236. diaspora
Briefs” reported the following: “Thanksgiving Weekend (1987)—All deities were
decorated with silver kavachas. A special Poolangi Seva was performed to Lord
Venkateswara.”^8 In 1990 the inauguration of the special hall for weddings with the
ritual celebration of the wedding of Venkateswara and the goddess Padmavathi was
held during the Thanksgiving break, and in 1991 a special Satyanarayana Puja was
held in conjunction with the Memorial Day weekend. Thus the sacred-time orien-
tation of the temple is made to coincide, as far as the ritual almanac will allow it, with
the secular calendar of the country in which it is located. While the reasons for this
time orientation are obvious—unlike in India, the festivals at Penn Hills are organ-
ized by people working in other places, and long weekends are a time when many
families do long-distance traveling—it is also important to note the coordination
with the American secular calendar. The Penn Hills temple is not the first to ac-
knowledge secular holidays; some temples in India have organized special New
Year’s Day darshans,and the Tiru Venkatam temple generally records the greatest
monetary collections in the hundi on January 1.^9
In 1986 the Penn Hills temple issued a cassette of popular devotional songs (bha-
jans).In it, the Pittsburgh area devotees praise Lord Venkateswara thus:
America vasa jaya govinda
Penn Hills nilaya radhe govinda
sri guru jaya guru, vithala govinda
Victory to Govinda who lives in America—
Govinda who, with Radha, lives in Penn Hills.
Victory to the teacher,
Victory to Vithala,
Victory to Govinda.Glorifying the lord as abiding in a particular place is similar to the devotees’ per-
sonal consecration of the deity in a temple and within themselves. While all tem-
ples undergo formal ceremonies of vivification with pitchers of sanctified waters,
the devotees’ songs give life to the deity in the temple and in the heart. Srivaisnava
devotees celebrate the lord ’s accessibility more than his supremacy; and to make
himself accessible, he is said to abide in a local shrine, close to the devotee. In Sri-
vaisnava theology, the lord ’s supremacy is seen in his containing, including, and
yet transcending the entire universe, and by having it as his body; while his ac-
cessibility is seen in his incarnating himself on earth (avatara) as an area, easy to
approach and ready to be worshipped. Here, he is wholly, fully god—not a sym-