M
EHER
S
PIRITUAL
C
ENTER
a place of pilgrimage for all time
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True happiness begins when one learns the art of right adjustment to other persons, and right adjustment involves self-forgetfulness and love. Hence arises the spiritual importance of transforming a life of the limited self into a life of love.
Meher Baba
The Discourses,
7
th
Edition, pg. 396
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Dear Meher Center Family and Friends,
We pray this newsletter finds you healthy and happy in remembrance of the Loving One who remains eternally in charge.
Meher Center is humming along in the very low-key and mostly sunny South Carolina Springtime. And as the Center environs quietly awaken, the dedicated and creative staff have remained busy during this unusual world-wide hiatus. Below are a few examples of what we’ve been up to.
The skeleton Maintenance and Grounds crew is caring for the Center property and making much needed repairs to the Boat House dock, Green Cottage roof, Refectory stairs, Library porch, and Cove Cabin, as well as taking care of the day-to-day “fixes” that inevitably arise. As usual, like everything this team does, the refurbishments and care remain seamless and unnoticed in the crew’s continual and devoted striving to keep the Center in 100% repair, as Meher Baba directed.
The Gateway staff, while always maintaining a presence at our entrance, is hard at work (mainly remotely) learning and implementing brand-new and long-awaited integrated software systems that will include bookkeeping, donations, record keeping and reservations. An interdisciplinary team is working on upgrading all of our emergency preparedness systems. And the media team, with the continued support of our colleagues in Programs and Archives, is busy crafting weekly offerings and thinking up other ways to promote connectedness in the Meher Baba family.
That's all for now. As always, 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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"I am the Universal Thief—
I steal the hearts of all"
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This raw and unedited audio recording is of time Meher Baba spent with His lovers at the Center in 1956, in the Barn and at the Guest House compound. At times Baba’s Mandali can be heard interpreting His gestures, and at others, there’s only the indefinable chatter of His lovers. Even amidst the noise, perhaps some will find in this recording the treasure of His presence.
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Heading Home
By Jamie Keehan
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ecppa collection
Meher Baba spent much of the last four year of His life doing His universal work in seclusion— despite the strain of the work on His poor physical health, and the thousands of lovers new and old desperate to be near Him. A decade earlier, in the Barn, Baba had asked Eruch to describe His seclusion work to His Western lovers. “He locks himself up in a room,” Eruch had said, “the doors and windows are all locked and there is hardly a breath of air… but Baba sits all day like that, closed and locked in. Baba says the whole world is nearer to him when he is in seclusion.”*
There are moments when it seems to me that Baba is now in seclusion on the Center. And just like it was agonizing for His lovers not to get to be with Him then, it’s agonizing now: there are so many of us longing for the Center, and the nectar of His presence that seems to embrace us the moment we set foot on it.
So many people have had to cancel their trips, or not schedule ones they were hoping to make, or not come for that first tour in answer to an inexplicable urge they've had for a while now. For some of us who live closer, we can make these tiny pilgrimages: you can see our tracks beating down the sand every day up to the beach gate, or our cars parked as close as we can get for prayer time. Soon after I started working from home, you could see me taking a crazy journey down Highway 17 from my house, marching past the McDonald’s and the Bargain Beachwear shops, cars whizzing on my right and power lines on my left, until suddenly I could feel it— the silence of the Center, the presence of it, real and humming. And if you looked closely, you could see that in the midst of everything, I had this big floppy grin on my face and tears in my eyes, like I had just tasted heaven. And I had.
Baba’s home is so special. It’s so special that we cross the world just to see it, or drive or walk for hours just to spend a moment at its locked gates, where the sweetness of His presence still spills out over the sidewalk and right into the road where thousands of unwitting souls pass by each day. Baba created His Center for a reason, and He came into human form for a reason. But He also said that His real center is in the hearts of His lovers. He also said, “I am not this body.”
And so some of the biggest work begins when we head home, like He so often asked His lovers to do, to head home and look for Him where He really is, where He always is.
In
The Joyous Path
,** one of the books that has been keeping me company these days, there’s a quote that resonates through time to speak to just this. It’s a quote that was special to Baba’s Beloved, Mehera. In fact, it was Mehera’s “fortune,” which she had selected from a batch of Baba-quote fortune cookies sent by an American Baba lover. May it be all our fortunes, during this time and forever, whether we’re walking the grounds of Baba’s sacred places, caring for our families, doing our work, sitting at home. “The more you think of Me, the more you will realize My love for you.”
*
Lord Meher,
Online, Pg. 4029
**
The Joyous Path
, Heather Nadel, Pg. 1014
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Wild Trespassers
Meher Center News Daily
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Some folks are obviously breaking rules! Two wild turkeys have been spotted around the Center over the last month and a half, a sight not seen in decades! Seen here on a serious nature walk, they entered the Center semi-lawfully from the front gate (No, they did not sign in! And there were no covered shoes worn!). Then they headed down the road, and were soon sighted basking in the sunlight right outside the Cabin on the Hill— just how they knew that cabin was built for Baba, don’t ask us. They are now on the run, and Center staff are left wondering whether they might not be a pair of lovestruck Baba lovers disguised as gorgeous gobbling creatures!
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April at the Center
By Preeti Hay
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“April is the cruelest month”* at the Center. It turns barren, thoughtful, deep silent nights into a musical soiree of magical creatures waking from the depths of the forest. Leaves and flowers spurt out from desire and memory hums songs in nature's praise. Spring drops upon the ambushed spaces; where no one knew flowers ever existed, blanketing vines of luscious gems appear and the fragrant trance of azaleas and gardenias follow pilgrims. Walking on trails, rippling songs of Carolina wrens invite you into mystery, cicadas deafen you with music, crickets are just about to take over the nights, kingly owls are spotted occasionally but always felt, and the snakes promise to come out any day now. April is magic. It is unbearable. It is the busiest month at the Center.
At the Gateway, on February 1st we wait with excitement for a rush of April reservations and they come, they fill us up. There is not one space left. When April comes, blazing sunshine blasts into our office as we welcome His lovers from all over for Baba to bestow on them the newness of spring. Families and children, spring breakers, old and new, parents, grandparents and all. For Easter sunrise, heavy eyes wake up to an invite from Baba's house, children walk around the lake looking for bunnies and every once in a while unfound Easter eggs appear months later for another child who is not even looking. But this year, the Lord resurrects within us.
The Gates to the Center are closed, but it breathes in beauty, the creatures guard it, the flowers enchant it and Meher Baba adorns His home with His presence. Baba said, “My center is the heart of every lover. Every lover with a heart that loves Baba is a center.” For all of us who cannot go to His home, our hearts are inner tillable terrain for His ploughing, surrendering roughness and hopes of all returns. There, lilacs will breed out of dead land, our thorns will render roses to gently caress His feet, our complaints sowed will bloom into buds of spring. His mammoth ocean will soothe us, and the vastness of His will, will help us persevere. “The awful daring of a moment's surrender,”* will painstakingly create a transformational landscape of His training ground. And finally, perhaps in that continuing longing, a sliver of His Center right within our hearts may be ready for an offering.
Baba once said, “Be patient. Wait in my love. Those who wait for me never wait in vain. Divine love and divine happiness await the one who is victorious and who holds out to the bitter end.” While we let Him speak to us, create and destroy, protect, nurture and take over our entire inner being, His physical Center rests in peace, every full tree, looking to the sun, prostrated and perfectly aligned to His will. Waiting for the Beloved's next direction.
*From TS Eliot’s Poem,
"The Waste Land"
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