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"Baba Ram D-A-SS"

Author's Note

A former Harvard professor, Dr. Richard Alpert, trained in India and became Baba Ram Dass. Ram Dass means "servant of God". He led a lot of the 60s generation toward the East, and he wrote a wonderful book called Be Here Now.

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I was attending a seminar with other ministers in Waltham, Massachusetts. Since the name Baba Ram Das was so much like my own, Bob Doss, my colleagues started calling me Baba Ram Das.

I was rather glad when I heard a saying from Baba Ram Das, “Some people have a quality in them that gives a blessing to others.” That is neat, I thought. I would truly like to be such a person myself, as Baba Ram Das is said to be himself and have a quality that gives a blessing to others.

Anyway, comes the piece-de-resistance. At the end of our mid-careers seminar, we were asked in a half hour period to do the following assignment:

The situation is (went the assignment) that you have announced publicly your departure from the position which, up to that point, has been seen as the culmination of your professional ministry.

An insightful journalist writes the story for a reputable periodical. The article summarizes your career and reports your future plans.

Then we were given this task:

Please compose the article as if you were the journalist. It should include, in perspective, some allusions to your abilities, your values, your style, and your interests. Then be prepared to share it with the group.

We were then told, “Let your imagination go. Do not get rigid. Use the right side of the brain, the aesthetic side, use humor if you want, just let it flow – tongue-in-cheek – but with a serious intention underlying it."

The following is what I wrote and delivered to the group. You should remember that by this time they were calling me Baba Ram Das.

The periodical: The Marcus Hook Gaslight Weekly

Religious editor: IMA LEAN SPRAYER

Item: June 20, 1992

Last Sunday the Reverend Baba Ram Dass sauntered over to the massive pulling-pit of the First Society Ever. The choir finished singing, Rock Me Lord in the Bosom of Frothingham, a hush undulated across the full-filled congregation, and Baba Ram announced that he was retiring from the pulpit to dig post holes for his new ashram on Mount Desert Island, Maine.

After 29 wonderful years of glory and service at First Ever, ole Ram, as he had become known to his closest, was doing what he had to do, yearned to do, could no longer avoid doing; he was going over the hill.

“It is not that I love thee less,” said Dass to the assembled, “It is that the time to retire to a new way has come, and I have heard the call of the wild, and now in sadness and happiness must cut the cord that ties me to this most marvelous and civilized Brandywine and Sharpley suburb.”

Dass was leaving his much loved First Ever of Wilmington at the culmination of his professional career.

The Reverend Baba Ram Dass had served a First Ever society in Maryland before coming to the First State (more “first” than which one cannot get) and there had displayed, played, and brayed his abilities as a first-type Ram-ham, turning a fellowship church into a full fledged First Ever Society.

Coming to Wilmington in the year of our Lordly, nineteen hundred and sixty-three, he had...

poured on the preaching,

turned up the sound,

busted out singing,

and moved things around...

starting small groups meeting

worship workshops too

counseled everybody

but not on what to do...

And the congregation grew - and the staff grew -

AND THE BUDGET GREW - and the meetings grew -

And he grew

A beard!

And (so this reporter is told) on one occasion a congregational delegation went to call upon Rev. Baba Ram Dass asking: “Brother Dass, wherefore art thou growing a beard and letting your hair grow long and longly, and cutting it off (and awfully) and wearing boots, and heavy buckled belts and singing in the pulling-pit, for we know you are not a 'gentleman under the influence' as it is only 11:00 o’clock Sunday morning and we are in Wilmington, and besides, your wife tells us you are a square!”

Whereupon, Rev. Ram looked upon the delegation with smiling eyes and a blessing flowed from his lips and he said unto them:

O ye sweet people-needers, religious rebels,

cozy seekers, psychology-tasters, questers for all that fills the spiritual hole in the center of Americus,

I am indeed under the influence,

not of better living through chemistry, no booze-n-hash-n-pretty pills,

but under the influence of the religious impulse that will not let me be.

Here I sit, so help me stand!

And they did, and he did.

And Baba Dass stood before them and said:

I have attended a mid-career seminar for several days in the upper reaches of the East, and it was good, and a messenger came unto me saying, "Go wild, Ram, go wild!” So here I stand, can do no other.

And THOSE GATHERED THERE asked the REV:

What do you mean, Brother Dass? Tell us so we can understand it. Put all that into a story and maybe we will stand under it.

And ole Ram Dam pondered, scratched his ear, and said unto them:

I went up unto the mountain seeking the oracle, and the oracle said:

"Go on back down the mountain, Ram Dam!

Take your pen and your paper; take your voice and gesture;

take your feelings for people and your love and your intimacy,

and sing unto the mountain a new song, put people in the pupils of your eyes, and say unto them:

‘I shall be a vocalist and you shall be my people

and I shall be your story-teller and we shall sing together.

I shall worship with you,

and lead celebrations, visit you in crisis and counsel with you in your need.'"

And, with that, Ram and the delegation danced and celebrated in covenant before the pulling-pit. The congregation worked and planned and served, and played and worshiped through the years thereafter, singing together, “This little fibril light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine! Let it shine!”

But now Baba Dass was approaching the sixty-fifth of all his years in this time of our Lordly nineteen hundred and ninety-two and he had yet another whole thing he wanted to do...

So it was that last Sunday he announced to the congregation:

I must go away now to nourish other planted roots in far off Maine, build there an ashram, carry on an Ashramic-Ramdamic ministry to any who may pass that way until some day old age will take me into the great silence.

Then the oracle was heard to speak again and said WHOA!

And a far-off mountain erupted in blueberry no’s – and slid to within an inch of the bed.

And with that Bob Doss woke up from his dream and nap and saw it was a quarter past dinner time.

“A LOS CHIEVOS MONTENEVOS CON SACATTE!” he exclaimed, as his fathers had before him, as if to explain it all, and which when translated means something like: “The goats are idly eating grass on the mountain side.”

And the colleagues cheered.

And, my friend, Carl Scovel, said: “That must have come from the Holy Spirit.”

You KNOW it. So be it. Amen.

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jake wrote

prairiedogg wrote

jake wrote

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