I was 20 and had recently moved back home in the summer of 1970 to live with my mother. For some time I had been living the life of a hippie with all that goes with it. I had dropped out college twice, had become disillusioned with the counterculture and was at a complete loss as to what I wanted to do in life. A well-meaning friend of my mother’s recommended that I take up a trade and become a tool and die maker, his vocation. This did not sound so appealing since as I saw it my only options were to either move to the Eastern Kentucky mountains and become a hermit or somehow return to college even though I knew three strikes and I’d be out of higher education. I was completely unmoored and adrift.

Mom suggested that I read two books (The Pychology of Man’s Possible Evolution and Autobiography of a Yogi) which for unknown reasons I devoured especially the Autobiogaphy. And she suggested I see a psychiatrist who had recently given a series of talks at a local psychiatric hospital on the teachings of G.I. Gurdjieff. She had attended these lectures and was impressed. My response was initially total resistance to seeing a psychiatrist and was met with a firm “I’m not crazy”. But in time I went to see a John Parks, MD at a mental health clinic in nearby Frankfort Kentucky.

I only had a few sessions there before I returned to college but three events were memorable. First, I took the forever to complete the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory - the MMPI measures personality traits and psychopathology. I never heard how I did on it - I assume I have traits and no pathology, at least of any significance was discovered.

At my second appointment the good doctor asked that I bring flowers to the next one but gave no indication as to why. As I drove to the next appointment I recalled his request for flowers which I’d totally forgotten. I soon saw blue morning glories on the roadside so I pulled off and picked a handful. At the clinic he led me through a short ceremony with the now wilted morning glories and initiated me into a Hindu meditation practice, gave me a mantra to train attention and a string of sandalwood mala beads that I’ve kept. Thus began for me a life of meditation. Later I learned that while a medical student at Harvard he and his wife had been similarly initiated by Swami Akhilananda of the Boston Vedanta Center and he was encouraged to stay in medical school as he was considering dropping out.

The third event was at the next visit when he and I went to a local Christian church where he had been leading a small meditation group. This was my first experience meditating with others in a group. All new to me a total novice!

And thus began a relationship that lasted the remainder of both of our lives. Dr. Parks eventually became John and shortly before his death at age 90 I was able to visit with him on his farm in the foothills of Eastern Kentucky. We talked all afternoon on his porch about many things (Zen, Rudolph Steiner, centering prayer, Thomas Keating, his conversion to Islam…), drank ice tea, and with lettuce we picked from his garden made a salad.

Grace seems to have a way of finding us, leaving us totally gobsmacked (How did this happen?!) and at times connecting us with people that need to be together for a purpose. This has been my experience. For this my gratitude is nearly beyond expression.

‘’New wood springs from underground” - Si Kahn