The Month’s Mind

Death is a breath-taking event even when we imagine that we are prepared. We mourn and grieve and gasp, and we have wakes and funerals, but we quickly forget. We fail to remember, perhaps, because the mortality of ourselves and the others we love is too difficult to imagine, so we banish its memory as soon as possible. The old form of wake has largely disappeared, and has been replaced by mourners making a brief appearance during restricted “visiting hours” at a funeral “home” away from home. This modern ritual allows us to act as if death is not part of the normal stream of life that flows through the place where we live. The sanitized showroom of the funeral home bids us to take a quick voyeuristic look at the dead, pay our “respects” to the living, and sign a book to prove to ourselves and others that we were there. Having done our duty, we return to “normal” as we continue to stoke the fires of the market place.

Funeral services conducted by pastors are usually other-worldly, most often calling upon God to give peace and comfort often without much focus on the life and death of the Mortal who just died. Many memorial services offer a more personal touch, but I believe that both with a memorial service and with the quick glance in the funeral home, not enough time is spent involving ourselves in the alchemy of the occasion.

A ritual like the one depicted in the Oscar (2009) award-winning Japanese film Departures has us pause for a while and gaze at the body of the one we loved. This ceremony gently holds our silent attention while we absorb the shock of the end of life of the Mortal nature of our loved one. It also gives us some moments to weep and to gaze and to absorb the death, as well as to give thanks and say goodbye.

Another ritual that is practiced rarely in these times except in Ireland is the Month’s Mind*  mass that is celebrated one month after death. Shakespeare made mention of the ritual in TwoGentlemen of Verona, (Act 1 sc 2) “I see you have a month's mind for them,” and the wealthy in England often used to leave elaborate instructions for the Month’s Mind that would follow their death.

I imagine us re-creating a Month’s Mind Rite that begins on the fourth Friday evening following the death and continues on Saturday until about five o’clock. A facilitator would explain the details of the ceremony to the gathering, and those who have attended a workshop on Love, Loss, and Forgiveness would also be familiar with the design of the ceremony. The Friday evening session would begin with two rounds of the Talking Stick that would be interwoven with a candle-lighting ceremony. The Saturday session would involve two trio exercises and a final round of the Talking Stick.

The first trio exercise would have the theme: “What did his/her life mean to me? Our friendship, connections and disconnections, the loss and much more.” We would have ten minutes to talk to the witness in our trio about our thoughts and memories of the person who died a month before, and ten further minutes to speak “to” that person by way of the witness. All the trios would reconvene in the large group, and there would be a period before lunch for participants to share their experiences.

The exercise after lunch would be inspired by the thought: “How will I spend the rest of my life?” We would have ten minutes to talk about our self with this focus, and then ten minutes for our Soul and Spirit to gaze at ourselves (by way of the witness). For the first five minutes we gaze lovingly at our mortal selves living life, and then for the next five minutes gaze and perhaps touch our self by way of the witness who lies down in front of us as if she were our dead Mortal self. After each member of the trio has completed their experience of witnessing their Mortal life and death, they reconvene in the large group as before for some reflections, and we would end the Month’s Mind Ritual with a final round of the Talking Stick.

I believe that the Month’s Mind Ritual would be an example of how loss may be transformed into loving energy for living. Thornton Wilder ended his book The Bridge of San Luis Rey on this theme with the words: “Soon we shall die, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten.” Unbelievable and unacceptable, and yet life is very short, and all memory of our being will be forgotten in a generation or two, if not earlier. “Oh no!” we cry, “I will never forget you,” but we do. And Wilder concludes: “There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.” So this ritual celebrates the survival of love, the only meaning, and if our lives are to have meaning, we must pass it on.

Since I first thought of the idea for this ceremony less that a month ago, two important men in my life have died. The first was John Schneider that I first met in Lancing MI and then at a workshop in Ireland and later at his home. Then, a few days ago, a close friend for twenty years, Jan Marissens, died next to his wife Magda while flying back to Belgium from New York. I had no idea that I might be facilitating this ritual in Michigan and Antwerp so soon, but it would be my awe full privilege to do so. I wrote the following for John, and I have now added dear Jan’s name, for they seem like brothers to me:

Good Mourning is also a greeting and an encouragement to we Mortals left behind, urging us to go through this ultimate confusion of being mortal. I imagine Gentle John and Gentle Jan smilingly encouraging us to move on through the chilly darkness, for the love they lived is everlastingly available and palpable to the touch even though their Mortal natures have moved on. Thank you John and thank you Jan for the time and the love you shared with us, and thank you for your love that is now and ever more.

