Each morning, after the orange sun has risen, I go out my door onto dry, leaf-strewn earth to face the sun's blinding-yellow rays. With barely wavering eyes, and from joy, I pray in these holy moments,
Good morning, Sun!
Good morning, trees and birds, and earth, and sky!
Good morning creatures!
. . . and from a song,
It's a new dawn,
It's a new day,
It's a new life,*
. . . and from a poem,
Every day is a renewal
Every morning the daily miracle
The joy you feel is life.*
Gertrude Stein
For I am so grateful to be here.
The geography is semi-desert. I am a beach lover. Yet, for my age, and my safety, I have chosen to remain here, and not travel to America, as I usually do. So I keep a laminated copy of "The Red Umbrella: A Beach Tale,"* propped behind my keep-cool clothes to remind me . . . the ocean is still there, and one day I may return.
Two months ago, I gave myself a gift—a two-volume ticket-to-reading for April through June titled, The Joyous Path: The Life of Avatar Meher Baba's Sister, Mani.* Already paper strips poke above the tops of the pages where I find Mani's words especially meaningful, such as these on
her early training with Baba.
You can see it in our pictures, none of us smiling; we were terribly
earnest, serious, and solemn about it. Your training was like that in the
beginning. Your every moment, your every thought, your every action was
not yours but Baba's. . . . It was as Baba wants, what He wants, when
He wants, how He wants.*
Looking through a list of possible blog ideas, with serendipity I opened a file labelled
"Surrender," curious as to my thought. It was a very old poem written after my first visit to Meherabad in November 1997. It hinted at my early, as yet miniscule awareness of Mani's meaning of what it meant to be with Baba.
SURRENDER
What fish
Would you like to be?
Rainbow trout,
Sea bass
Don’t look
For the bait.
When
You see
His shadow
Fly
To the hook
Laughing
He’ll dance you
Closer
Until you taste
The metal of
Gratitude.
PJC
My realization is, "Looking at our seasonal reading today may reveal intuitive understanding from the past, held without our consciousness, that we may now learn from."
* Feeling Good was written by English songwriters Anthony Newley and
Leslie Bricusse for the musical The Roar of the Greasepaint – The Smell of
the Crowd and first performed on stage in 1964.
* © Michael Bublé (album).
* Elizabeth Roberts and Elias Amidon, eds., Honoring the Earth: A Journal of New Earth
Prayers (New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 1993).
* Heather Nadel, The Joyous Path: The Life of Avatar Meher Baba's Sister, Mani (Myrtle Beach, SC:
Sheriar Foundation, 2015), 131.