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AUGUST 2000 at the ABODE of the MESSAGE
Some personal reflections of Rev. Hamid Cecil Touchon
AUGUST 3, 2000 APROX. 9:00PM
After an early start at 5:30am from my apartment in Cuernavaca, Mexico
I arrived at the airport in Albany, New York on a Delta flight from Mexico
City about an hour later than the scheduled 7:40pm arrival time. After
gathering my luggage at this fairly small airport I wondered what to do
because I had not received any instructions though I had paid for a shuttle
to the Abode of the Message about 45 minutes to an hour away. So I wandered
out the door that said 'SHUTTLE PICK UP' assuming this might be the right
area to look around for someone that I hoped was waiting for me. As it
turned out it was a wild day all around for air travel with many of the
retreatants' planes being delayed for a variety of odd reasons.
After stepping outside and waiting with my luggage I observed a few
suspicious characters that I thought might possibly be Sufi mureeds waiting
for a shuttle so I inconspicuously moved myself and my bags within ear
shot of these folks to see if I might hear some Sufi like conversation.
One 50 something gentleman was smoking a sweet smelling pipe and had a
casual air about him that seemed he might be from California or some other
Pacific coastal location. There were also a young handsome looking fellow
and two women. At a certain point I mustered up the courage to ask if they
were waiting for a shuttle to the
Abode and after finding out that in fact they were waiting for the
Abode shuttle I introduced myself. It turned out to be Ashraf and his companion
Christa from Maui, The young fellow was..., was..., Darn! his name is right
on the tip of my tongue... from Seattle and the other lady was, possibly
Kafiya Yager from the Land of Enchantment though I can't remember for certain.
After a while a shuttle did show up which was driven by one Sherdil
and in the back of the white extra long rented shuttle van was another
Sherdil with his lovely wife Farida Nelson who are the new center in Tempee,
Arizona. There were others in the van but I can't quite draw the others
into my mind's eye. (if you were one let me know) There was also Chandra
who arrived driving another shuttle to pick up more late people.
I was present at the Abode of the Message from August 3 in the
evening until 6:00am August 25. There were overlapping events so the previous
event - whatever it was - didn't clear out until noon the next day (4th)
so many who arrived on the evening of the 3rd were put up in dorms down
the road about a 1/3 of a mile at Darrow School for the one night only.
This is where I recall Ashraf, Christa and I stayed on either the third
or fourth floor. It was kind of hot and stuffy in the rooms but I happened
on to a private room with one bed where I slept. The next morning we were
supposed to meet a shuttle up to the Abode at 6:15 so when I headed out
the door at 6:15 the shuttle was leaving already so I had to start walking
dragging my roll along baggage with me down the black top road to try to
make the 6:30 meditation with Pir Vilayat in the Meditation Hall at the
Abode. After a short walk Jibril Okon from Kalamazoo happened by and offered
to give me a ride which I greatfully accepted.
My son Zack was supposed to send me my camping gear from Texas but
I contacted him a bit late and it took him a while to get around to it
so my camping gear wasn't to arrive until a full week later the following
friday. I had a pillow with me and a sheet but no tent or bedding so I
asked my old and dear friend Zehra-Latif Williams who was running the Programs
Office if she had a tent I could borrow and maybe a sleeping bag or blanket
but not until after a lot of long missed hugs. I attended the morning session
with Pir till lunch in the Meditation hall and after lunch we were all
ready to head up the hill. Later in the afternoon Zehra-Latif came through
for me with a blanket and tent which she had dug around for in the attic
which I set up on the Mountain as they call it above the Abode where the
retreat facilities are located. We found a reasonable place in the woods
where the ground was more or less flat and soft and Zehra-Latif helped
me to set up the 6 person tent not far from the bathrooms and shower building.
