Do you remember setting foot on Center for the first time?
You might have been a child when you first came, and you fit into the wondrous woodlands as a fish diving straight into water. However hard you might try now; the memory evades you. Or, you might not have been a child, but coming to the Center felt so familiar and home-like that you cannot trace it back to one exact moment or feeling. Or perhaps you are one with the sharpest memory of the time when you turned into the Center, off the highway, and felt something that made the most indelible mark upon your soul. You can still recapture that feeling as clearly as a crystal. Or, you might have been here, and taken to it slightly, “Nice place,” you said, or maybe perhaps, “strange place,” you wondered, and walked back out to your car and drove away into the vastness of the ever-moving world.
Every first-time visitor to the Center gets a full guided tour. The tour lasts anywhere from an hour to an hour and a half. At the start of a tour, every visitor watches a short introductory video that tries its best to do the impossible task of encapsulating an introduction to Meher Baba and the history and purposes of the Center, all in seven minutes. Interspersed with beautiful images of the Center, visitors can see moving images of Meher Baba and a short clip of Elizabeth Patterson describing the retreat.
In the snippet from an interview with Alan Cohen in 1977, Elizabeth says, “It’s a retreat, that is for renewal of the spiritual life. Everyone, at some time in their life, has known the spiritual life. Maybe when they were a small child, maybe later, they’ve had some experience and then it’s faded. And the wonderful part is to renew that contact, you might say, with God. Let God, that still, small voice, speak, and to meet other people, that are also, have come along in other paths that, then heard of Meher Baba, want to come. We’re never for want of people coming. They seem to come from here and there, and, are drawn by His presence.”
Nothing captures the torch bearing role of a tour guide better than Elizabeth’s words. A tour guide is tasked with the huge responsibility of being the guiding hand for a person who comes to Baba’s home for the very first time, and many a time, this person does not even know who Baba is. This job comes with the balancing act of connecting, greeting warmly and lovingly, while giving information. Guides must be prepared and well versed enough to answer questions about Baba, His life, the Center and the general philosophy that lovers of Baba believe in. But most importantly, this skillful task requires a discernment about when to step back and allow for silence – guide but not blindly, so that the still, small voice of God might speak in the hearts of seekers who have found themselves here.
The enthusiastic group of tour guides met earlier this month to share in companionship while discussing their joint role. This dedicated group of twenty people work unerringly, day after day to give tours. Yes, the Center hosts tours every single day! Again and again, they show up to do this job that is anything but monotonous. Walking into the tour is like doing an improv. You could have a large, devoted family from India, or a tourist who just discovered the Center on the internet, or a mix of both! The possibilities are infinite, just as Baba’s ways are.
During this meeting, apart from discussing the logistics of giving tours and handling challenges that may arise, the group discussed the role of the guides in sharing Baba’s life and message. This is something that the volunteers do so naturally and in complete attunement with their participants that it led to a wonderful discussion. We talked about Baba’s divinity and the different ways that the guides handle the subject and the interesting questions that arise from it.
Baba said many things about His divinity. Once He said, “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 the same Ancient One who alone is eternally worshiped and ignored, ever remembered, and forgotten. I am that Ancient One whose past is worshiped and remembered; whose present is ignored and forgotten, and whose future advent is anticipated with great fervor and longing.”*
To discuss His divinity with this group became an act of remembrance. To talk about Him and walk people through His home gives the volunteers the great joy and means to look at the Center with fresh eyes, each time. Just as one of the volunteers said, “While part of my job is to share with them the honor that it is to be on this sacred ground, I cannot miss my own honor in having this opportunity to share Baba and His home.”
*Lord Meher Online Edition, by Bhau Kalchuri, p.4581
|