Appointments with God

Like so many of us through the years, Agnes Baron’s first meeting with God happened in the Lagoon Cabin. She had devoted six years to founding and caring for Meher Mount, a center for Baba in California. Finally, in early April of 1952, she was given an appointment to meet Him for the first time at Meher Center. The drive across the country to Myrtle Beach was difficult, and she arrived exhausted and multiple days late. But the next morning, when she finally stood in front of the Lagoon Cabin, she was informed that she wasn’t late at all: Baba had sent her a telegram she hadn’t received, asking her to arrive on April 26. It was April 26. She walked inside.

Like so many people, Agnes stood in front of Meher Baba’s chair and the world changed. “There are no words to describe it. It was so fantastic. All my doubts just flew out the window. The first thing Baba did was to open His arms and put my head on His shoulder. Something out of this world happens to you when Baba puts His arms around you. It’s indescribable. What I saw sitting on the couch and what I felt was sitting on the couch were two different things. Without any more rationalizing, I accepted Him 100 percent. [Afterwards,] I was consciously watching Him to see if He was going to make any mistakes, but deep down I had already accepted Him.”

In September of 2020, there aren’t dozens of people waiting expectantly outside the Lagoon Cabin for their personal contact with Baba, as there were in 1952, and there aren’t guests and visitors walking by, peeping through the windows, feeling some undefined pull inside to the chair where He still sits. But Baba is still making His appointments, and we are still keeping them.

Gabe, a Meher Center worker, is part of the team tending to the Lagoon Cabin in ways that would be difficult during normal times. Right now, that means painting: using three different, carefully-selected kinds of coating to protect the window frames, the window sills, the thresholds that Baba walked over, the steps that have been worn by decades of lovers. When asked how he feels about working on the Lagoon Cabin, he says, “You know, I would say a lot of my time here is absolute confusion as to why He picked me and being tickled pink that He did, and wanting to live up to that. [I’ve] got to live up to that trust.”

That means doing slow, painstaking work. And as he works, Gabe thinks about all those other appointments that Baba made and kept. “I’m working on a window that Baba looked through while He was sitting in His chair in the Lagoon Cabin. These are the windows that beamed in sunlight behind Baba’s chair… the ones that lit Baba while He was having His individual [interviews] with folk.”

If, like so many of us right now, your own appointment at the Lagoon Cabin is through live streaming, you won’t notice any changes inside the building. When you come back, you likely won’t notice a difference on the outside, either, because the renovations are as seamless as possible, keeping every detail as close as possible to when Agnes Baron walked in there sixty-eight years ago at just the moment Baba had scheduled. The Lagoon Cabin will still be waiting as it always has, and it will hint at the same truth that it did when Meher Baba sat there physically, shining with infinite joy as His loved ones, new and old, finally arrived at His feet. The truth that He is always with us, waiting in our hearts, where the real appointment with God is kept.

*Lord Meher, Online Edition, 3048