A group of twelve assistants, participants and facilitators from the New Jersey PTS Masters of Spiritual Science were stranded by a snowstorm in a Howard Johnsons motel in the winter of 1996.<\/p>\n
As an assistant, I had watched as folks left early or took off right at the end of our session. They made it home safely. Our group of 12 were on a different course. The news media referred to the storm as the blizzard of the century for the Delaware Valley. The New Jersey turnpike was closed from January 7th to 9th. To pass the time in an era before smartphones, and when many of us still didn’t have cell phones, we ate meals together in the unheated dining room, did group spiritual exercises and free form writing, watched movies at the bar and counted the feet of snow accumulating.<\/p>\n
We were not the only accidental lingerers at the HoJo and had the opportunity to share our Light with others. John-Roger books were handed out, long soulful talks elapsed and on the second evening one of our facilitators gave an open MSIA seminar (this was a time when J-R had charged a few ministers with giving live extemporaneous seminars.)<\/p>\n
We had four attendees who were not from our PTS class. We had the jovial guy who told us jokes in the bar, a woman who gave us an impromptu Irish folk dance class, a business traveler, and Tanisha who was working at the hotel. Tanisha shared with us a serpentine chain of events which brought her from her native South to a job at the HoJo. She told us that she knew there was a bigger “hand” behind these events leading her to what she was looking for. This came into focus for her when she learned that our group would be using the hotel each month. She shared with us that she was torn between doing her job and wanting to be in our seminar room. She was disappointed to learn that the meeting was closed. When our group was waylaid by the blizzard she told us, “I think this was for me.\u201d She said that she had previously heard of the Hu and shared a heartfelt original poem with us.<\/p>\n
The Light works in mysterious ways.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A group of twelve assistants, participants and facilitators from the New Jersey PTS Masters of Spiritual Science were stranded by a snowstorm in a Howard Johnsons motel in the winter of 1996. As an assistant, I had watched as folks left early or took off right at the end of our session. They made it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":112075,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[263,266],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-112642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community-spotlight","category-featured"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112642\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/112075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.msia.org\/newdayherald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}