M
EHER
S
PIRITUAL
C
ENTER
a place of pilgrimage for all time
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I was Rama, I was Krishna, I was this One, I was that one, and now I am Meher Baba. In this form of flesh and blood I am that same Ancient One who alone is eternally worshipped and ignored, ever remembered and forgotten.
Meher Baba
The Everything and the Nothing, p 48.
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Dear Meher Center Family and Friends,
Happy Baba’s birthday greetings from your Meher Center family, as we once again join in celebrating the miracle of the birth of the Avatar!
As the Center enters into its busiest pilgrimage season, including our first ever
Spring Cleaning Sahavas
, I wanted to share something from Kitty Davy, early Western disciple of Meher Baba’s, and longtime resident of the Center from the 1950’s to the early 1990’s. It is taken from a television interview recorded in the mid 1980’s where she talks about the purpose of the Center as she had come to experience it through the years.
"Baba wanted to have a place where we could all come together and share. Baba’s greatest lesson, I think, is that we must share with each other. He wanted a Center where Easterners and Westerners from all over the world could come and live the way of life which He wanted – which was sharing with one another the feeling of Oneness amongst each other. You can talk about God in the Center as easily as you can talk about your profession, or car, or your family life. It is a topic that all people are interested in. It is the goal of life: to find God as your real self.
"Therefore, to do that, you must share. You cannot get very far if you are all closed in. You know how difficult it is to communicate. He comes down to our level and brings you up to His. He never preaches at you. Therefore, the Center has served a real purpose of bringing people together. Baba said, ‘I will never leave the Center. My consciousness will always remain.’ And that’s what people come for, for that renewal of the spiritual life."
We look forward to seeing you at His home in the West sometime soon.
In Meher Baba’s love and service,
Buz Connor
For Meher Center board and staff
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Memberships
Beginning in 2019 Meher Center discontinued its practice of offering memberships. Memberships were originally begun in 1969 as a way for people living in Myrtle Beach to qualify for group airline rates, as they were, at the time, planning to travel to the 1969 Darshan program in India.
As time passed, memberships became a modest fundraiser for the Center, as well as a way of demonstrating public support behind our 501(c)(3) tax status.
More recently, as Meher Center’s board of directors has clarified the Center’s need for ongoing financial support, the membership process became confusing to the overall fundraising message. It also has been clarified that all donors are counted as part of our demonstrated public support, and the membership category was no longer necessary. Our message now is that we welcome any donation small or large, as a much-needed gift of love and support to Meher Baba’s home in the West.
Over the years, it has become undeniably clear that all of Meher Baba’s followers as well as those who are friends of the Center are members of the Meher Center family. We want to thank the many people who continue to support and sustain Meher Baba’s home in the West.
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The Birthday at the
Center
By Jamie Keehan
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When Baba visited the Center in May of 1958, He requested a birthday party. The invitees to the party were children—adults could only come if brought by a child.
In considering how to write an article on Baba’s birthday at the Center, for a few seconds I was disappointed that Baba never celebrated His birthday here. And then it hit me with such force: despite not having spent a February on the Center, in His unwavering thoughtfulness and compassion, Baba used what seemed like a simple whim to give us this immortal example of how to celebrate Him.
Wendy Connor—then Wendy Haynes— was six years old at the time, but she remembers it perfectly. She had met Baba for the first time two days before, and couldn’t believe her luck to be invited to His party. Now she waited, with bated breath, outside the Lagoon Cabin for her new Friend to come out and start the celebration. Finally, the door opened and He emerged, smiling and radiant. She and her siblings had a garland of pink carnations for Baba, and when He saw the flowers His face lit up with surprise and happiness. “What? Are those for me?” He gestured. The children nodded happily and garlanded Baba, then He pulled all three of them into His embrace.
Wendy isn’t sure that Baba ever overtly said He was inviting the children for His own birthday. But she knows it felt like His birthday, from the very beginning. Baba led the crowd to long picnic table that had been laid for Him close to the shelter, between the Caretaker's Cabin and the Meeting Place. He was shining with happiness. He took His place near the head of the table, and then He smiled, and chatted, and teased, and made the first cut in the huge cake, and ladled out lemonade like the perfect host.
