A Flower for God: A Memoir April 2021
"A Monumental Achievement
"Writing with such richness of detail and yet with such clarity and economy of language is—at least in my experience —very painstaking work. I can’t imagine the dedication and love it took Prema to deliver a book of this quality."*
"One Petal at a Time"*
Petite, white, five-petalled jasmine bloom profusely on Meherabad Hill, supported on wooden posts in the Upper Compound, a large, walled-in area with a building originally built by the British. In November 1997, I arrived at Meherabad* for a first pilgrimage of ten weeks. I was fifty-four. On my January departure morning, I took a different route from my residence to the prayer building, called Samadhi, and entered the now developed Upper Compound with the original tall building added on to, another lower building, and big, wide-spreading trees that circled the inner wall, or grew randomly on an earthen area enclosed by grass. Each day I had been bringing a flower to place on the Tomb-Shrine of Meher Baba,* and today I hoped to make special by finding a different one not offered before. Reaching to pick one petite, white jasmine, I heard a gently spoken inner message not to bring a flower because I was Meher Baba's jasmine. Six years later, when I returned to live at Meherabad, for a total of five months over my first year, I was sitting in Samadhi, with the five others filling the space, when I again heard an inner message. This time it was brusque. I was to "Leave and begin writing." A Flower for God: A Memoir* was published in April 2021. A dear friend, and spiritual teacher, wrote to me describing its writing, spread over seventeen years, naming it,
"One petal at a time." *
"Prema's talent for vivid description enables her to personalize her youth, as well as her life in India. She brings to life rural Maine of the 1950's that will warm the heart of any New Englander. Her memories of her Grammie's kitchen would be a perfect complement for any photos she would still have from her earlier family life, to stir a lively discussion of the past.
Similarly, Prema gives her attention to the orchards and paths of Lower Meherbad to stimulate a linkage to her childhood on the farm. She brings alive a typical Indian marketplace with its colors, smells, and bargaining techniques that ensure the reader knows Prema has moved on from New England, but still is in pleasurable surroundings.
As she freely admits, she has inherited from her father the talent to set the stage by appealing to all of our senses, as he shows in his "Staten Island Ferry-Boat," which is included in the book. Best of all, to liken the saxophone section of a 1940s big band to the flight of a flock of flamingos will add a new dimension to the next time I hear "Begin the Beguine."*
My realization is, "There are happenings in life that affirm how love trusts love, as when seemingly separate writings simultaneously surface, in both thought and feeling, to connect through awareness the many forms for ever-present love."
* Bob Petrucci, review of A Flower for God, A Memoir, by Prema Jasmine Camp, Amazon November 13, 2021: https://www.amazon.com/Flower-God-Prema-Jasmine-Camp/product-reviews/0998538671/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_show_all_btm?ie=UTF8&reviewerType=all_reviews
* Meherabad, The site of Avatar Meher Baba's Tomb-Shrine (Samadhi) and site of world pilgrimage as well as His early primary residence and ashram, and headquarters of His activities until 1944.
* Meher Baba, referred to as the God-Man whose soul had come in previous incarnations and eras as Zoroaster, Ram, Krishna, Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, and this time as Meher Baba.
* Rosie Polo with permission for use here.
* Prema Jasmine Camp, A Flower for God, A Memoir, (Seattle, WA: Wilson Duke Press, 2021).
* Craig M. Brandt, review of A Flower for God, A Memoir, by Prema Jasmine Camp, Goodreads October 3, 2021: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57949057-a-flower-for-god#other_reviews