The passing of a collegue of Yore

I connected with an old friend on facebook this summer. I also connected with her two daughters. So, I have many recent pics and activities to bring me into the present staus of the family. I talked to my old friend on the phone one day - she was about to begin a new round of chemo. She never said how long she had it, but I knew the time was drawing near to her passing into the light, by the conversation. Our conversation included how to write down for the girls why she had lived the life she lived. It was close to my 65th, and inspired me to go deeper into my reflection on this whole journey. She wrote on facebook on Nov. 18. We were in the Sequoia National Forest on the 20th and as near as I can figure, just about the time that she was passing into the light. I had the urge to raise up my arms in ecstasy and sing the Hallelujah chorus and I imagined angels in the trees singing it for me. Silly, I know, and sounds a bit flaky, but it is the truth.

I did not know what happened that I didn't hear from her anymore.
Sometimes, my whole body just wrings out dry when I remember that I, too, left my sons in the care of others for so long while I was off changing the world. While they have assured me that all is well the feeling overwhelms me on occasion. Truth is they are all the better for it - as to which they will attest. I do remember her asking me how I could leave my children on one continent while I went to another. Then she left hers in the care of colleagues - for the Mission, we told ourselves.

Contacts such as this, after so many years - almost thirty in this case - bring up memories, sometimes in abundance, pouring into consciousness all at once. I remember her passion for music and having studied with Nadia Boulanger; community arts festivals; wine for communion for the first time ever on Maundy Thursday; her needing kirschwasser for a fondue; posters of radical revolutionaries hung for a Sunday of social action; me yelling at kids when it was my turn to care for our childrens' spirits (!) during our morning meetings and her having a talk with me about it; the building a new church from the stones of an old brownstone church - one of the many ends of the underground railroad, and a partnership of Scotch Presbyterian and the mystical Waldensian tradition; she and I attending a women's lib meeting, our corsets keeping us looking trim - never to wear them again!! Those were intense times of wild spirited social change. Broader social strategy that it was, the ICA we soon all became part of was boring in comparison . This grieving time for my friend-in--common-mission is appropriate, but it is also a time of letting go of the youthful exuberance and boundless energy we once had. How we live our lives today, is totally appropriate. All is really well.

I am so grateful to have been able to to have reconnected. We all have since lived a life of Mission in new ways, with the same intent -- to care for the coming into being of a new social vehicle - a new earth.

I have a deep appreciation and gratitude for the life we, in fact, lived fully.

Create a timeline of your own life's expenditure. What has been the underlying intent, the learnings, your reflections?