During the afternoon I made friends with Kenan Meyers from Seattle who
just happened to have a spare mat of his son's (Rafael) that he loaned
me and by evening of this sunny day I was set for a night's sleep. I got
to sleep pretty easily as it was cooler than the night before but I didn't
think of it to close the flaps over the screen windows thinking it was
the dead of summer and by 5:30 I was practically frozen. I was so cold
in fact that even with the blanket wrapped around me for the 6:30 morning
meditation in the big tent with Pir Vilayat I was still shivering cold
by the end of the hour long session.
A memorable experience for the wake up call at 6:15 and later that day
and all days there after were the beautiful, often haunting short phrases
of music played on a french horn by Naquib Harris from New York City whose
name actually means "The Herold" at various locations around the camp to
awaken or remind the mureeds of the various impending events or sessions;
each time playing a new snippet of Bach or Beethoven or Mozart among others.
He told me later in the camp that he has been doing this job at the Sufi
camps for 20 consecutive years.
The three weeks that I was there included 6 days of Leaders Camp which
was composed of representatives, coordinators and Cherags and I presume
guides and healing conductors. The next five days were Mureeds Camp and
training in the various concentrations such as esoteric school, universal
worship, retreat guide training, etc. Then for me and a number of others
there was a private retreat. In my case for ten days but some were taking
a 30 day private retreat.
Overlapping at the beginning were the meetings of the Jamiat Khas who
are the higher ups who have graduated from retreats to committee meetings
and overlapping the private retreat was a 6 day walking meditations camp
with Wali Ali.
The typical day of both the leader's camp and the mureeds camp was as
follows:
6:30 morning meditation with Pir Vilayat till 7:30
8:00 breakfast
9:00 morning session with Pir Vilayat (usually) till 11:30 and silence
all morning till noon.
12:00 lunch
2:00 or 2:30 the afternoon session till 5:30 which was with people of
various concentrations during the leaders camp and actually broken up into
various locations during the mureeds camp for the various concentrations
6:00 dinner
7:00 or 7:30 or 8:00 an evening event such as dances or zikr or Pir
Zia's presentation about Sufis or a 'sit around and eat cookies and drink
tea and shoot the bull' kinship session
around 8:30 or 9:00 everything is over and time for getting ready for
bed or taking a shower etc. and finding your way to your tent or cabin
10:00pm the first few nights of camp and later 11:00pm the generator
- what provides all of the electricity for the camp - is shut off and the
whole mountain is dark as ink except for the ocean of stars above and the
moon in its phase.
How terrible! Already much has slipped from my rememberance. Let me
try to recall things as they pop up…
There was a little beautiful, amazing girl age five who introduced
herserlf to me as Julie. When her mom called her Julianne (julie anne?)
she made fervant silent body language signals to her mother to not say
her real name as she obviously preferred Julie (this remined me of my daughter
who for a while introduced herself Charlie Kiss). Julie is a five year
old blonde haired blue eyed angel who reminded me of my own five year old
Noor-un-Nisa. Julie was just a complete joy and so polite and attentive
to others, even complementing adults that she thought did something impressive
in her estimation by saying; "That
was really good!" to the person. As you can tell, Julie and I
developed a strong attraction for each other and the third day into the
camp she told me about a dream she had of me in which I flew to her and
invited her to have a picnic at the beach during sunset. After telling
me this she gave me a drawing she made of the sunset and we had a big,
long, deep hug. I will never forget her beautiful spirit. I have
a picture of us together which I will share when it is scanned in. If you
know who I am talking about I would sure like to stay in contact with her
but failed to get an address or email from her mother. Shame on me!
I remember my friend Rev. Jacob Cabb who now lives in Atlanta. Jacob
worked at the children’s camp most of the time. He told me that he had
come to the camp via bus from Atlanta and if memory serves, it was a 20-hour
adventure with sitting in bus stations etc. Jacob’s luggage didn’t make
it to the camp for the first couple of days either. Jacob used to live
in the Denver area and that is where we made out connection. Once Jacob
came to visit me in Pagosa Springs where I used to live before moving to
Mexico and he brought with him his friend Khabir Wilt who was also present
at this camp. We all still remember swimming together in the cold mountain
stream at a park outside of Pagosa.
