The Quiet of a Bowl

In my living room, in a window’s light, centered alone on a round teak table, coupled with two modern, silver-finished straight-back chairs with cushions that resemble black leather sits my Cambodian bowl, reflecting where the morning light originates; it is from the north. As I gently spin the bowl, it holds that particular window on its inner curve, while elephants on the rim pass through. By lamplight, it is an art object—dimmed by its distance from the lamp, equal in graciousness. The bowl was a gift. The lamp came from my electrician. In his small home of kitchen and bedroom, from an upper, open cement shelf, he took down this lamp that is my focus at evening. A slender stem rises from a square base; the shade, woven and café-au-lait in tone, extends from a small upper circle to a flare at the metal hem. Its few decorations are of a repeated sun and a half-sun in linear dots of gold. In the evening, its shadow appears as many ladders on a pale wall. This is my quiet room where I dine.

External silence helps to achieve inner Silence, and only in internal Silence is Baba found … . I am never silent. I speak eternally. The voice that is heard deep within the soul is My voice—the voice of inspiration, of intuition, of guidance. Through those who are receptive to this voice, I speak.*

My realization is, “Whether by choice or circumstance, to be in silence is a gift, even for moments.”

* Kitty Davy,

Love Alone Prevails

, pp. 166-167 as quoted in “2017 Avatar Meher Baba Calendar,” (Mumbai, IN: Tea House of The August Moon Public Charitable Trust, 2107). For information about Meher Baba see Avatar Meher Baba, www.ambppct.org

From the University of Maine

From the University of Maine

to Sea Island, Georgia

A Thread of Pidgin English

the grass on top of my head

Sea Island, GA

In 1964, I was finishing my degree in French and taking a course that included exposure to other languages. Pidgin English was the one that captured my imagination, causing me to easily remember its translation—“the grass on top of my head.”

Pidgin is a language invented by groups of people who speak different languages but need to communicate with each other; it has a simple vocabulary, a simple structure, and draws upon the local language. A pidgin was created by the West Africans captured on raiding expeditions in the 17^th and 18^th centuries and brought to America as plantation slaves in the coastal areas of South Carolina, Georgia, and northern Florida. Because they spoke different languages, they formed a new language that drew on African pidgins as well as English.* 

Soon after the Fourth of July 2016, I drove away from Florida for the last time with my destination a town on the southern coast of Georgia. While staying there only several days to leave my car, I explored Rt. 17N, which had nothing to offer me. But Rt. 17S took me to the causeway to Sea Island, where I sat on a beach with thoughts of its surrounding beauty and my good fortune. In truth, Sea Island in the following year would play a role in the thread from my university course. 

After my return home in 2017, having again visited Sea Island, I remembered my university course one day and my delight with Pidgin English. Believing that the memory might have been stored for a future use, I began to research this language. On one website for linguistic studies, I found a photo of a ferryboat sign with instructions written in English Pidgin-Creole—causing a thrill as I read the translation, “If you want the ferry to come, strike the gong.”* Reading the words that resembled the language structure of those in my memory confirmed that I had remembered the correct language. 

A pidgin might in time become a richer language in vocabulary and structure and be spoken by a larger population. Then it becomes a creole language. The Gulllah Geechee, who live on the Sea Islands of Georgia, speak Sea Island Gullah and Geechee, a creole language.* I realized that a thread about language had spanned fifty-one of my years, creating new historical interest.* 

My realization is, “It matters to ask why experiences from many years back are remembered. Upon closer thought, a thread may be discovered that has continued unnoticed until one day it becomes a beckoning invitation.”

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gullah_language. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Africa.

* “Sipos Yu Wantem Ferry Yu Kilem Gong.” Photo ©Anders Ryman/Getty Images. https://www.thoughtco.com/pidgin-language-1691626. See Ryman photo here.

Coming Home - Stephen Michael Camp*

The music of my husband Stephen was a main road on the map of my life during our years together. That road has been there since—but as a back road—and for many years was not traveled. After his passing, I had followed an intuition to make notes about our time together. In one, a letter to an admirer of Stephen’s music, I wrote, “Stephen’s physical life sped up so fast, I think he and I lived twenty-four years in six. He works with me telepathically now. We have a new paradigm for marriage and work—one in spirit, and one on the planet.”

But any further thought to take his music to his audience did not develop. I could listen to it only occasionally. He had been unlike any man I had known, and that uniqueness vibrantly lived in his music. I wanted to love what we had had, yet live into my future on the empowerment of how I had grown with him—otherwise his music could have become my anchor to the past. Recognizing its grip on me, when I was given a message that would cause me to begin a one-hundred-eighty-degree turn toward a new life—Stephen’s music went into the background. Five years later, the timing was right and I shared his life’s accomplishments through music at Seraphim Center in Gainesville, Florida.*

This year marked 21 years since Stephen’s passing. For the past two years, I have been able to listen to his music, now transferred to CDs, with a new realization of the extent of his spiritual empowerment made available to all who listened to his channeled lyrics. As for me, I see myself then as innocent, yet open, and with my own awakening abilities, rapidly taking in experience and information. From our beginning to our ending, Stephen had been greatly advanced spiritually; during the eleven months before he took his last breath, he continued rapidly expanding in universal knowledge. Meanwhile, I was also in spiritual training, but on a different course—my focus, along with hope and prayer, was on the daily details within the practical responsibilities of our efforts to recover his active life.

Today, I find that I respond with an even deeper resonance to his words as their truth freshly enters my listening body. But even then, I was aware of how those who heard him were ferried by the rich timbre of his voice—willing riders to the destination of the word that he himself had chosen—surrender.


“Coming Home”



I have been living so long with a blindfold, I forgot what it’s like to see.

I spent all my life stumbling over my own feet. I thought it was over for me.

I stayed away from the Light and the Love. I knew what was better for me.

I found a home in the clouds of illusion. I thought that was sanity.

But now I’ve come home, and now I can see

That the Light I’ve been looking for is here inside of me.



And all the time that I wandered around, I’ve been angry cause He left me.

I looked everywhere outside of myself for my Master that I couldn’t see.

I stayed away from the Light and the Love. I knew what was better for me.

I found a home in the clouds of illusion. I thought that was sanity.

But he’s always there. It’s me who leaves.

And He always cares. He’s a Light that shines in me.



And now I’ve come home, and now I can see

that the Light I’ve been looking for is here inside of me.

But now I’ve come home, and now I can see

that the light I’ve been looking for is here inside of me.


My realization is, “Sometimes it takes stepping away from a former experience then stepping back to discover how much change has occurred within and the accompanying gratitude for the newly recognized progress.”

* Stephen Michael Camp, “Coming Home” by Stephen Michael Camp on Coming Home, Holy Smoke Studio, cassette.

*See “Watermelon Seeds” Stephen Michael Camp, EMOTIONS in Purely Prema.

* Seraphim Center: Rev. Dr. Janet Claire Moore, Senior Minister writes, “The Seraphim Center is an interfaith spiritual center, dedicated to the Light. … The Seraphim Center honors healing in all aspects: Both traditional and non-traditional methods are acceptable, as are the varied methods of divination. We believe that our planet and all life on it are precious, and are meant to be cherished, nurtured, and respected; and that we are to live our lives as best we can in joyfulness, peace, gratitude, and love.”

* Prema Jasmine Camp, A Flower for God (forthcoming). A memoir of my spiritual awakening and journey to God that began long before I was aware.