Gareth Calway has been a Baba lover since 1979.
While unemployed (in
every sense) and pondering his future after graduating from University, he received
a hug at an introductory meeting from an elderly and distinguished
— not to mention divinely eccentric — follower of Meher Baba (Lady Dorothy
Hopkinson) after apologising for giggling all the way through her
transcendent talk.
Inwardly convinced that something deeply significant
had happened at that meeting but reluctant to credit The Avatar for it,
he decided to devote 40 days and nights to a trial, convinced that Meher Baba
wasn't someone to idly flirt with but needing a strong signal that He was
someone it would be right to devote his life to.
Checking the 40 days "expiry date" in
a diary, it was found to fall on Good Friday (1979). Certain that this was
too corny to be true (and never having been any good at math) Gareth checked again
and found that in fact the "expiry" date was Easter Sunday.... This was
a coincidence, yes, but it was also a genuine message to someone puzzled by
that "Being Is Dying By Loving" paradox, thinking of starting a new life
from the sterility of his old one and (deep down) in love with Jesus.
Though bored and unimpressed by conventional Christianity, Gareth had always
felt drawn to the gnostic side of Christianity and by the Bible as a mystical text
especially as reflected in the work of poets, and the lyrics of the 60s —
and by the person of Jesus as God in human form, and Baba seemed
prepared to indulge Gareth even to the point of "arranging" for him to spend
a night of silence in a graveyard on Maundy Thursday on a grave that
(it turned out later) bore his own date of birth (another Maundy Thursday).
At this point, it was clearly time to stop mucking about, start following
Baba through the more inconvenient, down to Earth,
paths of everyday employment but Gareth was moved by the fact that
Baba would take the trouble to respond to him in his (i.e. Gareth's) own rarefied
language.
Marriage and a career in teaching followed (both still going strong!)
and Gareth continues to record the journey in pursuit of his hart/heart
Meher Baba, as seen from these apparently ordinary Ways.
Coming Home,
a book of poems which explores the theme of Evolution / Reincarnation / Involution
as described by Baba, was published in 1991.
Britain's
Dreaming, with a third section devoted to poems of the would-be Path —
"The Way of Love is a Tightrope" — was published in 1998. It ends with
Gareth's oldest retained poem and first real Baba poem, "Beloved, To Please You"
written in June, 1979, and still truer to Gareth than anything else he's ever written.
February 2009 update: Marriage still going strong (3 decades — same as my Baba romance). Teaching
career brought to an end after 27 years to become full-time author in 2007.
First novel River Deep Mountain High — published 2008, going into paperback
Feb 2009 — prefixed with Baba's words about literacy not being education,
education not being culture and culture not being gnosis. The novel is set
in a high school and is a romantic comedy. Eighth book of poetry about King
Arthur and the Grail Quest scheduled for publication later this year.