Part Nine: My Delight Turns to Dread

I was on cloud nine after I accepted the job to work for Mrs. Prophet personally. I felt so privileged! Just think, I was serving directly the true Vicar of Christ—the only genuine and anointed representative of the Great White Brotherhood on Earth--the most highly evolved person on the planet—the living Christ. How cosmic! I could not grasp the magnitude of it all. I was pumped big time!

For most of one day, Michelle gave me training on my duties and I took copious notes. Then I was on my own.

My new job was full time and that meant I no longer worked in graphics or prepared communion. It also meant I no longer had a regular staff schedule. I never attended any regular staff decree sessions but I did get to some of the Sunday services.

My weekday schedule went like this: E.M. and I arrived at the house about 6:00 a.m. One of us started breakfast and the other one woke the children.  After the kids were up and dressed, they had breakfast and either E. or I or the overnight staff guard drove the kids to school.

[Aside: With the exception of the guard who slept downstairs at night, the family did not have guards per se in those days to the extent that developed in later years. E. and I or whatever staff were with the children were their caretakers for the moment.]

When Mrs. Prophet woke up, one of us would assist her to get ready for the day. Sometimes she would have breakfast at home. She would either fix it herself or ask one of us to do it for her. After that, one of us would drive her down to La Tourelle for her day.

After all the family were gone from the house, there were regular household chores like dishes, laundry, cleaning, making beds and shopping etc. to be done. We shopped for Mrs. Prophet’s cosmetics and wardrobe at a Broadmoor Hotel boutique and the exclusive department stores in town. We took care of Mrs. Prophet’s dressing room and wardrobe at La Tourelle that were there for services and teaching at SU. We also delivered and picked up clothes at the dry cleaners and shopped for the children.

The children and Mrs. Prophet had an allowance from the church and one of my duties was to handle these household moneys and keep account of them.

When school ended around three o’clock, one of us picked up Tatiana and brought her home. Often Moira and Erin stayed at school or did things with their friends after school so they didn’t come home until dinner time. Sean was hardly ever home for dinner.

E. or I would sometimes take the older children on outings after school and then drive them home at dinner time. Or the children would come home with M. B. who would come to the house with dinner that she had prepared in the kitchen at La Tourelle. Most of the time M.B. stayed to serve dinner but once in a while she would leave and E. and/or I would be there to serve. A bit later in the evening, we put the children to bed after baths.

A lot of evenings, Mrs. Prophet would come home to have dinner with her children. Then she would return to La Tourelle to work.

Mrs. Prophet was married to Randall King at this time. He did not live at the house. He was living in his office at La Tourelle which was the old Montessori classroom that I stayed in when I first came on staff. I think Randall was in the dog house for something and was on some kind of discipline. Sometimes Randall would come for dinner at the house. He spent a few nights, too. I could tell two people had slept in Mrs. Prophet’s bed from time to time.

I never had much interaction with Randall. I picked up and delivered his laundry at his office and once in a while I would see him and say hi. And I would see him at the house when he came to dinner. That was about it. He was always courteous.

In spite of my early concerns about baby-sitting full time, I actually enjoyed working with the Prophet children. Tatiana had just turned four years old.  Moira was around eight, Erin ten and Sean thirteen.

I liked all of the children. They each had their own individual personality: Tatiana was very decisive about things for a four-year old. One day she decided she was going to fast and her mother held her to it. Tatiana only drank grape juice all day.

When I picked her up from school, she was hungry. I remember seeing her sitting on the floor in her room after school sipping grape juice. I could tell she was hungry but she stuck to her fast. It was sweet and yet sad at the same time. It seemed precocious to me that a child of that age would fast on her own. I was struck by her fortitude. I was also idolatrous of her because the messengers told us that she had balanced 78% of her karma.

Erin was sweet but could be cranky and would complain about doing things but you could count on her to be obedient in the end. She always had her nose in a book. Erin loved movies such as the Wizard of Oz and The Sound of Music. She also enjoyed making pancakes and baking cookies on Saturday mornings.

Moira had a lot of spunk and could be a rascal at times. She loved to tease her sisters. She could be openly disobedient. Other times she would try to get away with things behind our backs. We had to keep a close eye on Moira. She was a handful but she could also be very sweet and vulnerable at times. I liked Moira in spite of it all.

We didn’t see much of Sean as he left the house early in the morning--often with the staff guard who had spent the night. For the most part, he did his own thing after school with his friends and was not home in the evening much. I think he must have had an alternate place to stay because he did not sleep at the house a lot of nights.

Sean was old enough to be very independent and required no supervision from me or Elizabeth. His mother handled disciplinary issues. Sean was always respectful and interesting to talk to.

His mother made him do a three day fast one time. I gathered it wasn’t something he relished. He got around it for a while—he took solid food and blended it into a liquid. His mom found out and told him that it violated the fast. She said he could only have juice on a fast which he did after that.

