july 18th

I dream about going to Switzerland in winter,
 a pilgrimage to the snow and everything white.

I would stay till late summer
and climb the Matterhorn.

I would go into exile in the Alps with the mountain rocks
and look for ancient sugar dwellings.

I'd climb mountain after mountain until I found
someone young and I'd ask them to tell me the secret
about how to live on the edge.

 In Switzerland, everything would be fixed by understanding geometry
 and the broken parts of myself would find a way
 to mend in the snow.

July 11th

The most important things are the hardest to say, because words diminish them”    Stephen King

Maybe it's all right I did not say all the important things I thought I needed to say.
Maybe the words were not the thing, it was in the silence. a world was there.
Words would have diminished it.

I pray you know the way I felt and feel.
I pray you know all.
I pray I can release myself from what might have been, what could have been said or done
and rejoice in the beauty of you
and the love of you.


You are the song I keep singing.

july 11th

It's not a prayer, more a question, Oh God, where are you?

It's as though every day is your birthday

and I bring a bouquet of marigolds and long to place them at the feet of your soul.

Then I wait for you to arrive in a rainstorm of light.

When you don't it's like someone stole the slingshot that would shoot you back to breath and earth

 and now you drift along a heavenly prairie without sleep.

july 5th/ Anniversary

On this day in a backyard garden in Brooklyn
you married my mother sixty four years ago,
 your face full of seriousness and responsibility

My mother held onto your hand all day.
She was nineteen, girlish.
that first date she took you for a ride on a bicycle.

She was your happiness you said,
always seeing life as good.

You, more tragic, more poet,
war had already crowded out the good and the innocent.

If you're here,
send us a bouquet of roses.


 I want to believe you are here, somewhere between the air and the sun,
 close at hand, reachable.

 I have an image of reaching my hands out to you,
 but my hands always disappear into the air, your form escapes.
 I can't hold onto it.

 It's another prayer of surrender, I'll keep knocking at surrender's door,
 one day she'll let me in.

  I pray for the beautiful soul that you are
  to travel wide open to all.

july 5th

You gave me everything, without asking for anything in return.
You light my way, day after day.
I can't grasp in my mind that you are not here.
In so many ways it feels like you're here.

And in my heart you will always be here.
forever and eternally.

july 5th

"You are left to wander as long as is necessary until you are finally are able to relinquish control over the path of your life."
   Surrender and let God reorder the flow of your life.  You aren't leaving your life, you are reentering your life.... soul first."


Give up, give in, let go.
Surrender.
If I only knew how.
I would do it.

I pray to allow all of life to flow and not pretend I am controlling anything.

I am here only to live a life of love and service.

I'm going to find a way.
The way.

I bless you and love you and cherish you on your adventure.

I pray to have the courage, grace and love you had.

july 5th

"They are on their journey, you are on yours."

And it's true.
Why can't I accept my journey and yours are not one?

I have always known it, and lived my own life.

 Is it too scary, too lonely, too sad ?

I don't know.

you are "eternal loveliness," as St. Francis of Assisi wrote.

Just one foot step at a time, that's all I need to do.
and keep your eternal loveliness in my heart and soul.


I pray that you will know you are here in my  heart and soul.

June 21st

http://youtu.be/QCmP4bEJfOg


Here is the music
that breaks my heart.
Astor Piazolla wrote Adios Nonino for his father.

"Here's the reality of life, you make decisions with imperfect information and achieve imperfect results."

Or maybe there's a perfection in life we can not see.

So many decisions I made seem imperfect, fatal. 
Why couldn't I help save you?
 I will never know.
It's living with the not knowing that is the hardest to surrender.

You are my everything.

I pray for everything I can not know.

June 20th

  "You just need to keep the faith while things unfold.  Faith keeps on keeping on.  Faith means going forward by whatever means we can."

  "Just do the next right thing"  We must be willing to surrender to a power greater than us."   Julia Cameron


     I don't know if I have "the faith."

     I pray to find it.

      I don't know if I can go forward,

      I pray to move in a direction and do " the next right thing."


       I pray for surrender, every day, that is my prayer, to surrender to all that I do not understand, to the mystery of you,

       vacant from your chair, yet, present in my life, more and more powerfully every day.


        I pray to know you and love you just as you are.


        I pray to allow myself the not knowing, the confusion, the unfaith.

       


   

June 19th

"If your thoughts and emotions are in the past when you pray for guidance in the present, you are living in too many time zones.  This makes it hard for you to hear guidance or make decisions about what to do in your present life. You're actually listening for guidance so that you can go where you cannot go any longer, no amount of prayer can help you there. Clinging to the past is like praying for God to raise the dead."  Carolyn Myss


I want to stay in the past and in the present.
I don't want to leave you, and I don't know how to go on and keep you with me,
or do I ?
I'm so confused about all this.
I know you're here with me, and yet you're not here in the same way.
I can't go to your body any longer, I can't look into your eyes.
Too painful to even write these words.

I pray you will stay with me, in whatever ways you can.
I pray that I will know the ways, I will recognize you in whatever form you come to me.

I pray to listen. I pray to hear you.

June 18th

"We are constantly advancing, like explorers, into the unknown, which makes life an adventure all the way.  How interminable and dull that journey would be if it were on a straight road over a flat plain, if we could see ahead the whole distance, without surprises, with the salt of the unexpected, without challenge." 
Eleanor Roosevelt


In your honor, I go into the world, an explorer.
You will always be with me, you have "returned to the non-physical realm," just as real as this life, just a life and realm I can not understand.

 You are on your own adventure. 

  This letting go is the toughest, the most scary, sometimes not an adventure at all, just fear and the heart of sadness.

  I pray for your hand to reach for mine in a new way.

 I pray to rise to the challenge of the adventure.

June 17th

"When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on."  FDR


 There are many knots to tie,
 many ends of many ropes,
  I'm hanging on,
  and hanging on.

 I pray for a way in - not a way out.
 I pray for you ever present, ever with me, ever here.

All I can do is be here.  All I can do is live in my life, not in another's -  or in a life that I once had.
That life is gone, I can not retrieve it, as much as I yearn to go back there.

It is an impossibility.

June 16th

"A joy that death does not have the power to destroy."

 "Nothing that you have done in the past has the power to name who you are."

"Living with all our heart."  Thomas Merton


You are the joy that nothing can destroy.

 I look over the past, pieces of another life, they do not name me anymore.

 To live with all my heart, that would be joy. That would honor you and your love.


  I pray to live with all my heart into this new life.

June 15th

"Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That's why it is called the present."  Eleanor Roosevelt

You would agree, I know you would.
 You saw every day as a gift.

 The tears are with me almost everyday. they are my present.
 Maybe they are a present.
 Maybe they are living parts of my soul.
 Maybe I need to be glad they are with me, instead of wiping them away.

 Where do they come from?  I don't know.

I've always been a crier. I've always had my tears as my companion.

 Maybe my tears too are a gift, a part of me coming home to myself.

 I pray for you with me and not with me.

 A hard truth to accept.

June 14th

"A joy that death does not have the power to destroy."

 "Nothing that you have done in the past has the power to name who you are."

"Living with all our heart."  Thomas Merton


You are the joy that nothing can destroy.

 I look over the past, pieces of another life, they do not name me anymore.

 To live with all my heart, that would be joy. That would honor you and your love.


  I pray to live with all my heart into this new life.

June 10th

"That which is invisible is real and lasting: the visible is a fleeting lie: Spirit is the driving force behind matter."    Jonathan Ellerby


You are real to me, yet invisible.
 You are lasting and loving.
  I pray for you everywhere, I pray for your heart and soul.
 
"i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)"   e.e. cummings

June 9th

"You must come to terms with death to embrace life."


How do I do that?
what does that mean?
How in the world can you come to terms with the absence of someone?
As far as I can see, you can't.
You just have to start over, a new beginning.
your old life is gone, it is not here, nothing you can do to hold onto it.
Nothing.
I fight it everyday.
I fight reality everyday.
I'm so broken by it.
Heartbroken.

I have to find a way to keep you with me.

June 8th

I can't help you figure it all out, I can just tell you I' ll always be there for you,
always looking out for you
it's hard for me too
it's different now. I'm not in the same place
I can only work magic from where i am but it's not the kind of magic you think about
I can't send a prince charming down to you I can't find you a job
i can't send a pot of gold over to you
I can love you with all my heart the way I always have and always will
and I know you love me.