And underneath the ordinary sweetness and trappings of a good party hummed something else. Wendy remembers it: that somehow, despite being one little girl among so many guests, Baba made her feel so totally loved. At one point, she got a chance to show Him a
picture someone had just taken of Him. She ran up to Him with such excitement, unable to contain her thrill at sharing this with Baba. And Baba stopped everything. He turned to this little girl and this picture of Himself, and He took it gently like it was the most important thing in the world. He showed it to Adi. Then he showed it to Eruch. He held it up to the light. “How wonderful!” he gestured, beaming. Wendy was thrilled. She went back and got picture after picture to show to Baba. And each time, Baba stopped time for her. He accepted her gift and her love as though they were the most precious things He could imagine. And He gave so much back, that kind of vast love that illuminates everything, that still pours out of even the video of the event and makes us realize that of course, we’re still celebrating His presence.
I can’t pretend to understand all the meaning of that immortal afternoon, but one last piece strikes me as extraordinary. That when Baba first proposed the birthday party and talked with Elizabeth about where it should be held, they decided on that place near the Shelter— the exact spot where thousands of His young lovers over the years have been welcomed and embraced back Home when they first arrive for Youth Sahavas. And just a few feet away from the Meeting Place where, a few nights ago, we came together to continue the celebration, singing Baba happy birthday on February 25th before joining Him for cupcakes and one more helping of His eternal unchanging love.
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Sassoon Hospital, Pune, India
where Meher Baba was born in 1894
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Alan Wagner
Meher Center
Artist in Residence
May 5th - 9th
Contact the Gateway starting March 1st
to make cabin reservations
843-272-5777
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Holding His Hand
By Preeti Hay
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Jennifer’s first visit to the Center was in the spring of 2019. She returned again this winter. In her introduction letter to the Center Jennifer wrote, “Baba has continued to be the director of my life. I know that I can find Him everywhere but to have the opportunity to be where He placed His feet, lay His head, walked and taught, calls me.”
Unlike many newcomers to the Center, Jennifer had been following Baba on her own for years. Coming to the Center was her pilgrimage. “I first heard about Baba in 2003 when my mother-in-law was diagnosed with cancer. We utilized complementary therapies for her including Jin Shin Jyutsu. At her practitioner’s office we saw a picture of Baba and my mother-in-law said, ‘Oh, Meher Baba.' When we asked how she knew who the man was, she said, ‘I have no idea.’ Thus began our relationship with Baba.” As Jennifer became more and more curious, she asked the practitioner about Baba. She was then told about Baba’s time on earth and the five perfect masters, and she immediately began to cry. Everything made sense to her all of a sudden; these were answers that had never been explained and it was clear that Baba was the Avatar. She did not know it but He was what she had been looking for.
She devoured everything she could find about Meher Baba: books, videos, meetings. But simultaneously her life began to crumble: her marriage ended, she lost her job, through those losses she lost her friends, she lost interest in the luxuries that she used to rejoice in.“I was the definition of a materialistic person. I truly believed that pearls and fancy cars would get me happiness, and the more void that I felt, the more I sought, until Baba shut the door on me, locked it and threw me down the stairs.” At the same time she felt the need to give back, which took the form of volunteering as a Jin Shin Jyutsu practitioner at cancer centers. She took Baba’s name while treating patients including newborn infants battling life and death. But interestingly she never questioned this transformation in her life, knowing deeply that Baba was in charge.
Her most memorable time from her first trip was Baba’s house. “What struck me most was His pink jacket and the interesting cast of His hand and feet. And when I read the sign that you could touch them, I could not believe it! Putting my hands on His hand was so important because I work with my hands. His hands were so smooth, gentle and beautiful.”
Ever since, Jennifer started noticing His hands in pictures and videos. She became mesmerized with the divine plan that His hands orchestrate at all times. As for her own life, she does not know what more will come to her on this path with Baba but she says with a smile, “I am just staying tuned.”
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