The world lost a great one last Thursday afternoon, in the form of a dear friend's mother, at the ripe young age of 88, after 63 years of marriage. The light that was Dorothy is the light that is all of us...not just in us, but is us. Our source is one and the same.
I was reminded of this yesterday as we huddled together graveside at the culmination of services, thirty or more, under a tent against the January cold and said our good-bye's. Each of us alone with our own thoughts of her, our own memories, our own ways in which she touched our lives. And yet each of us brought together in that place by her, to remember and honor her light.
I had the privilege of helping put together pictures for those who came to pay their respects to enjoy. Pictures peopled with the family and friends she shared her life with. Pictures full of faces brimming with smiles that she helped put there. Snapshots of her life, a life well-lived and more than that, well-loved. She raised her family of four children, five grandchildren and one great-grandchild in tandem with her husband in the spirit of that love and it shows.
One grandson said it best in his eulogy -- that they were all raised with the knowledge that no matter what happened in their lives, nothing was ever so bad that they couldn't come home. It occurs to me that this is more than a mental "knowing", but a knowing in their hearts based on connection, based on love. Love as the answer to every problem, every triumph, every question...to everything. Love wielded in life as a means of actively honoring of the light in each of us. Love as a guide that enables us to see beyond our earthly circumstances and witness one another as we really are -- part of the same source.
Meditation, to me, is an honoring of that light -- not only in me, but in all of us. It ushers in a time each morning and evening to connect with the breath that connects every living being, regardless of what form that respiration occurs. It helps me to know that with every in-breath and out-breath, I am never alone. It creates the space to connect with the source of Love that permeates all, the love we know by heart, the love that is our collective light and available for us to live our lives by, if we only remember how. By the simple act of focusing my attention on my breath, a door is opened through which this remembering is possible.
It brings me peace to know that in honoring Dorothy's light, I am able to honor the light that is each one of us. It helps me tap into the potential we all have in this life to live with heart, provided we can remember the light we all share and to love each other well. It comforts me to know that, no matter what, we can always come home -- to ourselves, to each other, to our source.
If we're lucky, this can be the legacy our light leaves on the world as well.
My husband and I are grateful beyond measure to have been touched by this love and to be included as part of her family. Thank you, Dorothy, for the reminder.//
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