My imaginings on what you would say to me.

It makes me sad, heartbroken, I do my best to take the wisdom I know is there.
even though it may be only my inner wisdom rising.
getting past the noise and distractions I put in its way.

I pray to allow whatever wisdom is there
to rise up.

I pray for you- I know you are sending me messages in the ways that you can,
I'm thankful for you.

June 7th

I am a pilgrim on the road home.


"Everything is a blessing."

Will I ever understand that mystery?
Will I ever pick myself up and walk forward?

Surrender.

"Abandon myself to the mystical arms of the Divine."

What does that mean? 

I've spent too many years filling myself up, it's time to empty myself.

I pray for emptiness so that I may find you there.

June 7th

"When divine chaos comes through personal crisis - the death of a loved one, you must still find a way to gratitude through prayer and endurance, if not for the event then for the support system that is sent to you or for the insights that arise when you need them."  Carolyn Myss, Entering the Castle


   Chaos is a windstorm, a tornado, a blizzard in summer, an earthquake.
    Change comes always too soon.

    My feet have lost touch with the earth,
     I spin up and out.

     There's nothing to hold onto.
   
      I pray to find courage where there is none.

      I pray for you, I don't know if you are there.

      I'm knocking on a sky that has no ceiling.

June 6th

"When divine chaos comes through personal crisis - the death of a loved one, you must still find a way to gratitude through prayer and endurance, if not for the event then for the support system that is sent to you or for the insights that arise when you need them."  Carolyn Myss, Entering the Castle


   Chaos is a windstorm, a tornado, a blizzard in summer, an earthquake.
    Change comes always too soon.

    My feet have lost touch with the earth,
     I spin up and out.

     There's nothing to hold onto.
   
      I pray to find courage where there is none.

      I pray for you, I don't know if you are there.

      I'm knocking on a sky that has no ceiling.

June 4th

The glory and grace of grief

 you  have your layers, your windings, your bridges, your tunnels.
 
  "There are different wells within your heart
   Some fill with each good rain,
    Others are far too deep for that."  Hafiz


    I'm on the  threshold
    but how to cross over, to move beyond,
    to start " a new beginning."

     I have no idea how to do it.

   
     You will understand, and you'll stand on the threshold with me,
      as long as it takes.

      You are my prayer.

       My prayer is you.

June 3rd

"That which takes from us gives to us: Sickness is a healer, loss is a teacher."   Jonathan Ellerby


 "If you want to be given everything

      Give everything up....

 Because the Master has no goals in mind,

 Everything she does succeeds."   Lao Tzu   600 BCE


 "She who sees deeply into
   one thing, sees all.
 She who looks long into all things,
   sees nothing."  Ancient Vedic teaching, 4000 BCE
 

    You still teach me, in your universe,
     I know you saw deeply into love,
     and in that you saw everything.

     Have I given everything up?
      no I haven't.

    It just feels that way, without you here.

   
I pray to look deeply into one thing, love.
 And to not dance all over the place looking at many things.
  seeing nothing.

I pray to find a way to piece my heart back together, still with its brokenness, yet unbroken in its brokenness.


I pray for you raindance, starbright, seascape, moonrise, eternal love.

 

June 1st

"Life is very brief and the only true purpose is measured in how much love and grace we allow to flow through our souls during our lifetime."  Carolyn Myss

 "Empty your soul of its history.  Retain love, wisdom, goodness, truth as all these energies carry within them the people you love and the memories that make you who you are. Shed everything that leads nowhere and everything that continually repeats itself but serves nothing at all."  Carolyn Myss, Entering the Castle


  I pray to empty my soul of all the history that does not serve me, that leads nowhere, and hold onto love.

  I pray for you.

May 31st

"The building of a ship doesn't begin with the materials it begins with a longing for the sea."

 Maybe it is the same with communicating with you, I don't need to know how to do it, I just need
 the longing to reach you.

 I pray to let mystery take over and lead me there.


 I pray for you out in a vast universe where I can meet you.

May 28th

"Every moment of your life has value.. You practice approaching every person, place, flower, or crack in the wall as if it were there just for you to appreciate."  Carolyn Myss


 I give my soul a chance to emerge.

 I pray you will be beside me.

May 27th

"Flying by the seat of your pants, taking each day as it comes."

"There is an infinity of universes."  Burt Goldman on quantum physics


You are out in some universe where I am too.
 I'll meet you there.

 
I pray for you. always.

 May 25th

"The quieter we become, the more we hear."  Ram Dass

"Be fearless."
   Carolyn Myss

"Attachments to your worldly good, and to the traumas and pains of your past are, without a doubt, the greatest impediments to a spiritual life."   Carolyn Myss


And so attached am I !
not fearless, not quiet, attached attached attached....

may you show me the way, with your worldly guidance and your soul wisdom.


I pray for peace inside and out.

When I thought I had it all figured out, I was lost,
now that I am lost, maybe I'm on my way to being found.

"You can't always look in the rear view mirror when you are driving."

 "Call back the energy you are wasting on events of the past."



   I am blessed to have you in my life, it is an eternal having, nothing can separate you from me.

  Your physical absence is so difficult to hold that I have to dream you here with me like before.



   "layer upon layer of who we thought we are falls away." Thomas Merton

     I pray to let the layers fall away.

     I pray for you with all my heart.

"I lost his body but not his soul.  He's with  me every day."  Sondra Beaulieu, The Other Side of Sadness


I have to believe it's true, although many times I can't feel it.
I have to trust in a bigger picture, a letting go of what I know with my head, and go with my heart.
You can not be gone, it can not be.

I keep your soul in here, with me.

I pray for you.

I pray to keep going, keep living, to go  out into the world again and find peace and joy.

"People overwhelmed by grief simply give up,they stop participating in life and dwell on the past. They need help structuring more activity into their lives."
The Other Side of Sadness


I pray to find a way to do that.
I know that giving up is not helping.
I understand that dwelling in the past has not helped me move forward.
I haven't wanted to move forward.

there I said it.
Losing you is not something I can accept, and yet acceptance is the only way to continue.

But I know when I was this cute little girl you wanted to give me the world,
and that you still do.


I need to begin moving toward something.


I don't know what that is.
I pray for guidance, yours, God's, all the angels in all the heavens, I know you're busy but steer a little cloud of guidance my way.

I pray for that.
I pray to rest that you are at peace.

I pray for your peace.

"Our lives are changed and they will never be the same.  But in a way, I think I'm probably going to be a better person than I would have been had I not lost our daughter.

And I guess that's because you become more aware of how you deal with others, and how you think about others."  The Other Side of Sadness, a mother who lost her child in 9/11.


I feel that way too.
I hope I'm on my way to becoming a better person.

I pray for that.
Let me be a better person.

I pray for you.
I pray for us.

I pray for all of us who have lost our loved one.

Amen.

my old story


I know you will guide me in whatever way you can
to live life here and now.

I know you will love me for eternity however you can.

I know I will love you eternally when I am on this earth and when I am gone.

that's all I know.

how you went and where you went and what lies beyond are all mysteries to me.

mysteries I will never solve.

I'm dead to myself and I have to find a way to be alive.

"even when a death is foreseen, I was surprised to find, it still feels sudden - an instant that could have gone differently.  If only I could find a flaw in the story.
I thought, if I could find the right turning point, then perhaps - like Orpheus - I could bring the one I sought back from the dead."  The Long Goodbye



 I'm still looking for the flaw in the story.
 when will it stop ?

  I don't think it ever will.

 the yearning for you,   it will go on and on.

 What can I pray for?  I don't know. right now, I pray to get through this, to not fall apart.

 that's all I can pray for.

 and that you are safe and protected.

"Energy returns to its source." Einstein, via Shirley Maclaine

"The departed one has just gone on to another level of understanding."  Shirley Maclaine


yes, yes, yes.
let it be.

returned, and yet still here, in another form, another space.

You are with  me.

I pray for acceptance of the mysterious, the miraculous, the unknown.

"The dominant element of grief was a restless searching.  Grief resembles the anxiety that children feel when they're separated from their mothers."  The Long Goodbye

   Restless searching.  the constant question: Where are you?

  and it will never be answered. Never.


   "As we fail over and over to find the lost person, we slowly create a new world, the old one having been invalidated by death."  The Long Goodbye

    for me it's at glacial speed - the slowly creating a new world. I'm still clinging desperately to the old one.
    and feel I'll never let it go. Never.