Michael Murphy

Albany, NY

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*These “Minding Days” were of great antiquity, and were survivals of the Norse Minne or ceremonial drinking to the dead. The Venerable Bede (672-735) spoke of the day as commemorationes dies.

Good Mourning?...

Last week I wrote of "Good Mourning" as I attended a memorial service for a 23 week old fetus. I felt the mourning of the family and friends that attended. I mourned the loss of the baby.

This week there was nothing "good" about the mourning I experienced at the lost of our Jan and as I thought of his wonderful wife who is an inspiration to me, and of their children whom I have never met. I have not spent much time with either of Jan or Magda, but the time I did spend with them at Dzogchen Beara in Ireland in 2009 connected us. The time they spent with my Mom just before Jan's death connected us even further.

It was a shock, a punch in the stomach, an ache that will be mourned and remembered. I have no other words.

The Edge

I have been thinking about “the edge” recently. That place where what you believe, and maybe even hope for, becomes eclipsed by what is. Sometimes this may seem like a good thing and sometimes, not. I am thinking about a dear friend who just months ago retired from her work and was trying to come to terms with “what now?” Then, she started coming down with debilitating migraine headaches and what was believed to be a hernia that turned out to be cancer. Healthy, vibrant, full of promise just a few months ago and now in the hospital, in critical care fighting for her life. It can happen that fast, and it gives me pause.

Stopping to think about a work trip I am about to take to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in northern Alaska, one of the most desolate wildernesses left on our planet, and how going out “there” brings me closer to my friend in the hospital, and closer to us all, as we live out our human conditions. We are fragile, and we are going to die someday and that is hard to talk about- who wants to think about that!

But as I do consider it here and now, I feel my heart open. I feel the strength of my spirit wake up and look deeply into that seeming void, and there, I catch glimpses of life, of real living… on that edge, where the view can get terribly clear, and be terribly beautiful.

As we each struggle with our own facts of life, I feel blessed that I have connected with other brave souls, spirits, and mortals like you, who find your selves here- sharing the reality of our being.

For me, it is in this sharing that makes living all the richer and softens some of that edge.

Great Sadness

Jan Marissens

Today I am grief stricken by the unexpected and tragic loss of my great and gentle friend, Jan Marissens. He will be remembered by all who knew him, his family, friends and many who were graced to have met him through the Love, Loss, and Forgiveness Project.

I have no words at the moment, it is hard to move or even breathe. My sister tells me to move forward with the life I still have in me. And so with this life, and a heart ripped open, I send love to all of you.

The Un-Dead

This is one of those rare years when the Western Christian and Eastern Orthodox Easter celebrations fall on the same day. The news media, ever alert these days to the gathering of crowds in the middle east, report that it is creating a bit of choas in Jerusalem. Extraordinary crowds of pilgrims seek to retrace the Via Delorosa or stand within the Church of the Holy Sepulcher as Sunday's light dawns. Mass movements need to be carefully choreographed. Yet, though swept along with the crowd, each pilgrim is on an individual journey: to consider and better comprehend the permeability of the boundary between life and death. Half a world away, we can ponder with them.
Theologians use the term "resurrection"; more simply we ask, "Can the dead live?"
The scientist within wants to insist that dead is dead and that the siren song of denial must itself be denied. I visit the tombs of my father, mother, sister, aunts, uncles, friends and no stone is rolled back. They are where I saw them last-- laid to rest--undisturbed--that's it--finis! Why then, even as I stand there, looking at their names and dates inscribed in stone, do they all seem so alive within me?
I suspect that for others as well as myself, the dead are not so dead either. There is a portion of my consciousness where all these familiar folk have set up house. At a moment's lapse, I am through their door. I see them, they speak, even dialogue with me in tones I recognize and in settings I have experienced. Close my eyes in sleep and they are likely to meander through my dreams, sit there alongside as I relive my day, offering their unsolicited opinions. They seem as influential as ever, perhaps even more so. When I am awake, I seem to be their vehicle of expression, adopting their habits, employing their attitudes, indulging in their emotions. Like the cats who snuggle into bed with me at 4:00AM, I love them dearly, but crave my own space.
We are far more than the sum of our genes and influences. Deliniating one's own particular parameters of spirit and self is necessary and worthy work. Thankfully, Love, Loss and Forgiveness makes that work a deliberate conscious process. Confrontations and conversations that might have happened [had not circumstances and human frailty intervened] are given expression and hearing in safe settings so that we are freed to focus on the life we live rather than the life we might have lived. In a sense, the permeable boundary is re-crossed. Grateful for what we have been bequested, we move onward toward greater self-appreciation and self-responsibility. And that feels very much like becoming un-dead.

