Doing His Best

If you’ve been to Meher Center in the last 16 years, you may well have met Peter Goodman. He’s quickly recognizable by his big heart, his endless enthusiasm, and his willingness to stop and chat (and often ask after your friends and relatives by name), no matter how much he has going on.

Peter first came to the Center with his family as a toddler. “It always felt so much like a home to me, like a second home,” he says of the visits throughout his childhood. He loved going to the programs and hearing music that “just struck my heart.” He got rides from staff members on their golf carts. He requested tour after tour of Baba’s House, relishing the different details that the tour guides provided. And he got to spend time with Kitty and Jane—Jane, who he called “Grammy Jane,” and Kitty, with her playful manner, her British accent, and her frequent zipping from cabin to cabin on her golf cart.

As Peter got older, leaving the Center to go back to Pennsylvania started to get harder, like leaving home. So finally, after years of longing, on March 1st of 2006, right before his 25th birthday, Peter moved just a few minutes away from the Center.

From then on, if Peter wasn’t working at his local hotel job, you knew where to find him. “I was always busy, and went to every program I could.” Peter also served chai, lifeguarded at the Youth Sahavas, raked at Baba’s House and Dilruba. Ten years after his move, he took a volunteer position at the Gateway. Finally, he became a regular volunteer on Cabin Crew as well, cleaning cabins and Baba’s special buildings, and greeting guests who he always treated like long-lost family. He was offered a full-time job on Cabin Crew in early 2020.

Peter said yes immediately. But then, the week that he started, the Center shut down for guests. “It’s almost like Baba was playing a prank on me,” he says, “the Center felt so different.” Still, he threw himself into work for Baba. He cleaned, and re-cleaned, and re-cleaned the empty cabins, ensuring that mold didn’t take hold and that they were tended to in a way that pleased Baba. He came up with new ideas (including the concept of a Meher Center Virtual Sahavas, to connect people even when they couldn’t be together physically). And as he meticulously tended to the Barn and the Lagoon Cabin, he sometimes imagined that he was preparing them for Baba’s arrival—or even that Baba was in there with him, smilingly watching him clean.

After what seemed like forever, it was time for guests to return. First came Youth Sahavas. Peter helped make sure that the cabins were “nice and cozy” for Baba’s young lovers after sitting empty for so long. Then, after almost two years’ absence, those lovers started to arrive. “Once all the staff and teenagers arrived, I felt so much energy and love, and it felt like normal,” says Peter. Soon after, in October, the Center opened for all guests. “It felt like a light switch flipped—like Baba worked His magic, having people come on Center. it was a give and take of love.”

Now, when a new person arrives or when an old-timer finally comes home again after this long period away, Peter is there to greet them joyfully—as he buzzes from cabin to cabin in his golf cart like he saw Kitty do all those years ago. As Peter puts it, he loves “getting to be a part of guests’ experience, especially if it’s their first time on Center, welcoming them and helping them feel as if they were coming home to their home on the Center.”

Peter’s constantly sunny disposition, his boundless energy and enthusiasm, and his commitment to friendship and connection with his whole Baba family—they are gifts, but they are also a practice of his. When I tell him that he’s one of the people I know who works the hardest to remember Baba and stay cheerful even when things are hard, he says, “I try. I definitely try. It’s not easy, but I definitely try all the time.” Often, he turns to his favorite quote, which gives him direction and helps him to remember that Baba is always with him, no matter what life may bring. “Do your best, then don’t worry, be happy in my love. I will help you.”