Shariat Farm: Deepening Days, Deepening Years Part 2

Four months later…

"As I walked through the tall grass to the porch, in those early few moments I had stood still in a theater of humming insects and known this was my home—and that the thought was totally inappropriate. Nonetheless, I'd felt undeniable contentment, as in coming home, and an unquenchable longing to stay."*

By late October, two weeks before a departure for my first pilgrimage to Meherabad, India, I called Jesse, who was there on a six-month sabbatical, and with his permission brought out my things to the farm.

Returning from Meherabad to Shariat Farm after experiencing ten weeks of totally new ways of spiritual learning, I had memories of many kinds. There had been tears and adjustments to make to what had felt like unkindnesses. And there were also awe-inspiring moments, as when in the fullness of Meher Baba's energy I had heard messages both from His beloved, Mehera, while kneeling by her shrine, and from Baba Himself on my last day when he spoke to me through my inner voice, "You are my jasmine." Jesse travelled between the farm and Meherabad too.

Here, at Shariat, I loved my small farm bedroom with "its west-facing window taking half the wall… where in the morning I propped up pillows to look out at the roughly mowed yard and the trees, where birds and animals moved and leaves were shifting.  . . . This was the first time I'd lived in seclusion among abundant grasses.  . . . I looked out and met my new family—scrambling, squabbling birds at the feeder I hung, wheeling hawks, grazing deer and wild turkey, a passing fox partially visible, and a steadily crawling, long-term resident gopher tortoise on its routes."

In September, "I watched the varying browns and occasional yellow and red leaves as I undertook the farm chores." Sometimes I was thanked for my work, but I was growing in inner awareness, and rather than looking to Jesse for validation, "I told Meher Baba what I had done, and each day continued talking to Him about my day's work.  . . . Then many years later an insight appeared. The previous love ties in my life, while expressing spiritual love, had been securely harmonized with romantic love. I was now in training to know more of God's love.

"During a short time before bed, when a low lamp held us together from the end of the sofa where I sat to where he sat in a chair tilted back, his feet on a corner of the table, he'd tell me simple information about history, or international news. Most important was what I listened to about Meher Baba, His writing, and less so, other spiritual masters and their writing, holy women and their writing."

Seven years passed. Having spiritual growth now as continual inspiration in my life, I returned to the farm in the month of November where I spent time working on my book, and spar varnishing the studio, finishing the three-quarters Jesse had done in September that year. Then I'd planned a visit to my dad up north. "Letting go of the intensity of living at Meherabad and in India, I moved to simple-minded time, watching the sun rise and set and the stars wink out, following the herds and flocks crossing from his woods to the neighbor's, looking at the variation of petal, leaf, bark, and branch of dogwood, redbud, cedar, hickory, southern pine, one magnolia, and whatever flowers and grasses wove the texture of the field."

Shariat farm was sold in December 2015, following my last two weeks there that summer.  Yet I knew that in my heart, my love of these times and this place would live on.

My realization is, "Love has many faces. At times they are of the earth's grasses, plants, and trees, and the blessed creatures living among them."

* All quotes from this post will be found in Prema Jasmine Camp’s A Flower for God: A Memoir, forthcoming.