THE BALLAD OF A WARM CAFE'
by Max Reif
(written in around 1982. Below the story I will add a note about its composition, just after my return to my home town, St. Louis, from 2 weeks at the Meher Spiritual Center in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina)

A cloud walked into a small café and said, “I would like a little Sunshine, if you please.”

The waiter said, “If you get too much Sun, you will evaporate! You will not be yourself any more. You will not be a cloud any longer.”

The cloud said, “I am tired of dark, stormy skies, and in fact, helping to make them dark, helping the Thunder’s bluster! But I never knew that to change from all that, I would have to e-evaporate! Dear me, what would I be then? I could not deal with that! So I will have then, please, a small cup of Sun.”

The waiter brought the cup of sun on his tray and set it on the table in front of the cloud. The cloud saw the Sun swimming in the cup, and brightened. He picked up the cup and placed it to his lips, emptying it in a long, deep draught.

“How wonderful!” said the cloud, and the Sun was very definitely inside him now. He no longer looked threatening. In fact, if you saw him now, you would not think at first of a cloud. You would think rather of the Sun, and then have to look again to see that it was really only a sun-drenched cloud.

For a long time, the cloud sat and did nothing at all. But the rays of the Sun shone, shone from inside him, and he truly seemed a center of brightness all his own.

All of a sudden, though, the cloud began to cry!

“What’s wrong?” asked the waiter?

“I can remember a long time before I was a cloud, when it was always like this! But now, this cup of Sun is going to go away—e-evaporate! And I will just have to go up there and follow Thunder in the sky once more and be my old self again.”

“You do help things grow, even now,” said the understanding waiter. “And the Sun doesn’t really go away. It remains inside you! But if you really want more Sun, and want to leave the raining to others, you may always come back here, to this place, any time at all. This place will always be here for you.”

“We, that is good, “said the cloud. “But if I get too much Sunshine, I will evaporate! And I don’t want that.”

Perplexed, the cloud left.

But a week or so later, he was back for another cup of Sun!

“I couldn’t stay away!” the cloud laughed.

The waiter smiled.

 
***

Soon, the cloud was coming in more and more often, and looking brighter and brighter! With all the Sunshine he was getting, his appearance was changing in a permanent way, so that at all times now you could not tell if he was a cloud or something else.

“But I’m still so afraid of losing myself,” the cloud said again on day.

“Losing yourself?” asked the waiter. “It’s true that I warned you about that, at first. I just wanted to make sure you really wanted this Sun. Now it appears to me that what is happening Is not you are losing yourself, but that you are finding yourself! You are finding that a cloud was never really you, only something you had been molded into for a little while. Now it appears to me that you are on the verge of finding who you have truly always been!”

“One more cup of Sunshine,” said the waiter, “And I believe your number will be up.”

“Well, I can’t do anything about it anymore!” said the cloud. “I must have the Sun, no matter what!”

The waiter brought the cup of Sun on his tray and set it on the table in front of the cloud. The cloud picked up the cup and drank. He was infused with Sun, more than ever before, and for a moment, the light in the room was blinding!

When the light cleared, the cloud had a body just like the waiter.

“Now you will take over here,” said the waiter. “For I have a further Journey to make. You see, I too was a cloud before I came here. Now it will be your turn to serve all who come to this place for whatever reason, to serve all who come to this special place, hidden in plain sight of all, to give them Sunshine, and fill their clouded hearts.”

“I will serve,” said the former cloud.

“And when we meet again,” said the waiter, “It will be for all time.”

With that, the former waiter turned and walked out the door, and the new one was alone.

He picked up his tray, and holding it in one hand, began wiping tables in the small café, waiting for those who might come.
***
from TALES: parables, fables, visionary snippets by Max Reif
(available from Sheriar Books) 

How This Story Came To Be Written
I've been fortunate to live around 8 1/2 years, over several different periods, in the community surrounding the Meher Spiritual Center in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, beginning in 1976.  In the early 1980's, I was not  living there, but rather in my home town, a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri. My lifelines during this period were my periodic one-or-two-week retreats at the Center.

Returning to my home town after one of these stays, I experienced what I always did: the miracle of Meher Baba's Presence in the dream that is the world! It was almost like a scene in one of the Baba movies...I usually see it as a particular scene, where BABA is standing near several Western female lovers, outside of a store or a restaurant or bus station or something, in San Francisco or LA. "The occurrence of Reality in Illusion", Francis Brabazon called it in STAY WITH GOD.

I knew from past experience that this direct perception of BABA's Presence so strongly would not last! I wanted to do all I could to share it with otheres, before it got frittered away, the way it always did.

Shortly after arriving home, I walked to a cafe' about a block away and began to write. I could feel all the LOVE-energy from the Center coming through my pen. It all flowed very quickly, under the pressure of need. Within an hour, the story was finished.

I've shared it many times over the years, one time in Mandali Hall in India. It's been "out of circulation" for awhile, and I guess Baba wants it back in front of folks now, for another while.

JAI MEHER BABA!