     "But grief left me perhaps too aware of the transience of everything."
      Everything seems here and yet already gone. It's something I can't understand.
 
     And a year feels like a minute. How does that happen?

    "Sorrow turns out not to be a state but a process.  It needs not a map but a history."  C.S. Lewis


      Dora Carrington wrote about the passing away of her husband Lytton Strachey, "that everyday for the rest of my life you will be away."

      I pray for your soul, wherever you have drifted to, walked to, run to, floated to, swam to, whatever way you got there,
      I pray there were loved ones waiting for you, holding you and keeping you in love.

"The bereaved cannot communicate with the unbereaved."  Iris Murdoch

"Heraklitos wrote that we assume a new identity in death as a guardian of both the living and the dead."  Franz Wright

I'm counting on that new identity, if not, I can not bear it.

How can a year feel like a minute, an hour, yesterday.  I don't understand.

"Cry your eyes out when you want, be gentle with yourself."  Susan Merz Anderson

"there's a wishing futilely for the world to make sense again."  The Long Goodbye"   Meghan O'Rourke

"The people we most love do become a physical part of us, ingrained in our synapses, in the pathways where memories are created."   Colin Murray Parkes


"Even when a death is foreseen, I was surprised to find, it still feels sudden - an instant that could have gone differently.  If I could find a flaw in the story, I thought, if I could find the right turning point, then perhaps, like Orpheus, I could bring the one I sought back from the dead." 


All this searching and wondering and I always arrive at the same point, my head inside a book, then the book is finished, and there's no answer to finally solve the mystery.

You are not here with me, and I am here without you.  There's nothing worse. nothing.

My prayers have gone unanswered, except if you are safe and at peace, if you exist on some other plane, joyful and loving, still loving me, then the prayer I prayed every day has been answered.  But I will never know.

"Love fills you when you give it away."  St. Francis of Assisi

You have my love and you always will.

I pray to keep your love alive. Forever.

"Across the years I will walk with you in deep green forests; on shores of sand
and when our time on earth is through, in heaven, too, you will have my hand." Robert Sexton

My hand is with yours, forever and always.
I pray you know that my hand is with yours.
I pray for heaven and earth to be joined.
 I pray for you in heaven.
 

"Peace be with you."

I pray for peace to be yours,
eternally,
and for peace to claim my heart,
and know you are.
as I am.

Resurrection

Jesus resurrected. went among his friends and family to comfort them.
you are resurrected
I may resurrect too
one fine day
soon.

 here in the sun under the blue Florida sky -
 listening to the morning sounds of southern birds, you are everywhere.

from the review of "Say Her Name."    Francisco Goldman revives her through the only power left to him.  So remarkable is this resurrection that at times I felt the book itself had a pulse.  Throughout the book, he furiously attempts to hold on to what can be kept: mittens, hats, rings, as if they have the power to anchor him to the world."


If I could create something, a song, a book, a film that would resurrect you, that would be my greatest accomplishment.

I pray to create something to revive you.

I pray for you to be known in this world and the next.


Maybe it's enough that I knew you.

"Life is a precious but impermanent gift.  The body gives out and your soul is released.  The real value of life is whatever value it is to your soul."  Sonia Choquette


My precious gift, I pray to honor it.
Impermanence-  may I understand what that means, that someday I will not be here

with a love supreme may I honor you and my life.

You were gifted to me, the greatest gift.  I was the luckiest girl.
and all I can do is bemoan that you're not here.

I just want more and more and more.

when will I stop looking back ?

When will I just be grateful for what I had ?

I pray for you big soul.

Somedays I don't want to go on without you,
What does that mean?

Not that I don't want to stay alive.

I just can't adjust myself to without you.

in my own little universe, you were the sun, we revolved around you,
though I wonder if you knew it.

in my own little universe, there was no galaxy without you.

I've tried to think of you somewhere out there,
it's too hard.
to nonsensical to me, although I never thought I was so attached to the rational.

How come I keep looking for form,
when love has no form and I know it exists.


How come I ask you these questions but you don't respond.


I pray for you, no matter that I get no response, I pray for you, no matter that I don't understand. I can still pray still reach out.

 "Martial artists can not be grounded unless their being is where their feet are."

I'm ungrounded, un focused, un being, un footed.
No matter where I am, I'm somewhere else, wondering about life, death, no death, unlife.

I pray to know the ground under my feet.

I pray for you.  I pray for you to go on and on and on.

I pray for peace for both of us.

if there is worry in the after, don't worry about  me.

I will stand on my own feet. there is no other way.

you gave and gave and gave, it was more than enough.

You are woven into every moment.

My life's weaving is halted.
The stitches stop.
 unfinished

When the threads will move again
I don't know.

I pray for you out in the great beyond.
I pray to have your courage.
I pray to find my own.

"There is nothing sweeter than devotion."  Swami Kriyananda
 "Go with the currents don't fight them."

"Row row row your boat gently down the stream
merrily, merrily,merrily, life is but a dream....."


I pray to row the boat gently
and understand that life is but a dream....


I pray for you, rowing merrily in your dream,

I pray to join the dream.

I pray for you. always and always.

2o Seasons Of Kyoto

 are there seasons after this life ?
 20 or more, thousands, I don't know.

 I pray that there is more beauty and wonder than I can imagine
 where you are.

I pray that the seasons of your soul life are bountiful and full of light
and love.

  Your gifts are many, I pray that the world you inhabit now knows those gifts and celebrates you.

I pray I pray I pray.

"Grief doesn't necessarily make you noble, sometimes it just makes you crazy or primitive with fear."

It suprises me who I am,
less and more than I thought.

I can't recognize myself.

I come from a family of I know ers...
not you, my beloved dad, but others.

And I too fell into the trap, I know I know I know.
now my most often refrain to anything is I don't know.

I don't know anything
and everyday I know less and less  about myself than I thought I knew.

I only know or understand more and more about love,
it's ever embracing eternalness, how you can feel someone's love
no matter if they are in the next room, a hundred towns away,
downstairs from where you sit on your childhood bed and watch tv
or in galaxies or realms you can not imagine.

it is there, the same as it was, it doesn't disappear as you did,
it's my only foothold on this ledge,
my only finger of hope.

and I don't know what love is I only know how it feels.

"we are creatures of love."  Thomas Merton.

give me a perfect heart to love you,
I pray for calm, for peace, for serenity, for your soul. for my soul,
and for your bright light to always surround me.

 I pray for you, you are alive to me, and you always will be.

Everything makes me think of you.
I can't deny it, can't kid myself.
you are always there.
and then you're not there.

how do I unconfuse myself, unsad, ungloom myself.
I will have to live with you here, there and everywhere,
without seeing you, and that's giving up a lot.

I don't have a choice. not yet.
someday there may be a way to see you, in some form.

I pray for that day. to come and stay.

"Her absence was a space in our lives that I could almost embrace."  J.G. Ballard


It's too big a space to fill.
and it can't be filled.
by anything or anyone.
I will have to live with the space,
and know that you are within that space.

I pray for you, great soul, loving soul.
I pray for your travels.

In the river of my life
eleven months ago
everything stopped.

it wasn't a river anymore

I am walking in the river every day
unsure of where to place my feet.

the river keeps flowing, I can not stop it.

I pray for you on this day, that you are with me, at peace and in joy.

"Grief is on a continuum you have to move from one end of it to the other, and you can't miss any step along the way." Jack Miller, Ph.D

   Some days it doesn't feel as though it's moving at all, some days it feels as though all has stopped and I'm frozen in place.

   Some days I feel numb, I tell myself it's ok, but then something happens and it's not ok.

   Some days  I read something that makes me believe there is no death, and then I think about going to the cemetery and all breaks apart. 

      Many days I don't know what to believe, I only know you're not here in your beautiful physical form to discuss it with me.

       I guess I have to use other means to communicate, only I don't know what they are.  besides talking to myself and hoping and praying you hear me.

       I pray for you to hear me. 

        I pray for me to listen and hear you.

       I pray for reunion some day.

Bless your holy spirit
Bless your eternal soul.
Bless us all as we soldier on without you.
Bless us all to know that someday we will meet again.

you are blessed and we are blessed to have your love within us.

