Giriraj Swami read and spoke from Srimad-Bhagavatam 2.3.22.
“When I first visited the temple in Boston, the deity worship seemed odd—it was very foreign to my experience and culture. And I had learned in the Ten Commandments: ‘Thou shalt not make graven images.’ Still, I was intrigued, and I liked everything else—but the deity worship was a little hard to relate to. But then I saw Satsvarupa do the deity worship, and he was such a sober, pure-hearted, intelligent, and responsible person that I thought, ‘There is definitlely something to it; it is not just playing with dolls.’ At that time we did not have Radha-Gopivallabha, we had only small brass Radha-Krishna deities. Soon the devotees trained me as a pujari, and I experienced so much reciprocation from the deities. It was amazing. If I had never experienced it, I would never have imagined it. It was a very personal relationship, with tangible personal reciprocation.”