I found that the Prophet children were just regular kids and like all kids, they had their good and not-so-good moments. What made them different was being the offspring of the messengers and the circumstance of living in a community where almost everyone held them in an idolatry of sorts. More was expected of them because of who they had supposedly been in past lives and their supposed attainment and mission for the Great White Brotherhood in this life. It wasn’t what I would call a normal childhood setting to grow up in.

Still, even though they were regular kids, taking care of them was not an ordinary baby-sitting job because in another sense they weren’t just regular kids. I thought they were all avatars and therefore not ordinary people. Oftentimes, how to handle the children got tricky, especially when their mother was nearby. Since E. had been on the job longer, I usually took my cue from her.

It seemed that in general whatever Tatiana wanted to do, we tried to accommodate her. One Saturday afternoon, she decided and insisted she wanted to walk down to La Tourelle from the house. It was quite a way—at least two miles, maybe more. It was a nice winter afternoon with no snow on the ground. The roads were paved and there was never much traffic on them. I don’t remember all the details but I think E. said we should let her do it. I accompanied Tatiana on the walk.

We were about halfway down the mountain when I saw a pack of dogs coming towards us. They had not noticed us yet but it alarmed me. I made Tatiana get on my back and I kept walking. When the dogs noticed us they came running. I braced myself and kept my stride. They all sniffed and barked for a few tense moments but fortunately they did not get vicious. I kept walking and they soon lost interest and left. I was glad when we finally got to La Tourelle after our little adventure.

One of the things I wasn’t very good at was getting the two younger children ready for school in the morning. Moira and Tatiana roomed in one of the upstairs bedrooms next to the master bedroom where Mrs. Prophet slept. Often Moira would tease Tatiana in the morning to the point of her crying which would inevitably wake their mother despite my fervent efforts to keep the children quiet.

I still had a great deal of fear of Mrs. Prophet as I believed she was God incarnate. When I realized that Mrs. Prophet had been awakened, my solar plexus always did a flip. I never got in trouble for not keeping the children quiet, though. E. was much better at getting the kids ready in the morning.

After a couple of weeks on the job, we revised our schedules to where E. handled the early morning duties and I arrived in time for E. to drive the kids to school. Then I was there to assist Mrs. Prophet when she woke up. E. went home earlier in the evening and I handled the evening duties and stayed until the staff guard arrived with Mrs. Prophet around 11 pm or later.

Assisting Mrs. Prophet in the morning involved various chores. I laid out clothes for her and helped her with her wardrobe. Sometimes she would have me decree in a chair in her room while she was in the shower.

One morning I was helping her with her clothes. She had a fancy blouse that was hard to figure out how it buttoned. I gave it my best shot but it came out all kerflui. We both had a laugh over it.

Sometimes, I actually did her hair. She had these hot rollers that I didn’t know how to use. I have naturally curly hair so the world of curling irons and rollers is foreign to me. Fortunately for Mrs. Prophet, most of the time W.Z. did her hair at La Tourelle when she got there in the morning. (I am sure her "do" for the day required remedial work from W. when I did it in the morning.)

I also did whatever she requested in terms of breakfast in the morning. One day she was making some breakfast for herself that required thyme. She was very stern that morning and delivering curt, one-word orders. She barked, "Thyme!" and I replied, "It’s almost 8:30!" From her reaction, I could tell I had said the wrong thing. Then I realized I had misunderstood what she meant. I quickly got the thyme and handed it to her. There were no laughs that morning over my mistake but I laughed within and struggled to keep a straight face. The joke was on me.

I wasn’t really comfortable doing these things. While I had done a lot of housekeeping in my day, I had never been a personal servant and it wasn’t my thing. I still relished the privilege of serving the messenger, though.

Being that close to the messenger gave me glimpses of the personal side of her that I had not had occasion to see before. One evening when I drove her to La Tourelle after dinner, I saw her burdened and depressed. That was new to me and my heart went out to her.

I liked seeing her with the children when they were just being a regular family. I got to see them all together once when they went swimming at the YMCA. I remember a couple of Saturday afternoons when they were all home and had a good time being together.

I was glad when Mrs. Prophet would come home to have dinner with the kids. I think she always tried to make herself available and accessible to the kids, even when she was working during the day and evening at La Tourelle.

My favorite times around Mrs. Prophet were the quiet moments when she was mellow. These usually happened when she came home late at night or sometimes first thing in the morning. I treasured the few occasions I had of one-on-one casual interaction and conversation with the messenger. I wish it had happened more often. I would like to have seen more of her regular-person side. She never really let her hair down around me, though (except when I was putting in hot rollers <G>). I was too much in the capacity of a servant I think.

I always loved her laugh and I wish she had laughed more often. I did not observe that she had a great sense of humor, though. With the right people and circumstance, perhaps she did.

When I first got the job on Mrs. Prophet’s personal staff, I thought it would afford me opportunities to ask her questions about cosmic things and the profound meaning of life—my favorite subject. I was sorely disappointed when I found out it didn’t work that way around the messenger in daily life.

