Welcome to My World

For six months, the Center had waited quietly, and Baba’s lovers from all over the world had waited too. Mark and Lisa, a couple from Vermont, were two of those people: they had been coming to the Center twice a year for twenty-five years, but this spring they weren’t able to. “Lonesome,” said Lisa, when asked to describe what that was like. “It was lonesome. We missed the Center, plain and simple, really.”

And then, they got the message that the Center would be opening on October 16—New Life day. They called, asking if they could come, as they always had, on their way down to Florida. And others called, too: locals who were used to visiting the Lagoon Cabin every day. People from other states who were planning to stay a week in a hotel for just one afternoon at the Center and, when they learned they could visit multiple times, started to cry.

Jane and Bob Mossman were called shortly before the Center opened to ask if they would check people in every afternoon when the day visiting began, and they cried too. “We are just so deeply grateful,” says Jane.

The day came, and the guests began to arrive at the Center, at Baba’s home, at their home, for the first time in so many months. They found the gate open, a picture of Baba smiling at them from one of the posts, Bob and Jane standing to greet them. And then, as they drove through the gate, a song started playing: “Welcome to My World,” the version that Baba loved by Jim Reeves. “I play this song and a lot of people start crying,” says Jane. “They start crying, some people cry for the whole ride in to the road. It’s like there’s a magnet just pulling them — ‘I’ll be waiting here, with my arms unfurled, waiting just for you.'”

Mark and Lisa made it to the Center from Vermont last week, completing the journey they’ve made so many times. It had been pouring, but a few minutes before they reached the Center, the sun came out. Then they saw the gate, and heard the song. And they got out of the car, there at the entrance, and started dancing together. “We just had such a romantic feeling in the moment, dancing seemed like the natural response to that music being played and the reunion with the Center. [To that] divine romance.” Down the tear-soaked road, they joined the hundreds of other lovers who had also come home that week.

The time on the Center, for those hundreds of people, is indescribable, but Jane and Bob see something of it when visitors come out: “We feel such joy from them that we feel we’ve been on the Center with each car that goes in…They come out just flying. Flying. You can just feel the gratitude.”

As Mark and Lisa put it: “We were full. Very full and grateful, a real sense of peace. I think the sharp contrast to all the turmoil that was going on in the world, I think of Meher Center as that great sanctuary for the soul.”

Sometimes, people come out, dripping with love, and ask Jane and Bob for another song. They found one that seems to suit the mood of those moments. When they played it for one woman, she just sat in her car throughout, weeping. “The song is Nessun Dorma, sung by Andrea Bocelli,” says Jane. The translation: “None shall sleep. I will break the silence with a kiss.”