MEHER SPIRITUAL CENTER
Meher Baba's Home in the West
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"You must have complete faith in me. When an individual has 100 percent faith in me, and leaves everything to me, the burden automatically falls on my shoulders. I have my Universal work to do and I am totally engrossed in it, but the weight of that individual's burden reminds me of my responsibility toward him, and I do everything for such a person."
Meher Baba
Lord Meher Online, pg. 5015
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Dear Meher Center Friends & Family,
A loving Jai Baba. Happily, Spring is upon Meher Center, and we are on the verge of that beautiful explosion of colors that ushers in the new season.
Just a reminder that the Center is now open for day visitors from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. every day, including the Meher Abode compound. For more information, see the guidelines here.
In Baba’s love and service,
Buz Connor
For Meher Center board and staff
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Meher Baba at Brookgreen Gardens |
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In this stunning sun-dappled video from 1956, Meher Baba is seen strolling through Brookgreen Gardens followed by a group of His lovers, appreciating the sculptures and occasionally stopping under a tree to rest or play with the children. Charmian Duce describes the experience of being with Baba during those heavenly moments.
Video, 03:41
Courtesy of Sufism Reoriented
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God Walked Here
By Preeti Hay
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On my first trip to Meher Center, like many new pilgrims, I went to Brookgreen Gardens. A well-known cultural and artistic magnet only an hour south of the Center, these gardens are enjoyed by people from near and far for their exquisite beauty reflected in artistic history, preservation of nature and love for animals. In the spring, blooming azaleas adorn the gardens, colorful butterflies flutter and a band of birdsong welcomes visitors to heaven-like beauty. But that was not why I went, and definitely not why the gardens brought me to a weeping halt.
Mani wrote in her diaries of the beauty of the gardens during the women’s 1952 visit when Baba took them for outings. Subsequently, on the afternoon of July 28, 1956, during Baba’s second visit, two buses were chartered to take the group to the gardens. Baba and the Mandali rode in a car driven by Fred Winterfeldt. One of the buses was delayed in dropping off a non-Baba passenger. Baba asked to stop His car and the first bus to wait for it. “He got out and stretched His legs, then got in the front seat next to Fred. Fred, happy to be so close to his Master, began to sing and hum songs as one of the Mandali in the back seat had been humming Indian bhajans. He began to sing a strange song about Krishna and His charioteer, making up words and music. Baba, gesturing for him to continue, swayed in time with his impromptu tune.”*
At 3 p.m. the group was welcomed by three-hundred-year-old live oaks with hanging Spanish moss, like draped garlands for His awaited arrival at Brookgreen Gardens. Baba walked around the breathtaking Sculpture Gardens. The wonder of the maker watching His own beauty; and the spark He provides for such beauty to come through man in his art! Walking to a secluded part of the garden, Baba sat under a fruit tree and the Mandali sat around Him. He moved His fingers swiftly and others like Peter Thibodeau and Tex Hightower imitated His movements playfully.
In the ease of companionship on the lush lawns, Baba said, "This reminds Me of the past when Buddha sat under the tree. After Buddha had been fasting for so many weeks, an old woman helped Him by giving Him a rice pudding. Following His eating of that pudding, Buddha sat under the tree, where He attained His goal. As Babajan was to Me, so that old woman was to Buddha, for just as that old woman helped Buddha get super-consciousness, just so did Babajan give super-consciousness to Me."*
After John Bass fetched sodas for all and Baba tried on the sandals that Tex Hightower had made for Him, the group left the gardens for supper together at the Center.
Darwin Shaw recounts a personal experience while being with Baba at the gardens. “On one occasion when Baba was walking at the head of the group, I walked fifty feet to one side to take the picture of everyone. As I looked up at them, I was amazed to see the whole group following Baba was enveloped in stardust! Thousands of tiny sparks of light flowed from Baba like the wake of a comet, permeating the whole group. I snapped the picture, hoping this phenomenon would be captured on the film, but of course it was not.”**
Perhaps one stellar spark settled on stone in the form of words.
For me, having seen pictures of Baba in the gardens, by virtue of where He had walked, this place was a pilgrimage site. But when I saw a poem at the Poetry Garden, I wept for the unknown touches of God on earth, stemming only from His love and grace upon all who yearn for Him, even those who do not know it. At the entrance to the Poetry Garden, the poem carved on stone read, “Pause friend and read, before you enter here…Herein tranquility and peace abide, for God walks here at the cool of evening tide…There where the ancient trees wait hushed and dim, May you find God and walk awhile with Him.”