When you forgive those who have hurt you, you free up your awareness.  You shift it out of the past and bring it fully into the moment, where it can serve you to become what your heart's desire wants you to be.  Forgiveness is a great act of the soul.    The soul doesn't like to cling to the past.  It understands that all experiences are beneficial to our spiritual growth, because all experiences ultimately teach us something.  


  The most unforgiving I am is to myself.
  I pray to forgive myself for all the things I could have done, could have said, could have saved you.

  I pray for that comfort, I pray that you will understand all my failings, I know you do and you did,
  I pray to be as forgiving as you.


  I pray for your great soul, lighting up the world, the stars, the billions of galaxies, all at once.

  I pray for your soul's energy to stay near and travel far, yet remain in the orbit of my heart.


  I pray for myself to let go of past mistakes, failings, weaknesses, sins.

  

"In the Buddhist tradition - take your sorrow and sadness and do something positive with it in the name of someone you love."   Peace from Broken Pieces, Iylanla Vanzant


Everything I do, it's in your name.
to honor and continue my love for you.

From the smallest detail - it's all in your name.

You are all the verses to all the song I sing.

My song is for you.


I pray for you, kind, gentle, soaring soul that you are.

I pray for you. always, always, always.

"We must live our own experience, we cannot inherit it."  Andrei Tarkovsky


The life I have is mine
and I cannot rely on others,
it's all up to me.
"Everyone has to stand on their own feet."

I pray for your soul. is it safe ? is it worried?
is it at peace?  do those concepts exist in the hereafter?
is there a hereafter?  what is out there?


help !

"The great secret of death, and perhaps its deeper connection with us, is this: that, in taking from us a being we have loved and venerated, death does not wound us without, at the same time, lifting us toward a more perfect understanding of this being and of ourselves."  Rilke


   I'm not sure I believe you Rainer,
   why couldn't I have  had the more perfect understanding while you were here ?
   I only feel the wound, nothing more.
   there is a loneliness deeper than life.
   and it grows.
   is there a secret of death? , I want to know that the secret is there is no death, and that someday I'll see you again.
   I pray for you, a prayer of love and thankfulness.
   

"What batters you becomes your strength." Rilke


I need a miracle to see me through the battering.
to see beyond my little world, so closed off from the outer world - universe, galaxies, infinite space that is all around me
and that I can't see or understand.

I pray for a miracle for you and for me,
that we may find a way to be in the greater realm together,
unafraid and with grace and love.

I pray for your infinite spirit to be in everlasting peace.

I sing a song to you everyday.
of love and gratitude, and yearning.
I sing your praises, I sing your heart,
I sing you.

may the song go into the eternal space and time,
a place that seems so far yet may be so near.
I pray for you, song of my heart.

First day of spring.

"My mind can't accept it."  Mrs. Lee


My mind can't accept the unacceptable.
Can't believe the unbelievable.
I look for you everywhere.
I pray to find you.
I pray you will find me.

Amen

"The key is to learn to row the boat you've been given." 

"I learned one of the most spiritually productive truths that I now rely on each day of my life: when you do not seek or need external approval, you are at your most powerful. Nobody can disempower you emotionally or psychologically."Caroline Myss



more about water and boats and steering your course.
another quote from her, she said a sailor is at his best in a storm.
this storm I don't know.  it's rocking and upending everything in my boat.
I pray to learn how to row the boat I've been given, that I may be able to get through any storm.

I pray for you, I still don't know if you need my prayers, but Fr. Peter said you do, I'll take his word for it.
I have buckets full of prayers for you.

I pray that you are ok.

I pray that love helps you. my love, our love.

"You are the light behind all perceptions." Jean Klein

"God is a circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere."  Euphedocles


You are the light behind everything.
 with your light I can go forward.

With God all around us we are together.

"You see this glass? For me, it is already broken. I enjoy it; I drink out of it. It holds water admirably, sometimes even reflecting the sun in beautiful patterns. If I should tap it, it has a lovely ring to it.
But when I put this glass on a shelf and the wind knocks it over or my elbow brushes it off the table and it falls to the ground and shatters, I say, "Of course." But when I understand that this glass is already broken, every moment with it is precious."

             Achaan Chaa

Every moment with you was precious, I recognized the "broken glass" that was your body, I knew it could break, would break,
as my body will break, and every moment with it is precious.

I pray to recognize the broken glass that is my body and all bodies, to recognize their preciousness every moment.

I pray for your soul in the divine presence, all around me.

Amen

"What is mindfulness ?  Mindfulness is the awareness of what one is doing while one is doing it,and of nothing else.  That is, while walking, instead of the usual distracted state of memories, hopes and fears, and so on, a jumble of thoughts and fantasies which have nothing whatever to do with walking, one confines attention to consciousness of bodily movements of the legs and such eye and ear consciousness as is necessary.  The meditator concentrating on these bare essentials thereby clears out of his mind a lot of junk.

Clearly, this is useful to the ordinary living of life as well, for the person who allows his mind to be overgrown by a jungle of irrelevant thoughts is a careless person, and his personal confusion may bring about the harm, or even death, both of himself and others."    Bhikkhu Khantipalo


I pray to be mindful, to not have a mind "overgrown by a jungle of irrelevant thoughts."

I follow you, a mindful soul. 

You are my teacher, in this as in all things.

I pray for your soul to know all this, to know your ever present presence in my life, my soul, my heart.

Amen.

I am your little flower.

May your light surround me.

I pray to blossom from your love.

"In your absence is your presence."  Jean Klein


You are present to me every moment.
Your physical absence painful, overwhelming, confusing.
 It is difficult to live with your physical absence.
 I have to think of you as in another room, a room somewhere I can not even dream of,
 a room with a view, of eternity.

"What is mindfulness ?  Mindfulness is the awareness of what one is doing while one is doing it,and of nothing else.  That is, while walking, instead of the usual distracted state of memories, hopes and fears, and so on, a jumble of thoughts and fantasies which have nothing whatever to do with walking, one confines attention to consciousness of bodily movements of the legs and such eye and ear consciousness as is necessary.  The meditator concentrating on these bare essentials thereby clears out of his mind a lot of junk.

Clearly, this is useful to the ordinary living of life as well, for the person who allows his mind to be overgrown by a jungle of irrelevant thoughts is a careless person, and his personal confusion may bring about the harm, or even death, both of himself and others."    Bhikkhu Khantipalo


I pray to be mindful, to not have a mind "overgrown by a jungle of irrelevant thoughts."

I follow you, a mindful soul. 

You are my teacher, in this as in all things.

I pray for your soul to know all this, to know your ever present presence in my life, my soul, my heart.

Amen.

Clarence Budington Kelland - Father
"He didn't tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it."


I was fortunate to have you to watch live your life.
 Ability to love, uncommon Courage,  brilliant sense of humor,  unique intelligence,  quick wit, poet's tenderness,
 and so much more.

I pray to have a few of your qualities.

I pray that you know that I value you more and more each day.

I pray for YOU.

Amen.

Love is from the infinite, and will remain until eternity.
The seeker of love escapes the chains of birth and death.
Tomorrow, when resurrection comes,
The heart that is not in love will fail the test.
I pray for eternal love to guide me through this life,
to help me "escape the chains of death."

I pray for your soul, content and peaceful somewhere here and now
not in some other realm  - in our realm , the one we share together.

There is no substitute for another.
no way to get over their absence.
People who tell you that there is a way,
don't know the truth of it.


What can I pray for ?
 that the happy, peaceful soul of yours is among saints and friends and stars.
 that you are home, a home I don't know anything about.
 A home I too will return to someday when my life here is complete.

"Remember man is dust and will return to dust" 
The priest at St Patrick's Cathedral
on the event of Ash Wednesday, as I lifted my head to have him smear my forehead with black ash.

I must remember dust is in my future.

" My wounded heart"
"Dear God, help me heal from grief and loss."

I pray for peace in accepting what I cannot accept.
I pray for peace in your soul.

Somedays I don't know what to pray for.

I can only keep praying for your love to be within me always.

"Love has conquered death."


I want and need to believe it.
death is only a doorway, to an opening
that is a mystery, the great mystery.

I pray to live the mystery, to let it be.

I pray to know your soul in my daily life,
here in the quiet morning,
to feel your presence.

I pray for your soul.
your loving soul.

In my heart of hearts, I find you there.
the noise on the outside keeps you far from me.
In my soul I know that you and I can never be separated,
it's only my thoughts that can keep you from me.

It is only when I find that still place within that
I can be with you,
without separation.

