Gratitude on Gratitude

On the morning of the last day of the Spring Cleaning Sahavas, all the participants sat in a circle in the Meeting Place. Melissa Collins, the coordinator of the Cabin Crew who also coordinated the Sahavas cleaning, spoke to the group. “I am overwhelmed at the amount of work that got done here,” she said with emotion in her voice, and Jeff Wolverton, another Center staff member, was similarly choked up when he noted the contribution would save their team weeks, if not months, of effort. Melissa continued, saying that she really didn’t want to assign any more hard work this final morning, because everyone had already done so much. There was a cheerful, resounding disagreement throughout the circle: the Sahavasees wanted to do more.

This was the first Spring Cleaning Sahavas to ever happen on Center. Every summer for over thirty years there has been a Youth Sahavas bursting with love, and for the past few years there has also been a Young Adult Sahavas. But on March 10, participants of all ages started arriving for hard work and company with God—people with black hair and grey hair and white, kids and their parents, a mom toting her eight-month-old baby, those who had been coming for thirty years and those coming for the first time ever. And they all came ready to work.

Janet Files, a local participant, says of arriving for Sahavas, “I guess you would say Baba showed up as soon as I came in the Gateway.” Janet had always joked that she wished she could go to the Youth Sahavas. A mother of four, she says, “I had heard about Youth Sahavas, that it was an intimate gathering with Baba. I saw it in my own children—the positivity that prevailed—they would applaud anybody who did anything with great enthusiasm. It was a family feeling.”

At the Spring Cleaning Sahavas, Janet got her wish. The work started from the beginning, and Janet laughs about having a real bonding moment as she and another participant cleaned refrigerators “with passionate energy.” Over the course of the weekend, through work and games, Arti and small group discussions, the closeness grew. Despite different ages and different faith traditions, Janet says that in the light of Baba’s presence, everyone started to look lovable and fabulous—“Everyone was equally embraced by the mission to clean up, and also, I would say, the holiness of the Center … we all just felt at home in the lap of God’s love together.”

During the work sessions, Melissa went from group to group, bringing cleaning supplies and answering questions. Some groups were singing together, some listening to music, some quiet and contemplative, but all fully engaged in the task at hand—scrubbing and shining and wiping every nook and cranny of Baba’s center. “Someone was really excited about how clean they were getting the handles on the cabinets,” Melissa notes with a laugh. And then more seriously: “It was overwhelming in that I really wasn’t expecting to feel so much love and joy at everyone being here and doing the work. I guess I was really surprised at how much everybody was just diving into and loving the work … it was emotionally overwhelming to witness Baba’s love in everyone’s joy at being here.”

Ultimately, so much got done. All the kitchens were deep cleaned. Every book in the library was taken off the shelf and dusted. Truckloads of debris were removed so that the firebreak could be reploughed. “I felt like my goals were very lofty and my expectations were very high,” Melissa says, “but everyone that participated … just blew me out of the water.”

Even so, during the closing session in the Barn, when Melissa tried to thank the two participants who were with her during Small Group Sharing, they said no. “It was amazing,” she recounts. “They said, ‘You seem to be kind of emotional about how grateful you are and how much work we’ve done … But the truth is, we are actually grateful to all of you for letting us come here and help, to become a part of the Center. For letting us put OUR work into the Center. We’re grateful for what you’ve allowed us to do—to come here and give back to this place that means so much to us.’”