ACCOMPANIED in Life and Death

I adore the Sierra Club annual calendar. For years I have relished how, when I turn the page to the next month, each outstanding photographic image of Mother Nature begins to speak to me.

It was poignant to walk into my beauty-filled office garden after six weeks of absence, ritually turn the page from August, glance at the September picture, and quickly move on to October, which I have recorded here as a month of healing.

This is November’s image by Nye Simmons: Cypress trees in the swamps of Louisiana. What remarkable beings! What an ethereal form of community-in-relationship!

Immediately, I felt the ghostly connection to my life as I sense it.

All month I have found comfort in the beauty of Uli and I woven together, flooded in the quagmire of the unknown, and completely surrounded by the shadowy presence of our ancestors. Held and accompanied. Forever.

November has been a surreal experience of being enfolded by Love, of being swamped yet digging even deeper into our unique soul stories, aware of the powerful Spirit-realm surrounding us and embedded in our soul DNA. Uli and I have had many prayerful conversations, aware of our lineage and the remarkable gift of spiritual resources we have been given.

I write today aware of the presence of my dearest friend Allie Riley-Kussin, who died during Covid, so far away physically but so close in my heart. It’s her birthday today. She is an ever-present ally, still present in liminal space when I walk between the world of cosmic consciousness and material body. Somehow, she still offers her spirit to continue the healing work she began here. And she keeps showing up.

This week, a card hidden in a stack of papers that Allie sent me, describing rainy Ireland and John O’Donohue’s home, arrived once more with this message: “Awaken your spirit to adventure, hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk. Soon you will be home in a new rhythm, for your soul senses the world that awaits you.”

I wept in gratitude, as I knew those are the words I already knew to be true and needed to hear once again.

I think of my friend Deb, whose loving husband passed today a year ago, and so many friends and family members who are now on the other side. They are ever-present, accompanying us in ways that are far beyond our understanding. Today I honor all these dear ones who are committed to supporting our lives now as soul story—not just as material body-beings—but even more, through and in, and all about intentional embodiment-in-action, which moves outside of time and space.

So, once again: What is soul story? I return to DAY 37.

“How do we know the difference between the human story of day-to-day life happenings and living in the liminal space between our actions and thoughts in order to glimpse the bigger cosmic picture of who we are and how we uniquely are connected in community and called to live on this painfully messy and beautiful planet?

I see it as both big picture/imaginal thinking and mindful presence to attunement in each moment. It’s about getting out of our monkey minds and practicing embodied experience as a way of life, being guided by Spirit who is ever-present all around us and in us.”

Today I rest and laugh with joy in the arms of a Beloved Community who continue to offer soul gifts beyond reason.

Exciting news! Tune in soon for my Thanksgiving post and I will tell you why!

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As we enter this week of Thanksgiving here in the US, here’s a suggestion:

How might you be led to honor and wait in the presence of those loving departed ones who accompany you?

How might you offer a physical ritual of gratitude in this re-membering of their accompaniment past and present?

How might you offer healing words back to your land and all those more-than-human beings who are imprinted in your being?

Here are images of a special place that called me during Covid, a mesa outlook where I escaped to then, and now often walk. My Altar of Grief and Gratitude: Each cairn, each stone carries words, songs, and prayers, healing grief and joyful thanksgiving, and hours of silent meditation.

I’ll be heading there today with this remembering fresh in my heart.

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