It is a prayer to wander into that still place
as often as I can, or never to leave it,
to always keep that still space alive,
no matter what is going on outside or in
my noisy thoughts.

I pray for soul to soul communication,
that I may not block it,

that I keep the channel open,
that I hear your soul's whisper no matter where I am, or where I go,
that I am with you always.

Love conquers death.

Amen

"But because being here means so much, and because all
that’s here, vanishing so quickly seems to need us
and strangely concerns us. Us, to the first to vanish.
Once each, only once. Once and no more. And us too,
once, even if only once,
to have been on earth just once — that’s irrevocable.
And so we keep on going and try to realize it,
try to hold it in our simple hands, in
our overcrowded eyes, and in our speechless heart.
Try to become it. To give it to whom? We’d rather
keep all of it forever… Ah, but what can we take across
into that other realm? Not the power to see we’ve learned
so slowly here, and nothing that’s happened here.
Nothing. And so, the pain; above all, the hard
work of living; the long experience of love –
those purely unspeakable things."  Rilke


What have you taken into "that other realm?"
love, take all of it, my love for you and everyone's love for you.
take it as a letter to God, a letter to the sky, that you were here
and we loved you.  As you loved us.

I pray for you to have that love in your soul for eternity.

I pray for your soul, for peace, for joy in your soul, for your light to be present in my life forever.

This world is not the same without your physical presence.

I pray for my soul, to do its work here on earth, to the best of my ability.

"Journey into this day knowing that whatever should happen we can never be separated from the Love of God, that when we are low He raises up, and when we are on the mountain top He rejoices with us."



May you be with me in this lowland,
and when I rise to the mountaintop may you rejoice with me.

 I pray to know that I can never be separated from your love, where you go, I follow.
where your love is, mine is there.

   Just let me know it, and believe it.

"The whole purpose of monastic life is to teach men to live by love."  Thomas Merton

Living by love,  I felt you lived the life of a monk, you let yourself be taught by life.
I saw it in your face, in your eyes, in your deeds.

I pray to walk that way,
allow myself to be taught to live by love.

I pray for your light to shine above me, within me, around me, all the days of my life.

"Without general mindfulness one cannot be generous,  kindly or compassionate.       
What is mindfulness ? And, how is it established?  Mindfulness is the awareness of what one is doing while one is doing it, and of nothing else."  Bhikkhu Khantipalo


I pray to be mindful, to follow your example, you who were mindful always.

I pray to walk the path of being aware of what I am doing while I am doing it.

I pray for your soul, your light being, you sweetness and love to be at peace
and to be with me always.

"Understand that all experiences either make you bitter or better "



I pray to be better.

"Many things are not within our power to change."


"Love ought to manifest itself more by deeds than by words."  St. Ignatius Loyola


I do things in your name.
Everything I do is in your name.
I  honor you in this way.

I pray for peace for you.
I pray for peace for me and all our family.

Peace peace peace.

"The only truth is love beyond reason."  Alfred du Musset

 "Seek peace and pursue it."  Psalms 34:14

"Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
of Eros and of dust,
Beleagured by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame."

 excerpt from W.H. Auden

May the affirming flame come through me,
may I pursue peace
may I love beyond reason....

You, in the advancing sky, expand beyond body and mind,
into the glorious spirit and soul that you are, without end.

I pray for you, expanding and thriving in another space and time.

I pray for peace.

Amen

"We are not our bodies or our emotions or our minds or any of the structures and restrictions we experience around us.  We are an infinite part of the God Force using the physical form to experience spiritual development through a special teaching called "daily life."  Miracles, Stuart Wilde


It would be a comfort to believe it.
I'm still in the "Great Doubt."

I want to believe you completed your mission here on earth
and now can be free in light and love.

I pray for that to be.

I pray for you living in love.

I pray to not worry about anything.

I pray to be thankful for every day,as you were.

Amen.

I'd like to send all this somewhere you can read it, somewhere you can hold it in your hands and smile, or look at me with tears in your eyes,
it will take all the saints in heaven pulling for me to dig my way out of this snowstorm.

the waking at 3 am
the endless days of nothing, errands, doctor's appts, cafes.

I watch Libyans dying on the street
I want to know why no one does anything,
I am the no one who does nothing,
if you were here
you head would shake,
and shake in disgust,
God said, you would say, you can either love each other or kill each other,
you, a friend to God.
you had known God.

I don't know why you had to leave,
we had so much more to see together.

I've got to make good on all of it.
how I do that, I don't have a clue.

"You don't love a flower for what it does, but for what it is."

 you love someone for what they are, not for what they do.

" I will ask you to stand and  all join hands in a little while. But first,  we realize we are going to have to create a new language of prayer.  And this new language of prayer comes out of something which transcends all our traditions and comes out of the immediacy of love. We have to part now, aware of the love that unites us, the love that unites us in spite of our differences, real emotional friction.... The things that are on the surface are nothing, what is deep is the Real.  We are creatures of love.  Let us therefore join hands, as we did before, and I will try to say something that comes out of the depths of our hearts.  I ask you to concentrate on the love that is in you, that is in us all.   I have no idea what I am going to say, I am going to be silent a minute and then I will say something...

Oh God, we are one with You.  You have made us one with You.   You have taught us that if we are open to one another, You dwell in us.  Help us to preserve this openness and to fight with all our hearts. Help us to realize that there can be no understanding where there is mutual rejection.  Oh  God, in accepting one another wholeheartedly, fully, completely, we accept You, and we thank You, and we adore You , and w e love You with our whole being,because our being is in Your being, our spirits is rooted in Your spirit.

Fill us then with love, and let us be bound together with love as we go our diverse ways, united in this one spirit which makes You present  in the world, and which makes You witness  to the ultimate  reality that is love.  Love has  overcome. Love is victorious.  Amen.. The Asian Journal, Thomas Merton

"Spiritual discipline means "bringing about a change in oneself not in the environment.  Changing the external world to suit one's desires is the way of worldly men;
that is like carpeting the whole earth to avoid being hurt by thorns."  a quote from Murti in The Asian Journals of Thomas Merton


Let me not look to "carpet the world."

I pray for discipline, spiritual and earthly.

I pray for you, for your soul, for your heavenly being

to live a life I can not know or understand.

I pray for your heart and soul to be with  my heart and soul eternally.

"What is important is not liberation from the body but liberation from the mind. We are not entangled in our own body but entangled in our own  mind."  The Asian Journal, Thomas Merton


"A congruent person can afford to empower others."  Unknown


 I pray to be liberated from my mind.

I saw you as a congruent  person maybe that's why you did empower others.

I pray to become congruent..

I pray for peace for all souls.

I pray for the peace of your soul.

 Love is Supreme.

"Grace is the enlivening life (spirit) of God supporting and transforming creation.  It expresses throughout the field of nature and from within every soul.  It directs the course of evolution and awakens souls from their "sleep" of mortality.  When we are less self- centered  and more soul centered, less grasping and more giving, less contractive and more expansive, grace more obviously expresses to order our lives and circumstances."    Roy Eugene Davis  Mediation Guide


I pray for grace,

I pray to be more soul centered.

I pray to expand and resist contracting.

I pray for you, expanding somewhere in the universe,

counting stars, surrounding the universe with your love.

I pray for you......

"The monk is one who has to struggle in the depths of his being with the presence of doubt, and to go through what some religions call the Great Doubt, to break through beyond doubt into a certitude which is very, very deep because it is not his own personal certitude, it is the certitude of God Himself, in us.  The only ultimate reality is God, God lives and dwells in us.  We are not justified by any action of our own, but we are called by the voice of God, by the voice of that ultimate being, to pierce through the irrelevance of our life, while accepting and admitting that life is totally irrelevant, in order to find relevance in Him.   And this relevance in Him is not something we can grasp or possess.  It is something that can only be received as a gift.  Consequently, the kind of life that I represent is a life that is openness to gift; gift from God and gift from others.


It is not that we go out into the world with a capacity to love others greatly.  This too we know in ourselves, that our capacity for love is limited.  And it has to be completed with the capacity to be loved, to accept love from others, to want to be loved by others, to admit our loneliness and to live with our loneliness because everybody is lonely.

And so I stand among you as one who offers a small message of hope, that first, there are people who dare to seek on the margin of society, who are not dependent on social acceptance, not dependent on social routine, and prefer a kind of free-floating existence under a state of risk.