Even on a Sunday afternoon after a live dictation delivered at the service that day, the conversation around the messenger was mostly mundane. I can’t say as it was always that way but in my experience around her during my tenure on her household staff and later on through the years in various capacities around her from time to time, I never heard much discussion about the teaching given by the master in the dictation just concluded. I was always struck by this and a bit disappointed because I loved the teachings and expected that they would be the topic of discussion more often around the messenger. Perhaps I just wasn’t in the right place at the right time to hear it.

I was surprised about some things around the messenger. One day I had the opportunity to ask Mrs. Prophet how she was recovering from the astral experiences she had after the minister had touched her third eye during our third-level field trip. When I asked her about it, she had practically forgotten it ever happened. I realized that she had overstated and exaggerated the situation in her remarks to SU. I thought of a teaching in Dwal Kul’s Pearls on the human aura.  He said that exaggeration was a form of dishonesty. I was almost startled to realize that the messenger still had elements of the human consciousness.

I was surprised by other things, too. For instance, one time Mrs. Prophet ate some chicken soup. I remembered her vow about being a vegetarian at Freedom ’73. It was a big deal to eat meat at that time. She explained to me that it was necessary to eat meat once in a while for the protein.

Another time, she had me buy blackberry wine for medicinal purposes. I understood why but was still surprised by it.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have been, but I was surprised to find out that Mrs. Prophet and Randall argued big time. I guess I had her on a pedestal because of who she was and the wonderful teachings she had delivered at the Family Designs for the Golden Age seminar. I expected that she, of all people on the planet, would have a perfect marriage and family.

One week-end, Randall and Mrs. Prophet had a big fight. I was told to take Sean and get lost for several hours. I was to call the house later on to find out if the coast was clear.

Sean and I went to the mall and looked around at stuff and then took in a movie. After the movie we went to a phone booth to call the house. Sean knew exactly what was going on. We then got something to eat and I took him to La Tourelle. Then I went home for the night.

I learned later that Mrs. Prophet spent that night in an undisclosed hotel in town. Randall was notorious for a terrible temper and I guess Mrs. Prophet didn’t want him to know where she was.

Not very long after that incident, Randall called the house one day and asked me where Mrs. Prophet was. I knew she had gone somewhere with Harry Spielberg but I told Randall I didn’t know where she was. Mrs. Prophet asked me later what I had told Randall and I told her the truth—I had lied to him. She didn’t say anything except that Randall knew I lied. I felt like I needed to protect her from him. It was a very awkward situation.

After a brief honeymoon period on the job, I began to get into trouble for things. Mrs. Prophet could be a stern taskmaster. Things had to be done just so. For instance, one evening at dinner I poured her a cup of tea.  She made me come back and fill the cup to an exact spot to give her the proper amount. It was also a major issue that all food be hot.

Sometimes Mrs. Prophet was out of touch with the tasks of daily living. One day she asked me if the job of taking care of her and the kids and the house really required two people. I was speechless because E. and I were constantly on the go. I couldn’t imagine how one person could do the job we did.

She could also be what seemed callous. One time, E. and I got the flu at the same time. E. stayed home that morning and I came to work because I was just starting to feel bad. By 7:30 am I had chills, aches and pains and a fever. I could hardly stand up at the breakfast table as the kids and Mrs. Prophet ate. I was surprised to see that there was absolutely no concern in Mrs. Prophet over how E. or I felt.

After Mrs. Prophet got to La Tourelle and the kids got to school I went home to bed. E. and I got a message later in the day that we were both "out of alignment." The guilt I felt was much worse than any of the flu symptoms I was suffering. It was awful.

Serving in Mrs. Prophet's household got very confusing for me. Today’s rules would be tomorrow’s disobedience. This was before the concept of guru and the eastern slant on the path had come into focus in the teachings. I was totally in the dark. In my mind, I was just a Catholic who had found a wonderful teaching that incorporated the saints and also included reincarnation. I didn’t have a clue about the so-called eastern guru techniques. I didn’t know what a guru was. I wasn’t looking for a guru.

As the weeks went on, things got rockier for me. But I was still determined to do my very best at all times. Because I seemed to be so dense around Mrs. Prophet, I started getting up at 3 am so that I could get 40 Astreas, violet flame and the Surrender Rosary done before I went to work. I hoped the decrees would make me less dense, but it didn’t make much difference. I still got in trouble often. Elizabeth and I seemed to alternate places in the dog house. We laughed about it.

In April, the Easter conference was in California. It was so intense getting the family ready for the trip. Tensions ran high and adrenaline flowed constantly. It was a crisis atmosphere. The chaos and confusion was unbelievable. What a relief it was when they all left for the airport. Peace at last!

We had a few days respite. I stayed at the house while everyone was gone. It took me days to clean up the unbelievable amount of rubble from getting the family out the door to the conference. I had never seen such a mess.

When the conference ended and Mrs. Prophet returned, it was a major adjustment in consciousness to be back in the intensity of life around the messenger. I found that I no longer relished the opportunity to work in her household. My delight had turned to dread.

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