I met Shauna at a week-long church-sponsored summer camp when I was twelve. She was the head counselor for the entire camp, a group of maybe a hundred girls from local churches known in the Mormon religion as wards. Her room was next to mine in the lodge, so we occasionally exchanged quick greetings.
As the week went on, we passed in the cafeteria, at the campfire singalongs, on the way to the biffy. Since I didn’t particularly like our ward’s counselor, I probably needed more “talking too” than most of the kids. But I did like Shauna, even when she was telling my roommates and me to be quiet and go to sleep or chiding us for being slow to do our chores.
The last evening of camp, we all met for a bonfire and singalong. Shauna pulled me aside and asked me to give the benediction at the sunrise service the next morning. Lulled by the soft glow of the fire and the sweetness of the songs, in a kumbaya moment, I said yes. I had no idea what an important moment that would become.
Later that night, overcome with the enormity of what I had agreed to and consumed by stage fright, I lay awake for hours. Finally, in desperation I got up, knocked on her door obviously waking her, and explained that I couldn’t do it. She invited me in and suggested that we pray together. I don’t think it ever occurred to me that prayer would help, but she didn’t seem inclined to let me give up in fear, so we knelt together in prayer. I got up, went back to bed, and slept.
The sunrise service was the final meeting of the whole camp. It was a beautiful morning. The meadow we had hiked to was surrounded by 8000-foot peaks, and the sun was just beginning to rise over the tops. As the ceremony drew to an end, it was my turn. I folded my arms, bowed my head, and delivered a benediction filled with all the wisdom, sense of awe, and Mormon-approved requests for blessings that my twelve-year-old self could muster.
We returned to the lodge, ate breakfast, piled into busses, and headed back down the canyon to our local churches.
Thirty-five years passed. One day in Vermont at a summer retreat with my friends, I either read or saw on TV a national news story that Shauna had been accused of some impropriety in the Women’s Studies department she led at a university. Knowing that accusations take on a life of their own and imagining what she must be facing, I wanted to support her. I wrote to her. I told her how much that week had meant to me and how much it mattered that she had seen a potential in me that as a child I didn’t see at all, and as an adult was only beginning to realize. I thanked her.
To my surprise, she wrote back. She told me how much it mattered to her to know that someone remembered and valued what they had tried to do for the girls in their care. She thanked me.
So as I write this, another thirty-plus years have passed. Why, I wonder, has this come into my consciousness now? Sitting in contemplation, I am immediately suffused with feelings of goodness (the meaning of the name Sutriya) trust, and faith. All inherent qualities of my soul that I rarely acknowledge. All lessons I am learning in this life. My time with Shauna was very brief in earthly time, but something in the timelessness of the heart has kept this experience alive. I think by supporting each other we honor each other, and in doing so honor ourselves and the path we are all walking together. That goodness, that grace, is reflected back to us.
That morning on the mountain was the first time I was asked to act in a spiritual capacity on behalf of others. Not the last, though. Gururaj once told me that my dharma is to teach, which I now think means using my ability to articulate what I have learned over decades of spiritual practices. So as I sit to write this, I am grateful for being prodded to do so. It has stirred in me a part that has been dormant for far too long. And it has served as a reminder to appreciate, trust, and have faith in the path that has brought me here.