And among those people, if they are faithful to their own calling, to their own vocation, and to their own message from God, communication on the deepest level is possible.

And the deepest level of communication is not communication but communion.   It is wordless.  It is beyond words, and it is beyond speech, and it is beyond concept.

Not that we discover a new unity.  We discover an old unity.  My dear brothers we are already one.  But we imagine that we are not.  And what we have to recover is our original unity. 

What we have to be is what we are."

The Asian  Journals, Thomas Merton


Maybe I'm in the Great Doubt.
Not to be so bold as to step into line with monks...
 yet there is doubt in me.
but I  have certitude that you were among those few
who "dare to seek"   that you were not dependent on social routine, that you had communication on the deepest level.
You had communion with God, the Divine, to you it didn' t matter what name was given to God.
Your fatherhood was your vocation, you lived it well
I pray that communion with the Divine is yours eternally,
I pray that I may find communion with God, the Divine, beyond words, beyond speech, beyond concept.

Amen

 you, full of grace

 may the divine be with you.

I can't ask you for anything,

you've given enough to me and everyone.

May your soul rest,  may you have all the rest you couldn't get on earth.

Amen.

"Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, loving someone deeply gives you courage."   Lao Tzu


As you would say, "Amen."

I pray for courage.

Your love gave me strength.

Let me know how to find that strength in the here and now without your physical presence.

I pray for that.

Learning to be humble, that is my prayer.

Nancy and I drove home to Manhattan just at Sunday dusk under a streaked sky of steel gray long thin clouds and deep blue and pink background clouds.

We had spent the afternoon with my mother, bizarre in some ways, yet also ordinary.

We started out listening to an opera CD that my brother David made for my mother.  The music was to accompany the manicotti making that was about to begin.

"It just felt right," my mother said, "yesterday when I was making the pizza,to be listening to opera.  "Some of it was so sad," she said, "even though I didn't understand the words, I was  crying while I was standing at the stove."

 Then my mother  darted from the stove to her CD stash.

  "I love the Beatles," she said.   "Let's get rid of the opera."

  After she ejected poor Maria Callas just in the middle of the heart crushing Mio Bambino ( my mother doubted it was Maria Callas and since she is also a singer I should believe her)   she put in the Beatles ( or so she thought).

    She turned up the volume too loud, just like my teenage nephew does when he wants me to hear the latest music he loves, and she started sliding back and forth on her kitchen floor.

         "All we are saying is give peace a chance,"  she sang.

          I didn't have the heart (or the courage) to tell my mother it wasn't the Beatles, but an ex Beatle, John Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono with The Plastic Ono Band.
          I just couldn't do it, it would have burst her Beatle bubble.


           She kept singing, her voice getting louder with each chorus, her fingers finding the volume control and turning it up each time they chanted, "all we are saying is give peace a chance." 

        "I just love the Beatles," she said again.

        I remembered another winter, years before 2011, when I was sixteen, my hippie boyfriend and I went Christmas caroling in our little suburban town.

      When we got to the first door and were about to knock, he said, "what carol should we sing ?"    "Let's sing "All we are saying is give peace a chance,"
I said,  completely taken with myself for a moment at the genius of that, the Vietnam war was still going on and I knew my town neighbors might have had a different opinion than my blue eyed bearded boyfriend and me.  I don't know if I was a rebel in the making or a brat.

      Back to my mother in her newly painted, newly sinked bright and cheerful kitchen - the song continued, Nancy and I looked at each other big smiles on our faces at my mother's glee at the song.


      The music changed, John Lennon and Yoko sang another song but my mother didn't sing along.  It was back to the lesson.
      The manicotti lesson we had come to learn

       The afternoon changed as the sun moved away from the yellow kitchen window.

  My mother got serious, giving instructions ( or orders ) to Nancy and me.

      She's always right, so it's hard to do anything but obey. 

        "Don't use that pan," she told me when I started to butter my small Cuisinart frying pan.

          I persisted, "Let me try, " I said.  Failure met me at the gate, and soon I had a ragged puddle of manicotti batter in the pan, doomed to feed the Pearl River birds with my ineptitude.

       The lesson continue more easily once I gave in to my mother's expertise.  
     
        While she cooked she told me a story I had never heard.   Picking up the manicotti shell with two fingers, hot to the touch but not too hot for her, and placing it gingerly onot the plastic wrap layers of finished shells, she said, " You know, Grandma De Leo used to make the manicotti shells in boiling water, it was not easy and often they fell apart in the water.  I saw this new method in a magazine and I told my mother-in-law about it.

    ( My grandmother was a master self taught cook.)

    My mother said, "She listened to this new method and concluded it was worth a try.

If it were me I probably wouldn't have tried it, but my mother-in-law had an open mind."

     Just like my father did, now I see where he got it from.

      By mid- afternoon my younger sister Dorothea had arrived.   She went to my mother's window- like mirror, staring into a pane.
   
 "Look at my wrinkles," she said, "they're coming."

     "Stop looking," Nancy laughed.  "That's what my twice face-lifted sister tells her clients, she works for a plastic surgeon and tell women to stop looking at their wrinkles..."
      and live. I wanted to add.

          By 4:00 pm the manicotti were constructed, one demonstration by my mother of how to carefully place the three cheeses was done Nancy and I were left to complete the task.

         My mother had calculated by eye exactly how much ricotta cheese was  needed to fill all 16 manicotti.

         I made the incorrect assumption as we were nearing the end that we would be short cheese and added some.

          My mother came over like a supervisor, "that was about right," she said, after looking at the cheese that remained.

      But as the last manicotti was stuffed I saw that the amount remaining was just about the amount I had added !

       My mother had been right.

       As usual.

        At 4:30 we were sitting down with the baked manicotti and a bottle of my mother's latest wine find, a California zinfandel called, Dancing Bear.
       
        "French is better," I said.    "No, I don't want to give my money to the French, I'd rather give it to California," she said.
        

        My mother had a broken wine opener, missing its most vital piece.  My mother told my sister to try anyway.

            My sister got the opener in the cork but couldn't pull the cork out.

        Nancy, a native Texan and petite, like a Dallas wrangler, planted her feet on the floor and released the cork.  The sound of the pop and the force of the cork releasing sent Nancy back a step or two and a small gush of red wine spilled onto the creamy light floor.

       My mom sat with her wine and her manicotti.  She ate the first bite.   "Good," she said.    "It's good."   

      "The cheese could be a little more melted," she added to her initial thumbs up.


      We all ate.silent.  Nancy closed her eyes and put the first bite into her mouth.   "Delicious," she said.


        At our meal my mother told a story about Lydia Bastinach and her daughter.   On their cooking show Lydia's daughter had baked a cake,
when it was time to cut it, she cut herself, my mother showed us with her hands, a large piece of cake.  My mother was horrified that they
would eat like this on TV slathering their cake with whip cream and pouring chocolate sauce over it.

      "Dad didn't like Lydia, " I said.   "He said she was what was called "high Italian."     (It means snobby, or thinking you are better than others.)

      "He was right," my mother said.

      "He was right, fortunately or unfortunately, about everything,"  she sighed, her head dropping down.


     We went away, each of us in that moment, to him, mourning him and loving him, speaking of him,  knowing he was with us, yet his physical absence so hard to understand, accept, and live with for both of us in our own way.

      We went to our own cone of grief then, like a silent tornado starting at our planted feet and lifting all the way to our head, grabbing us violently out of normality, a disaster,    returning with no pattern or prediction to when it may come back.

       I've stopped running from the tornado, as my father taught me about the ship heading into the waves not trying to avoid them, head in to the waves, and you will survive, try to circumvent them and you will perish.  Although it seems frightening to head into the storm you must.

      My own private tornado came up over my head at my childhood kitchen table so palpable and real to me I felt  almost like it could be seen, then it rushed away and we returned to our assessment of our homemade family meal, a meal my father would have loved, cooked by his favorite women for our favorite man. 


      He was a lucky man, and we were lucky too.

"Adapt yourself to the things among which your lot has been cast, and love sincerely the fellow creatures, with whom destiny has ordained that you shall live." Marcus Aurelius


I pray that you knew, know that I loved you sincerely,
and I was never so blessed as to have you as my father, destiny ordained it.

I pray for you to know that, forever and eternally.
when all the books of life get written, may that page be among the best.

I pray for peace for you.

