BY KAREN BOSSICK

One of the first times Bob Grabowski traveled to the Soviet Union, the couple with whom he stayed ushered him into a tiny bathroom in their small apartment.

There, they pointed out the toilet seat hanging on the wall where a painting or mirror would have hung had it been an American house.

“Every time they used it, they took it off the wall,” said Bob’s wife Barbara Grabowski.

Sleeping in odd places and braving primitive restroom accommodations was part of the job for the Rev. Robert (Bob) Grabowski as he taught Science of the Mind principles in Russia, Ukraine, Peru and Mexico.

Grabowski was honored for his work with an Honorary Doctorate of Divinity Wednesday morning before 800 people attending the International Centers for Spiritual Living annual convention in Denver. The degree is the highest honor that the Centers for Spiritual Living confers.

“He did these trips at a lot of personal sacrifice so I extremely proud of him,” said Barbara Grabowski.

“Everyone who deals with Bob experiences his compassionate and caring nature,” said the Rev. John Moreland, senior minister at Light on the Mountains Center for Spiritual Living. “I am so pleased that he is receiving this much-deserved honor.”

Bob Grabowski served for 15 years as a Global Ecclesiastical representative coordinating everything that happened outside the United and Canada.

On his first trip to St. Petersburg he taught 300 people from all over Russia, including some who had traveled three and a half days across eight time zones to get there.

“Russians love lectures so we had lectures in the morning and breakout groups in the afternoon,” he said. “I remember one woman who came across stage to get her diploma. She stopped in the middle and told my interpreter that she wouldn’t accept the diploma unless I promised to return to teach the advanced course.”

Grabowski did not grow up in the Science of the Mind philosophy, which teaches that God is everywhere and principles for living.

He graduated from Michigan State with a degree in Industrial Design and later studied at the Corcoran School of Art. A custom jewelry designer for 43 years, he owned art galleries in Monterey, Carmel and Ojai, Calif., as well as a Santa Fe, N.M.

He had a parallel career in real estate investments, managing various holdings in several western states at the same time.

In 1987 he and Barbara moved to Sun Valley—a week after Light on the Mountains Spiritual Center held its first meeting in the former Elkhorn Hotel. They became among the original 13 charter members and helped carry candlesticks and hymnals in milk crates as the group moved to the Clarion Inn, the Tyrolean Lodge, back to Elkhorn and finally into the Grabowski’s home and garden in Greenhorn.

“R.L. Rowsey brought his keyboard and played it on the front porch,” recalled Grabowski, who served as the center’s first board president and later on its leadership council.

Bob Grabowski made his first visit to Russia in 1994, where he organized and developed study groups, teaching an Introduction to Science of Mind course. He was so touched that he returned to the United States and became a Centers for Spiritual Living minister. Barbara was ordained shortly afterwards.

But she declined to accompany her husband to Russia until the Russians decided to include toilet seats in public restrooms.

“You’d think our life revolved around toilet seats, but we just had a lot of funny stories about them,”  said Barbara.

In fact, Bob Grabowski always tried to board the train in Moscow bound for his next teaching assignment at midnight. If all went right, he’d arrive at his next destination about nine in the morning, just in time to use the restroom wherever he disembarked.

“With the jiggling of the trains, the restrooms were filthy so you tried not to use them,” Grabowski explained. “I remember getting off in Crimea where the lady who greeted me took me immediately to the local McDonald’s, because it had the cleanest restrooms in town. I got in a long, long line that stretched out the door. Then I watched as a man walked right past me and turned left and entered what was the men’s room. I had been standing in the ladies’ line.”

Bob Grabowski spent 15 years speaking and teaching in Switzerland, South Africa and England. But it was Russia and the Ukraine that were most memorable. He would stay up to two months at a time, teaching classes and training practitioners in Moscow, Nizhny-Novgorod, Kazan, Votkinsk, Balakhna, Sochi and Ufa.

“I liked teaching the Russians because it’s such a positive philosophy. It bolstered self-esteem in a people who were under somebody’s thumb,” he said.

In one case, Grabowski recalled, he handed each person in the room a piece of a jigsaw puzzle, then asked how many had worked on a puzzle only to find the last piece missing.

“Look at that piece in your hand,” he told them. “The world is not complete without you.”

There was an 11-year window in which Russia was open to religious groups, Grabowski said. But the Russian Orthodox Church tightened restrictions on all but the four faiths that had been there historically after a few groups from the United States got too aggressive with their proselytizing.

“When I was there I had to be careful that I presented myself as a facilitator or speaker, not as a minister,” he said.

Grabowski will be feted at Light on the Mountains Center for Spiritual Living with a potluck following the 9:30 a.m. service on Sunday, Feb. 23.