Working for Baba

For those who have been to the Center over the last several years, seeing Carole Kelly at the Gateway has been a quiet but definite part of the ‘Welcome Home’ experience. It is not a bombastic welcoming nor is it monastic; it is reliable and very thorough. Carole has been the silent pillar of stability and strength at the Gateway. With its complex functioning of reservations, accounts, volunteers and countless behind the scene projects, the Gateway is almost its own creature. To manage this adventure requires no less than faith and poise. In her over thirty years of managing the Gateway and working closely with Jane Haynes, Carole brought forth those skills and much more. Now that she has passed on the baton, but still continues to work part time, all her colleagues rely on her for her very wise last word. They know very well that Carole has seen it all.

Carole first found out about Meher Baba in 1975. She was baptized Catholic and raised Christian Scientist. She was open to the idea of God and of Reincarnation but following a Master did not make sense at the time. Her deep curiosity was answered when she was guided inwardly to read God Speaks. “When I got to the part about the planes of consciousness, it felt like an inner explosion of recognition. I knew this was the truth. This was not what I was looking for but I could not deny it. This was when I came to understand that Meher Baba was God, not a master or an intermediary, and from that moment on, I have been with Baba one hundred percent,” she says.

In Minnesota, New York and California, Carole taught special education to learning disabled and emotionally disturbed children in public classrooms and trained graduate level teachers to do the same. She was questioning what her next step would be, when during her first visit to India, she felt strongly that she should move to Myrtle Beach to be near the Center. She then got a job in Conway teaching at a middle school. Following that year of teaching, Jane Haynes (the President of the Meher Center at that time) asked Carole if she would like to work at the Center. She first started working at the Gateway in 1987, but by 1988 she was Jane Haynes’ administrative assistant.

Working with Jane was challenging but gratifying. The rush, the stress, the juggle, the quest of doing well and of pleasing Baba kept this relationship going. One could imagine working for a spiritual Center as relaxing and even keel, but just like life with Baba, it was anything but that. “Those years were so bizarre that it was often comical. I had to step back and tell myself that none of this is real and that I just had to do my best.” Through all this Baba found a way for Carole to survive in Myrtle Beach as a single mother. Almost miraculously she paid her bills, found housing, raised her child and continued work at the Center.

As all things change, Kitty passed away and Jane retired. Just then, the opportunity to be the Coordinator of the Gateway opened up for Carole. “I had missed the Gateway very much. It felt like returning home. From then until now, I have thanked Baba every day to be able to work where I am supposed to be.”

When asked what her favorite part about being at the Gateway is, Carole chuckles. “I love it when I am the only worker there and the phone keeps ringing, while four new guests from India are arriving, a maintenance truck pulls up, the administrative office calls for something and two drop in visitors enter the door! I love when I am just one of three there and the phone has rung only once all morning!”

Carole personifies that very readiness to give and receive at all times. But it is bereft of the presumption that this is for the benefit of anyone but her own good fortune to be here. “It has been so important to remember the message Baba gave to his lovers in Poona, October 1962, called My Dear Workers: ‘You should never think that in your work for me you are benefiting others, for by being my instrument in bringing others to me you are benefiting yourself.’”

It is through this work that she experiences love that has grown, “slowly and quietly without my even noticing it.” Her work is her meditation. “The realization, looking back, is humbling- especially considering my personal human frailties, and the awareness of how much farther I have to go. Just knowing I’m on the road, though, is enough.”