Am I the only one who sees the significance here?  Henry James and "Goodbye, Mr. Chips"?  "Mrs. Miniver" and "The Cherry Orchard"?

Okay, maybe I don't either.  

Back to current events then.  Yesterday D and C and I meet in West Hollywood and drive together out to LAX to the Airport Hilton to see this tiny Indian woman saint who hugs people (www.ammachi.org).  Oh, I know, there was a time when I would have rolled my eyes at the prospect; there was a time when I was old and bitter and mean, full of contempt, capable of withering scorn for all matters spiritual... I was once not a very nice person.

Depending on who you talk to, I'm still not.

And what, you may ask, happened?  Some days I'm not sure myself, except I think if you go to enough of these things, something happens.  And I don't mean you neccesarily find the Lord (although I did meet a woman who found Jesus in a loaf of bread), or that you're suddenly Washed in the Blood, Born Again, Transported, Lifted Up, Renewed, Saved, Enlightened or any of those things that routinely seem to happen to people.

I suspect all it really is, one day you get this idea that maybe there's another way of looking at things, and it's not yours.  And it's okay.

I met this very nice English lady, years ago.  She lives in Pondicherry, India, and she works doing translation work for the French embassy there, so, you know, very multi-cultural, very well traveled woman of the world.  And as we talked I tried to let on that I knew a few things too, I'd been around the block myself, I knew there were quite a few of these "Gurus" and Teachers around.

"Jesus was a Teacher," she observed.  And I quickly admitted that, in a manner of speaking, she had a point there.

Oh, I continue, I'd also seen this one guy, an American who went to India back in the Ram Dass days, who wears his dreadlocks piled up on top of his head with a big rose stuck in.  "We call him Marge Simpson," I explain.  She frowns and I realize she probably didn't get a lot of American television in Pondicherry.

"It's a cartoon on Fox," I add.

It doesn't help.  So I tell her I've heard there's another one of these teachers they call "The Chanel Guru" because she's young and very attractive...

"May I give you a piece of advice?" the English lady asks.  Of course, I say.

"Never criticize another person's guru," she says in such a simple, casual manner, as if she were recommending I take a hat, or use sunscreen.  She also says it in this way that makes clear she thinks that's exactly what I've been up to, being critical and catty that is, and it's going to bring me a world of trouble if I don't watch out.  She doesn't say so in so many words, but I get the message.  Still, I'm not about to cave without some defense.

"But what about the fakes and the charlatans and the --"

"Oh there're some of those, of course," she replies. 

"Duh," I add, as a rhetorical device, to underscore my point.

"But people eventually figure out who's a fraud and who's not, don't you agree?"

I reply that I suppose people probably and eventually figure these things out.  I was thinking of televangelists who go to prison, but I didn't get into that.

"It's a sacred relationship," she continued, "a person and their guru.  Or if you prefer, their Faith.  To interfere with that relationship, that bond, is not just bad form, of course.  It's actually quite dangerous.  Not to mention very bad karma."

And what happens then, I asked, [The "Oh Yeah?" implied] when people go about saying they've got the Only Way, and it's Theirs and all the rest of us are going to Hell.

Everyone's entitled to their opinion, she responded.

Right.  But what if they try forcing the rest of us to ...

Oh, well then that's when it gets unpleasant, doesn't it, she offered.  Crusades, genocide, religious wars, the Holocaust.  Very awkward.

Awkward?  I agreed.  She had a point.