Category Archives: Uncategorized
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Dancing Together
In the winter of 1988, Beverly Smith asked Meher Center staff if she could call a square dance at the Center’s then-small New Year’s Eve program. They told her to wait while they asked Kitty Davy, one of Baba’s close Mandali who was then 97, whether she thought it was appropriate. “Yes,” she said, “As…
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Repentance
There are days we might feel the Prayer of Repentance is more applicable than others. But after dictating the prayer seventy years ago this month, Meher Baba demonstrated how important repentance is, again and again, for all of us. Baba wrote the Prayer of Repentance in November of 1951, during the New Life, when He…
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The Fire of Divine Love
After the first dhuni was lit in Meherabad in 1925, Meher Baba asked each of His Mandali to write a poem about the dhuni. Many poems were written; however, the poem that continues to define the power and nature of the dhuni was composed by Baba Himself. Baba personifies the dhuni as if she were…
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Mercy within Change
A lot can happen while waiting for Baba’s lovers to return to the Center. When the Center first closed for guests, Dean Mendoza was working on Maintenance. At first, his job continued approximately as usual: each building still had to be carefully tended, and work even ramped up as the crew started focusing on projects…
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Finding Beauty and Truth
To tell the story of Australian poet and Mandali member Francis Brabazon’s first meeting with Baba without telling the story of the man and his search would be an erroneous and incomplete account. About his first meeting with Baba at Meher Center in 1952, Francis wrote, “This meeting was a culmination of ten years of…
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“Baba waited for me”
“I was never a seeker. Baba came to get me,” said Judi Schoeck when we started talking about her life with Baba. Judi has been working at the Center Gateway for close to two decades and has been with Baba since the early seventies. So how does one end up working at God’s front gate…
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The House of the Gatekeepers
When Meher Baba visited the Center for the first time in 1952, Elizabeth Patterson asked Him if He wanted her to move onto the Center property that she had spent so many years preparing for Him. “No,” He replied, “Not until I tell you to.”[i] Baba specified that, when the time came, Elizabeth should build…
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The Inward Journey
“External journeys are from place to place … the real journey is the inward journey.” -Meher Baba at the East-West Gathering, quoted by Darwin Shaw Diving into the lives of Baba’s close ones is like diving into the deep seas to find treasure. It is not always easy but is always rewarding. Where does one…
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Waiting for the Christ
In 1952, when Baba first traveled to His home in the West, He asked that only a few close disciples meet Him in New York and take the train with Him to South Carolina. However, when He arrived at Penn Station on the evening of April 20, high above Him on the uppermost balcony, two…
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Giving and Giving
When I think about Ann Conlon now, I think about giving. It starts with her Baba story: she was a young journalist in New York who had grown up Catholic but who, when she heard about Baba and was told He was the Christ, found herself saying simply, “that’s right, He is.” Nevertheless, despite her…