* Awakener Magazine, vol. 4, no. 4, pp. 24-26
** As Only God Can Love, by Darwin Shaw, pg. 376
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Caring for Meher Center:
A Garden for His Pleasure
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At the recently reopened compound at Baba’s House, not only were visitors met by the welcome of cheerful volunteers but also a plethora of spurting buds and blooming flowers.
Currently seen at the garden are some late blooming camellias, fragrant daphnes, winter honeysuckle, pink starflowers, daffodils, tea-olives and pansies.
In the last year since the house has been resting, the team of gardeners has had the opportunity to redo a whole bed, amending the soil, taking out several of what now are considered invasive plants and replanting the bed as a natural woodland. This team of five meets and works once every week to tend to Baba’s garden. To them working this garden is incomparable to any other because of His presence. So, what is the focus of this continuing work of beauty? “In Baba’s garden we always strive for His pleasure and ask in everything we do whether we are pleasing Him,” says the group leader.
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Growing at the Center
By Jamie Keehan
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For more than twenty years, Bryan West has been carefully tending to the grounds of Baba’s home in the West, and Meher Baba has been carefully tending to Bryan West.
Bryan’s relationship with Baba began a few years before he first came to the Center.* As a recent high school graduate in San Diego, Bryan moved in with Scott and Anne Makeig and their kids, a family he had always felt was special—something about their warmth, their mutual respect, the healthy way they were together. He knew they were devoted to a guru, Meher Baba, but didn’t yet know the role Baba would play in his own life.
Then one tumultuous night, Bryan set off on a walk to clear his head. He ended up at the edge of the ocean and decided to go wading—but was pushed and pulled deeper than he intended. As the waves dragged him toward some pilings, he struggled and narrowly escaped what could have been a fatal accident. Shaken and exhausted on the shore, he didn’t know what to do when he heard a voice: “Just go home, be safe. Get into bed and take it easy.”
That was Bryan’s first feeling of connection with Baba: a simple, gentle, practical voice of love from deep within him.
It wasn’t until a few years later that Bryan considered working on the Center. He was at an important crossroads, about to finish college, wrenchingly unclear about his next move. Suddenly, Scott Makeig suggested, “Why don’t you go and work at the Center for a little while? Just until you get things figured out.”
Bryan balked at first—the beachwear shops and neon crab signs weren’t an immediate draw—but he couldn’t shake that voice, and soon he found himself driving east. He had no plans to stay at the Center long; in fact, he remembers thinking to himself, “I just need to rake my life out a little bit.”
Bryan was provided with an apartment in the home of a long-time Baba lover, Virginia Rudd, who took him in, cooked meals for him, talked with him endlessly about mutual literary interests and, of course, about Baba. Soon Bryan started working on the Center, and one of his first jobs was raking the compound at Baba’s house.
Bryan found the outside work beautiful, healthy, poetic, just what he needed. He kept learning and gaining more responsibility, caring for the natural beauty of Baba’s home as the time went by: first months, then years, and now decades.
Throughout, Bryan has felt Baba’s presence in the people around him. This initially included many lovers who had been with Baba in the body, the quiet luminosity of remembering Him with them. And then it was simply the constant arrival of God through the guests, year after year, and daily companionship with his fellow workers.
Bryan has also been shaped by the inevitable grumbles and clashes of community. He has become less battered by his own emotions over time, less likely to keep “bashing my head against a wall,” more able to let things go. Bryan says of the increased detachment he’s gradually seen in himself, “I would say He likes that kind of happiness too.”
Now, after more than twenty years, Bryan seems to know every tree on the Center, and to constantly, discerningly rustle through every bush. The vistas onto the shimmering lake have been carefully tended by him, as have the trees that adorn the entrances of the special buildings, the paths that Baba’s lovers walk contemplating God. Bryan says that the meaning of the quote “work is worship” becomes ever clearer to him: that legacy dating back to the very beginning, to Elizabeth and Norina carefully and painstakingly and lovingly creating Baba’s home in the first place.
And so Bryan continues to grow at Meher Center, tending and being tended, turning his face more and more to the Sun.
*Stories from personal communication and Bryan’s chapter in the book Waves and Waves of Love, Compiled and Edited by Carolyn M. Ball
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