Krishnas and he said, "No, definitely not. I don't want you to do that." I said, "Dad, I know I need to do this. I feel happiness there." And he finally said it was OK.
Then I didn't have much contact with my parents for a long time. I pretty much kept them out of my life because they didn't appreciate what I was doing. I didn't have a good relationship with my mother. But I was very close with my father. After about 15 years I started calling my father, and he was very happy to hear from me. We started to become very close again. We had nine kids in our family, and he said out of all them I proved to be the most spiritual. He was very proud of me for what I'm doing. He said that chanting on beads like we do was the same thing as praying to God. It didn't matter what way you did it, you're still praying to God.
At the very end of his life, I gave him a picture of my deities and he had them by his bed, and he said that they were very beautiful and he was happy that he could look at them before he passed away. I would read to him from scripture and he was very accepting of our philosophy and our way of life.
I think chanting has been a real important thing for me. It's helped me to understand the philosophy and to understand the world. I know it's the right thing. We have prasadam, a spiritual food that we offer to God. I've seen people change when they eat this food. I've seen their hearts change, I've seen their moods change. It looks just the same as any other food, but it's been offered to God with love and devotion and mantras -- and it changes people.
The marking on my forehead is tilak -- it's sacred clay from India, and it marks the body as a temple of God. We mark our body in different places with the names of God, Vishnu. And this just shows that God is sitting in our heart next to us.
We don't eat meat, fish, or eggs. By taking spiritual food, by purifying the body, we're going to come to a stage of loving each other and forgiving each other for our faults. Nobody's perfect in the world. This is the material world where there are always problems and nobody is perfect. If we can just focus on those good things then we'll all learn to live with each other in a happy state and we'll all be happy together. As long as we're finding fault and disliking someone for the way they act, we can't progress in spiritual life. It's a stumbling block on the path.
--Maharha Dasi
Sandy Ridge, North Carolina
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