Jacob, knowing that I have a little background in martial arts invited
me to come over to the children’s camp where several of the boys had become
interested in breaking sticks karate style so one morning I spent with
the boys and girls discussing some basic martial arts techniques and attitudes.
Pir knighted a few of the older boys the day before and this particular
day the older girls decided that they should be knighted or ladied, I am
not sure which, so they left for a while to have Pir perform a similar
initiation for them. We broke enough sticks I would say to have a marshmallow
roast but we never did get around to it. The boys found that the rotten
sticks were much easier to break than the fresher ones and while there
were many sore hands by the end of the morning most of the boys were satisfied.
One boy however, by the name of Michael, thought breaking sticks was
a rather boring and stupid activity and spend most of his time patiently
waiting for the other boys to get the stick breaking out of their systems
so that they could all play together doing something that was actually
fun in his opinion. There is another good story, a fishing story regarding
Michael that Jalil Buechel recounted for me I believe on tape and as soon
as I come upon it I will post it as well.
Mirabai, like the kitchen itself was a standard feature this year and
I got a picture of her, which I will share when I get the photos back from
the printer. The food over all was pretty darn good. There was even gourmet
coffee served beginning around 7:30 after the early morning meditations
with Pir. Mirabai lives on the second floor of a house close to the main
Abode complex and came up every morning around 5:45 by shuttle and worked
most days for breakfast and lunch and it seems to me her plan was for another
cook to do dinner but I am a little fuzzy on the details. Anyway, she put
in a big day every day. The normal arrangement was for a couple of staffers
to work the kitchen with Mirabai one of which was a very nice young man
by the name of Amos who was part of the Young Adults group which I will
mention later. Other than this three volunteers from among the campers
were selected for preparation of each meal and 6 volunteers for the clean
up crew of each meal. These were solicited at the blessing circle before
each meal.
The food was primarily vegetarian but it was still good anyway with
a number of creative and tasty dishes thrown in here and there including
soups, stews, pastas, tofu in various configurations, salads, teas, veggie
burgers, and a variety of yummy breads. I noticed that Mirabai is into
various kitchen protocols and adabs so anything to do with the kitchen
or food it is good to secure her blessing before hand so as not to receive
a chastising as I did once for eating early due to having some event that
I volunteered for which was going to cut into dinner time. I never did
ask her which codebook she was using but now that I am thinking about it
I am curious. Always remember that when you go to a Sufi camp to put in
your time as a volunteer. It is a great way to spend a little time getting
to know others and being of service at the same time, which is our intended
constant expression of Sufism anyway – to be of service.
Only shuttles for the most part were allowed up the mountain and even
like that the road, which had been freshly graded before camp was in pretty
bad shape by the end of the mureeds camp. The main shuttle drivers during
camp were Harvey (from where I am not sure), Khalid who lives at the Abode
and Malik [formerly Merlin] Kruger.
Harvey was always in too big of a hurry to actually talk to and I heard
at least on story of a lady in the back of one of the shuttles he was driving
spontaneously breaking out into a cold sweat and repeating protective wazifas
on the apparently hair raising ride all the way down the hill at speeds
that seasoned campers had never previously experienced on that hill.
Khalid, an old hand around the Abode, some time back was also the head
of operations at the Abode and while there, I attended one of the Sangatha
classes that he leads on a weekly basis.
Malik was a very helpful and thoughtful guy who I enjoyed spending
time with and whom I remembered from my very first Sufi Camp in 1978 I
believe it was. To give you an idea, there was a young mother with two
young children at an evening event and as any parent will tell you, it
is very difficult to focus on anything at a Sufi Camp with a couple of
small children who become easily bored at adult activities. Any way, when
Malik noticed that these two children, a brother and a sister started getting
antsy, out came a couple of shiny envelops with very small pop and glow
sticks which turned into a red glowing light. The children instantly became
enthralled. Malik, it turned out brought a bag of 50 of these glow sticks
with him to give to the kids. Hum… Take note future campers.
Young Adults