There is no one compendium of Lakshmi icons, shrines, history, and worship in Queens. In this exhibit, I attempted to piece together a string of different ways she is part of daily life in Queens and part of Hindu worship in this borough.
It has become clear to me, in this process of writing and creating this website, that a fuller Digital Humanities project could grow from the roots and the stories that have been shared herein.
This process of gathering information has led me to conclude that to truly communicate the spiritual relationship that devotees have with Lakshmi, greater collaboration would be needed. In the spirit of Digital Humanities as I understand it, an expanded "Lakshmi Project" could be created in the following way.
- Spend more time in the smaller Hindu communities and temples around Queens to get to know the ways in which they worship, meet devotees, and talk with the pandits or priests.
- Clarify the different parts of the world people have immigrated from and how Lakshmi worship is the same or different.
- Seek to uncover deeper insights and spiritual wisdom that is being facilitated in local worship. This means getting beyond my own experience into conversations or oral histories with local Hindu New Yorkers.
- Open a photo project that enables devotees to share their images of worship and put together a photo release that allows for the sharing of these photos.
- Discover more about the larger Queens community of spiritual leaders of Hindu life here (especially for help in collecting photos from devotees).
- Speak to local Hindu politicians who also worship here because they have interesting cultural stories.
- Learn more about Hindu water worship in Queens and how to do so in an eco-friendly way.
- Spend more time discovering home worship of Lakshmi in Queens, especially during Diwali when people believe she comes to earth to help us all.