"When you are a light to yoursefl, you are a light to the world, because the world is you, and you are the world."  J. Krishnamurti, "This Light in Oneself


You were a light onto yourself
and that is how you lit the world,
my world, and all you encountered.


I pray to be a light onto myself.
I pray to follow your example.

I pray for you and your love to remain eternally ours.

"Your lost friends are not dead, but gone before, advanced a stage or two upon that road which you must travel in the steps they trod."  Aristophanes

Advancing, that's the way I can look at your departure.
And that I too will "advance"  someday.
"The day is coming when I'll fly off."  Rumi

These old masters had wisdom as you did.

I pray to become wise, to become sure that all you have done is "advanced a stage or two."

And I pray wherever however that stage is it is a glorious one.

I pray for your soul advancing....

Absent.
you are absent and I feel absent too.
before I felt such pain I could just be the pain,
now I feel I'm allowing myself to feel better.
but a part of me feels absent and not with my feet planted on the ground.

Numb.
that's part of it too.

Maybe I  think too much.

I asked Fr. Peter, our long lost cousin, last night
on the long distance call from Brisbane,
before you go, I have one question.
Do souls  need our prayers?
I can't figure that one out.
Yes, he said, they do.
but he couldn't explain exactly why
so I m stll unsure about that.
except I will always pray for you, always always always.

I pray for your goodness and your love to be part of me every moment, every day.

I pray for your soul to be the happiest, most peaceful, joyful soul in the universe.

I pray to know, not to worry about believing..

" The word "belief"  is a difficult thing for me.  I don't believe.  I must have a reason for a certain hypothesis.  Either I know a thing and then I know it - I don't need to believe it."
Carl Jung

"When unhappy, one doubts everything; when happy, one doubts nothing."  Joseph Roux


" losing someone you love is like having a tree that had been growing in your heart suddenly yanked out by its roots, leaving a gaping hole or wound."  Diane Kennedy Pike

  I feel like a whole world had grown in my heart.  The more I was with you, the more I loved you, the more I understood about love.

   It's hard to not feel like " a tree has been yanked out by its roots.

    It was a universe fully created, fully formed, it was beautiful and safe.  I could live there.

    Now the universe has moved somewhere outside or maybe deeper inside, I'm not sure.

     I don't want to doubt God, or your soul's existence or communicating with your soul.

     Maybe that day is coming, I don't know.

      I feel a slant of light leaning in to me.


      I pray that you are here and with all of us guiding us gently toward your light.

"In order for us to go forward, we must live in the now.  We must take the day that we have been given and make of it what we can.  We cannot change the past.  We can only regret it, and such dwelling leaches optimism from the day at hand.  It is one more way to be blocked and a sadly effective one --- if only.  If only things were different, but they're
not !"  

"I needed to believe that we are guided at all times, and that we do the best we can by the light we have to see by.  If God is all powerful, and I believe that God is, then there is no such thing as an irreparable mistake.   If I ask for guidance and my course needs correcting, I will get the guidance necessary to correct my course. There is no need for harsh recrimination.

There is no need to count back over the past looking for wrong turns.  The decisions of a decade ago must be seen as the best decisions we could have made at the time.  In any case, a decade past is a decade past and there is no changing things.  Today can perhaps be done better but the past cannot be undone."
 Julia Cameron



I dreamt that I was in the dark holding the hand of a little girl.  We came to a very dark corner on the path, we couldn't see ahead.  We stopped.
I looked back knowing my father was behind us somewhere. I called out, Dad, Dad, and soon he came to us.

I'm going to try and believe that, he is there, just around the corner not too far from me and when it gets dark I can call out and he will come to show me the way towards the light.

And there is no good coming from going backward.  I must "take the day that I have been given and make of it what I can."

I pray for light to find its way towards me and that you are there looking over my shoulder guiding me away from the darkness towards light.

I'm praying for you everyday, praying for your soul to be at peace, untroubled, and joyful.

"Prayer is an interaction between humanity and God."

"Love is the core energy that rules everything. Love is the one ingredient that holds us all together."  John Fetzer


 "Make me an instrument of your peace,
   where there is doubt, faith
   where there is despair, hope,
   where there is darkness, light
    where there is sadness, joy.....   excerpt from St. Francis prayer


    
I'm praying for peace for me, for my family, my friends, everyone.
I'm praying for myself to find faith instead of live in doubt.
I'm praying for the despair I feel to turn into hope.
I'm praying for the light to return, to be led out of the darkness.
And a prayer to take my sadness and lead it one day into joy, the joy of you, of all that you were on earth, on all that you are
 in the world of the soul.

"In the moon haze
my arm the only pillow
this sudden fondness for my life."  Buson


"your father has given you the gift of life,
  a new beginning!  Embrace it with thanks." 
                         Condolence card from Vimala Rodgers


 It's true, I wouldn't be here without you.
 giving thanks is the least I can do.
 let me find a way to give thanks and embrace this new beginning.

 a prayer of thanks.

I don't have any words today only tears.

tears of grief, sadness, confusion, doubt, misery, gratitude, love, compassion... they all fall the same,

and they are all mixed up with each other.

and they fall

and fall

and fall,

I really could fill a city with tears.

I have a great reverence now for love.

It is the miracle of life,

that someone is given to us who loves us and cherishes us.

Why it took me so long to have that reverence, that awe for love,   I have no idea.

And it grows inside me like a flower blossoming all over my earthbound soul.


"Perfect love casts out fear ."   Dorothy Day

 You left me this "perfect love"  so that I may walk unafraid, alone yet always within the sea of your soul.

 I just have to find the strength and courage to head into the waves,  that is what you taught me about being a sailor, you steer the ship into the waves, if you don't, if you try to go around them, the ship turns over and is lost.


 You have to have faith.

  This is my prayer for you today, that all the lessons of love you left me, I will live with awe and reverence.

When I had your love here on earth, I took it for granted, worse than that, I didn't pay attention to it a lot of the time.

The mourning is for so much lost time, and as I say it to myself, I lose more and more time.

I am so lucky I had you at all, that is a miracle in itself, that you were born to be my father

and that you loved me just the way you did.


A teacher writes about being sad that the school year was ending. His Jesuit friend who had spent many years teaching told him, "it's the same for me when a school year ends. You have to freely accept love from the students, but you have to remember that you can't hold onto it."  It reminded me of the experience of the apostles after the Resurrection, who wanted nothing more than for Jesus to stay around.  His response: "Do not cling to me."   from My Life with The Saints, James Martin SJ


I cling. more and more it seems. and in the moments when I don't, I panic, am I not feeling ? have I gone numb?

there seems to be only two switches, dire pain and deep gripping sadness or nothingness, numbness. how can that be?

how can it be normal to feel this way?

it can't be.

the clinging, like a child holding onto the pant leg of her parent, begging him not to go.

that feels right, the other, the nothingness -  that just feels  frightening.

When I had your love here on earth, I took it for granted, worse than that, I didn't pay attention to it a lot of the time.

The mourning is for some much lost time, and as I say it to myself, I lose more and more time.

I am so lucky I had you at all, that is a miracle in itself, that you were born to be my father

and that you loved me just the way you did.


A teacher writes about being sad that the school year was ending. His Jesuit friend who had spent many years teaching told him, "it's the same for me when a school year ends. You have to freely accept love from the students, but you have to remember that you can't hold onto it."  It reminded me of the experience of the apostles after the Resurrection, who wanted nothing more than for Jesus to stay around.  His response: "Do not cling to me."   from My Life with The Saints, James Martin SJ


I cling. more and more it seems. and in the moments when I don't, I panic, am I not feeling ? have I gone numb?

there seems to be only two switches, dire pain and deep gripping sadness or nothingness, numbness. how can that be?

how can it be normal to feel this way?

it can't be.

the clinging, like a child holding onto the pant leg of her parent, begging him not to go.

that feels right, the other, the nothingness -  that just feels  frightening.

"For me to be a saint means to be myself."  Thomas Merton


"The beginning of sanctity is loving ourselves as creatures of God.  And that means all of ourselves, even the parts of us that we wish weren't there, the parts of us that we lament."

  James Martin SJ


 Give it all up, the lamenting, the regrets, the going over mistakes.

I pray for that.  To not wish to be different than I am.

To accept all of myself and move forward whatever that means, wherever that takes me. that would be faith.

every day I begin again.


I pray that you can be a silent guide through the sea.

