Passing On J osephine Ross By Anne Ross, Averil Park, NY How can you adequately describe in words the life of another person? Even a person you think you know well your mother. Especially a mother who was not what anyone would describe as typical. Instead of breakfast, she fed us on poetry; instead of housework, we were treated to the smell of lilacs and walks in the woods... J osephine Esther Ross was born on November 21, 1907 in New York City, the daughter ofDr. Amadeus William Graubau, Professor of Geology and Paleontology at Columbia University, later at the University of Peking China, and Mary Antin, author ofThe Promised Land and lecturer on prob lems of immigration and related subjects. Later in life, she would tell us that it was difficult being the child of two “geniuses.” Although she learned the Hebrew prayers from her Jewish mother (her father came from a Lutheran family) and they kept the Sabbath, she attended a Christian boarding school and there developed a love for Christ which later reflects in her poetry. When she was a young girl, her mother took her to a palm reader who told her “this is the hand of a born mystic.” In November of 1931 at the age of 23, she met Meher Baba at Harmon, New York on His first visit to America.* This experi ence was to have a profound effect on her and she said that she immediately recognized Baba as the living Christ and she became a lifelong devotee. Up until then, she had never written po etry, but after meeting Baba, she said the words just flowed. She describes how He appeared to her: -
Thybeauty, Loro Ic like a thousand blossoms thatlift their fragrantpetals to the night, andali the myriadjewels ofthe stars arepale beside the radiance of Thy light.
She was one of the fortunate few who stayed for the month that Baba was at Harmon. She said that she was given the honor of bringing Baba’s meals from the kitchen to his room and would catch a *
glimpse of Him through the open door. She was thrilled that Baba asked her to stay at Harmon to help with typing until he re turned in the spring, as the house was permeated with His presence. After He left, she expressed her deep longing:
Margarita. He also accepted Baba as his Master and became a life-long disciple. (He is the one who played the bagpipes for Baba subsequent visit to Challa-combe in 1932, mentioned in the English newspaper ac counts.) A few years later Josephine and Kenneth met in NYC through mutual friends who were interested in Baba, and they were innmediately drawn to one another, as she so beautifully writes in her poem: Out ofeternity You come to me; hook intoyour eyes And there Isee Myselfreflected! Oh, in what dim past frf4re we two partec/ Now to meet at last Under these newer skies, In this strangeplace? What destiny now brings us Face to face?
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Istand on a balcony neargentlyswaying tree tops, And a golden summer moon floods the world with her light. Crickets andkatydids fill the night with theirshrill cries; And myheartis lonely. Where is He whom hove more than all eartith beauty? IlookforHim in the stars Andfindhim not.
Prior to this, on His way to America, Baba had visited England and spent 10 days at the retreat at East Challacombe in Coombe Martin, established by Meredith Starr. One of the early English group gath ered there to meet Baba was Mother’s fu ture husband, Charles Kenneth Ross, who was the brother of Meredith’s wife,
See page 1586, Volume V, LordMeher
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Even though she felt a deep soul connection with him and he told her shortly af ter they met “that he would like her to be the mother of his children,” she told him she wasn’t ready for marriage. He went off for a year to the Northwest Territories of Canada and when he came back and visited her, she said “I’ll marry you now ifyou stiiwant me.” (I often think how near my sisters and I came to not having them as parents, though I’m sure Baba planned for them to be married long before they met each other.) Mother said that she asked Baba if she could go to India with Him and He answered in His own inhnitable way, “If you were a boy, I would take you!” In June of 1937 they were married fri NYC and moved to a five-acre uncleared plot of land in the Pine Barrens of southern New Jersey, about 1 7 miles inland from Atlantic City. Their new home consisted of a one room cabin along with a large tent, no indoor plumbing and a hand pump for water. Daddy started clearing the land (with an axe and a shovel) and started building another room onto the cabin,which was not yet com