“Baba waited for me”

“I was never a seeker. Baba came to get me,” said Judi Schoeck when we started talking about her life with Baba. Judi has been working at the Center Gateway for close to two decades and has been with Baba since the early seventies. So how does one end up working at God’s front gate without having sought Him? Is it chance, is it mercy or just a good story? I was about to find out.

Judi’s story is one that is full of heartache, transition, and a final arrival. A month after she turned twenty, in a roaring roll of things, she moved to San Francisco from Manhattan to work at Rolling Stone magazine. Having not received her issue on time, she had written to them offering to work for them to improve their circulation. Her confident offer was met with an instant hire over the phone! About a year later, at the end of 1970, the real reason for her hire was revealed. The mailroom boy put the latest issue of the magazine on her desk. The cover had a picture of Meher Baba and the article was written by Pete Townsend. “I had seen a billboard with the ‘Don’t worry, be happy’ message before and it had appealed to me. This article sparked my interest further and I started reading about Baba. I first read Listen, Humanity, then Avatar and eventually the Discourses—a book that I ended up living with. In the early days, when I read the Discourses, I said out loud, ‘This is what Jesus would say if He ever came back.’”

But life was not all roses just at His recognition. More grinding work had to be done. Judi’s life was tumultuous with drugs, failed and troubled relationships, and serious mental health struggles. “Being a Catholic girl, I wondered if I was blaspheming by giving up Jesus. No one around me wanted to talk about God and either way, I did not know what consecrating one’s life to the living Christ meant, yet.” Drowned in her own life’s turmoil, she did not meet another Baba lover for eleven years. It took a long time for her to give up drugs and to feel worthy of His acceptance. “I was trying to connect with the impersonal God and missed opportunities to be with Baba. But some years later, in photo slides, I found pictures of Baba all over my apartment. While I had been thinking that I was not connected, what mattered was that He was connected. Now, I am trying to reframe the narrative for myself: my tragic early adulthood was filled with His love for me. He waited for me, until I knew what it was to be faithful to Him.”

Once Baba turned the key, it appears that the solitary woman’s life which was more internal with Baba was turned to experience Him in outer spheres and with other people. In 1982 she started going to Meher Baba House in New York and became involved with the work crew right away. She helped set up for meetings, was part of the entertainment committee and was also on the board. In addition, she drove people to and from the meetings. After ten years there, she moved to Denver for work, where she helped start the Rocky Mountain Sahavas and wrote for the Broken Down Furniture magazine. By now, having travelled to India, Myrtle Beach and later Australia, she was all in.

When the Denver stint ended, Judi’s father (who she intended to take care of) planted the seed of the possibility of moving to Myrtle Beach. While he did not live to make the move, Baba had lit the spark illuminating a path waiting for her. In 1999, she moved to Myrtle Beach and started her own Pilates and massage studio. Meanwhile she dedicatedly volunteered at the Center until a time came when she had to close her studio. “I think Baba indulged me until a place opened up on Center for me to work.” She started part time in 2004, became full time in 2009, and continues now as the coordinator of the Gateway. “It is such an amazement that I am here. Every morning I ask Baba to guide me, because I know that I am not here to help Baba, He is here to help me.” Her life here is full not just with work but with being able to participate in programming through her music and announcing the evening programs.

In the years that I have worked with Judi, I have observed a formidable reliability in her. An intentional effort to be present, wholly. Showing up again and again with determination and taking things on without hesitation. When I share that with her, she says, “I guess with Baba I do not have goals, except to love Him.” Paradoxical as it may be, the lack of goals can clear the way for more work. “The real work is to be present, to hear the next step,” she says.