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.

Eight months today.

I keep waiting to feel better. but I don't

Why do I keep focusing on all the things I didn't do.

All the ways I didn't save you.

All the faults I have.

All the "sins"  I committed.

I am so sad.  about so many things.

I'm listening for you everywhere.

I don't know how this is going, I can't see my way past a foggy, gray present.

I'm looking for a way to find my way.

Thank you for your beautiful, wonderful life, for sharing it with me.

Amen.

"Prayer - a long, loving look at the real."  St Ignatius

"St. Augustine said if you can comprehend God, then "it" cannot be God, because God is incomprehensible."   James Martin SJ


A force who loves me even when I cannot love myself.
A divine presence that creates the mysteries of life and love.
A guide through this life.

Where have you "crossed over" to?

Is it a place?  a country of heaven, a land where one rests eternally?

Or is there no where to go?  as some mystics say. and you are right here, beside me, with me, part of me.

Are we all right here, all the time, traveling together though I have no idea what that means.

these are the thoughts I have every day.

I want answers but none are coming

I'm crawling, not even on my knees yet.

and it's all I can do.

I know I'm a bit dramtic, maybe more than a bit

you called me Sarah Burnhardt, or Sarah Heartburn...!

I was a cry baby, still am.....

but I am cozying up to the crybaby in me...

and even liking her a bit.

My prayer is to love you and honor you forever and ever.

There is no death.

Life is eternal.

Amen.

"All symphonies remain unfinished."   Karl Rahner

"There is no perfect decision, perfect outcome, or perfect life.  Embracing imperfection helps us relax into reality.

  "What ifs"  can help us dream or they can move us to sorrow for our sins.  
    But when they move you toward fear, prevent you from moving ahead in healthy ways, lead to dead ends and "cause gnawing anxiety," they are most likely not coming from spirit."     James Martin, SJ

  
All the time I go over what I could have done, could have prevented.
It is a dead end, because nothing I do now can change the past.

  I ask for my good spirit to guide me along the way back from the past into the present, the only place I have the space to change.
 
  I pray that you, you, you, will always be there like a gentle hand on my shoulder, steering me toward the light.


  I pray that I am not taking you away from your soul's task, but somehow I believe we are forever connected, and my task in living is to be guided by your loving soul.


  I pray it's all right to believe that.

 it's the only way I can go forward.


   Amen.

"We are sometimes powerless over what happens to others."
  "Many things are not within your power to change."
 These are difficult to accept.
 I still have the feeling I could have done more, could have changed the outcome.
 And then everything would have been all right.
 Nothing is all right.
  I'm working on it.
  with your love to guide me I'll go into this next year on a new path, one I don't know, and have no idea where it will lead.
  An unknown and mysterious path.
  I have to be brave, as you were.

   This is what I want to live, I know you would see its value.
     From St. Ignatius
  Listen compassionately
  Be present
  Do something practical
  Love freely
  Forgive
  Pray
I honor you by life in action with these values.
 It would have been a great conversation between us.
 I'll keep talking to you, may you always listen.....
 Amen.

Let me be silent..
Let me be still
Alone
Empty
In the Presence
Saying nothing
Asking nothing
Being silent
Being still
Your Face, my Beloved
Looks upon me
That is all
That is enough
You know
You understand
You love me
Let me receive
Let me be still
Let me be silent
     Jim Cotter

Let me walk into this new year with peace, courage and love.
Let me walk.
Let me ask for nothing
Let me receive everything with grace.
Let me walk beside you every moment.
Let me honor that path.
Let me be forgiven for everything.
Let me forgive others for everything.
Let me love freely.

Let me see my life as a gift.
Let me see my body as a gift, eyes, ears, nose, mouth, hands, feet.... down to the smallest cell that carries my blood.
Let me forget old hurts and have eyes of compassion.
I know you will bless me on this way,
always you are in my heart and soul.
Amen.