Beloved
"These years, like centuries
have imprinted themselves on my skin,
engraving your name over and over again.
I have longed to hear your voice
to feel your touch
but then you have written your love
all around me
in all I see
in all I feel."  (I don't know who wrote that.)


"I saw eternity the other night
and like a great ring of pure and endless light
as calm as it was bright..."  Henry Vaughn  1621-1695



Love writes itself around us and stays in the circle of our  life, the love of another, our love for them, it melds into one
continuous, eternal love that has no limits no end.

All the other things, the hereafter, the circle of eternity, the heavens, the places we travel to when we leave our earth, I don't know, I don't understand, I can't comprehend,
 it mystifies me and confuses me and I doubt and I doubt.
but love, that part of eternity I understand.
I'm holding onto that. I know it's true.

This rainy and icy morning I pray for Don, for his brilliant and gentle soul, to be at peace.

and I always pray for you, out in the near distance.

"For those with faith no explanation is necessary: for those without faith no explanation is sufficient."
 The Song of Bernadette

"You don't love a flower for what it does, but for what it is." 

And just as in nature all the seasons are arranged in such a way as to make the humblest daisy bloom on a set day, in the same way, everything works out for the good of each soul."  St Therese of Lisieux


May I have the faith to believe it and accept it.

May your soul circle the heavens, the galaxies, the billions of stars and always find a way back to us, to be near us.  and may we always feel your presence and you ours.

"And a ship without rudder may wander aimlessly among perilous isles yet sink not to the bottom."
 maybe I am not without hope, I can wander aimlessly but not sink to the bottom.


"What is the soul?  it's the real you.   it's not just the atoms of you, it goes beyond the skin,  it's the pattern of you, a rich pattern that involves everything, your memories,  your character, your personality, all the people you love, your relationship to them,  you are not just the matter of your body which is always changing.
God will not allow that pattern to be lost and will resurrect that pattern."  John Polkinghorne.


that gives me hope that all is not lost.

That I can float out there onto the wave that holds your soul.

"This is not the only life we live,the future is not yet there to be known.
  there is a destiny beyond death."   John Polkinghorne

This doesn't seem like a country, more like a sea.

I am beginning to understand the phrase, "at sea."

"it dates back from the time when accurate navigational aids weren't available and any ship that was out of sight of land was in an uncertain position and in danger of being lost."


"at sea"  has come to mean  "a state of confusion and disorder."

in "The Tempest"  a storm strikes a ship, a violent storm rages around a small ship.

There was a storm,  "a violent storm that raged against a small ship"

From The Tempest

ARIEL [sings]:
Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell


Maybe it is that we are all going through a "sea change"

I hold you in my heart always and I know if you can guide me through the sea you will.

I keep saying, praying to be more like you,
but I cannot be you, I can only take your gifts to me, your example and use them as my living light.

To live with your blessing inside of me and use them out in the world.

That is all I can do.

I pray for the willingness and the openness to do that.

This other realm, I don't know it, I can't find a way to comprehend it,
I pray to just believe it exists and live the mystery of not knowing.

and I pray for the faith to trust in life, beyond death, even though it doesn't make any sense to me.


Just to let go and trust in something I can not comprehend,

and then live here and now.

Amen.


I'm thankful I was given the gift of you.

A central teaching in most spiritual traditions is:  What you wish to experience, provide for another. Look to see, now, what it is you wish to experience--in your own life, and in the world.  Then see if there is another for whom you may be the source of that. If you wish to experience peace, provide peace for another. If you wish to know you are safe, cause others to know they are safe. If you wish to comprehend seemingly incomprehensible things, help another to better understand them. If you wish to heal your own sadness and rage, seek to heal the sadness and rage of another.  Those others are waiting for your now. They are looking to you for guidance, for help, for courage, for strength, for understanding, and for assistance at this hour. Most of all, they are looking to you for love.
 This is the moment of your ministry.  This is the time of teaching. What you teach at this time, through your every word and action right now, will remain as indelible lessons in the hearts of those whose lives you touch, both now and for years to come. We shall set the course for tomorrow today.
 My religion is very simple.  My religion is kindness.    Dalai Lama


Amen.

This is what you lived, may I have the courage and the strength to follow your example.

I pray for the goodness of your soul to carry you through.

May I have the grace to live with reverence for all of life.

May I see every person in front of me as sacred, holy.

I pray for that grace.

I pray I can follow your example.

May I follow the way home.

I pray for you with all the love I have.

I pray for you with all the love you have given me.

May I walk gentle on this earth.

May I learn to accept sorrow and not run away from it.

May I learn to accept everything and not run away from it.

Rain

Toward evening, as the light failed
and the pear tree at my window darkened,
I put down my book and stood at the open door,
the first raindrops gusting in the eaves,
a smell of wet clay in the wind.
Sixty years ago, lying beside my father,
half asleep, on a bed of pine boughs as rain
drummed against our tent, I heard
for the first time a loon’s sudden wail
drifting across that remote lake—
a loneliness like no other,
though what I heard as inconsolable
may have been only the sound of something
untamed and nameless
singing itself to the wilderness around it
and to us until we slept. And thinking of my father
and of good companions gone
into oblivion, I heard the steady sound of rain
and the soft lapping of water, and did not know
whether it was grief or joy or something other
that surged against my heart
and held me listening there so long and late.

Peter Everwine


There is a surging in my heart, unnamed.
each day I ask it what it wants from me,
and every morning I wait for its answer.

I can not know if you have gone to a place
where you can understand, or even know what I feel.

That is part of the longing to go out now into the wilderness
with no way to know if you still can hear me.

my love grows and my understanding grows each day.

I pray to give you what you have given me.

"Death is nothing at all.
I have only slipped away into the next room.
I am I and you are you.
Whatever we were to each other, that we are still ......
Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?
I am waiting for you for an interval.
Somewhere very near, just around the corner.
All is well."



Let it be.

I pray for you waiting somewhere very near, maybe even here.

Amen

"I needed to set my own pace for the journey.

 It might have seemed to someone looking on from the outside that I was walking in place,
or dragging my feet, for I was not ready to turn my attention to the future for many months.

 But from inside the experience, I was moving as quickly as I could covering enormous segments of land with a rapidity that used all my energy.
 Only I could know how much time I needed to make each leg of the journey."   Diane Kennedy Pike


"Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding."   Kahlil Gibran


All this time I haven't moved much.
I may need to let go of expectations on the course of my life.
I may need to let go of everything to go back to something.

Does that make sense?

There is something underneath all this,
let me not make the same mistakes in life over and over.

Let me learn from what I have done and give me the strength to do better.

May your soul and all the souls of the departed, Don, Gladys, Harry, Moose, Sally, Barry, Elizabeth's father, Dai Sil's parents, Rafi, Grandma Violet, Santo, my grandfather, Antoinette, my grandmother, my grandfather George, my baby brother Dominic the first,  David and Linda Lee's baby daughter Angelina, and so many others......rest in peace.

May those of us left here on earth be at peace.

May my understanding of this life grow and my judgement of life diminish.


 "The soul never takes birth and never dies at anytime nor does it come into being again when the body is created.  The soul is birthless, eternal, imperishable and timeless and is never terminated when the body is terminated." 
Bhagavad-Gita/ Chapter 2
verse 20

"When you are sorrowful look again in your heart and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight."

"And ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation."  Kahlil Gibran

"And shall it be said that my eve was in truth my dawn."  The Prophet


Is there really a dawn in my future ?
I'm not sure

I just pray that whatever eternity looks like,
if it's you being here with us in some other form of energy,
that you are knowing and present, that there is only joy in your spirit, no worry, no frustration, nothing but that feeling I had with you,
love and devotion, happiness and contentment.

I realize now that I had eternity, it was that simple feeling of being at peace,
at home, at one...

with you it was eternal.

Sometimes I don't want to be myself, so flawed and full of imperfections,
but who else can I be, and I know you loved me for myself, faults and all.

You never doubted my goodness, so maybe there's hope for me.

"You do not become good by trying to be good, but by finding the goodness that is already within you, and allowing that goodness to emerge."
"One thing we do know:  Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness.  How do you know this is the experience you need ? Because this is the experience you are having at this moment."   Eckhart Tolle 



Empty vessel sailing.
No harbor.


you must be in a space/place where there is peace.
Nothing less could be your reward for a good and well lived life.

and with so much love surrounding you how could anything else be possible.