Imagine Loving Thy Neighbor as Thyself

This is the time of year when many remember One who loved his neighbors as himself and died for them. I thought that the following piece that will shortly appear in my new book, Gazing at the Lighthouse: Reflections on the Loving Life might be of interest, and I offer it with love.

We are urged to love our neighbors as ourselves, and it is a disaster for the neighbors. In fact, most of us hardly know our neighbors and probably don’t like them, never mind love them. No big surprise, because many of us are also unfamiliar with ourselves. Loving ourselves is something that we have been lead to believe is weak or self-indulgent or narcissistic, regardless of the fact that Narcissus killed himself because he discovered that he was unable to love himself.

What if we really loved ourselves and then acted in the same manner towards those around us! Imagine waking up and saying to ourselves, “Good morning! How glad I am to see you!” Imagine being our own best friend, someone we can trust to whom we can take our concerns and worries without fear of judgment. Imagine being comfortable with solitude yet relishing connectedness!

Loving ourselves is giving voice to our feminine Soul nature. In our increasingly masculine world, the feminine within men is often unfamiliar. If as men we love ourselves or love other men, then we imagine we must be gay, regardless of the fact that sexual preference has little or nothing to do with love.

If we love ourselves, we might believe this to be a statement that we prefer self-love to a sexual relationship with another, regardless of the fact that masturbation and sexual relationships may have nothing to do with love: they may be more akin to scratching an itch than being expressions of love. If we feel love towards a woman other than our wife, that love is often seen as off limits because coveting our neighbor’s wife is taboo, and it must mean that we want sex, regardless of the fact that we can love ourselves and others without sexual activity. So men are often lonely and out of touch with their feminine nature. They may only allow themselves sports talk, backslapping, and a variety of addictions and protective habits with men and flirtatious but not deeply penetrating exchanges with women.

For women and for men, loving ourselves is the best preparation for unconditionally loving others. Many women who have little love for themselves dedicate their lives to filling the feminine void in men. Filling the emptiness of another is impossible, as broken marriages and other relationships tell us, and neither the woman nor the man is satisfied once the bloom of sex is diminished.

So let’s imagine loving ourselves. We will need to practice forgiveness; we will need to practice letting go of the doubts, judgments, and limitless ways in which we torture ourselves for not being someone else. Let’s look in the mirror and love what we see. Let’s meditate lovingly on ourselves, and when we feel fulfilled, the love will spill over and nourish others.

Michael Murphy

Cracks and muscles

Mortal, Soul, and Spirit — the Love, Loss, and Forgiveness Project unites these three aspects of ourselves into a trinity of well-being and inner strength. The Mortal is our physical self, the one that eats and breathes, toils and dances, and must eventually die. For each of us, the Mortal takes the guise of one gender or the other, but what the Soul and Spirit recognize is that within each of us we possess both the feminine and the masculine. The Soul is that feminine part of us that can love unconditionally and gaze in rapt attention at another without judging, and feel the heart fill. The Spirit, our masculine energy, is the voice of inspiration and enthusiasm, the nudge that prods us to live life and meet our destiny.

When I began in LLF earlier this year, I was astonished by how little I was acquainted with my own soul and spirit. Although the idea that each of us embodies male and female energy was not new to me, I only knew it as an idea, an abstract concept carried in my head. For me, as for so many others, my intellect had become not a way to engage with life but a clever means of escaping it. I began to see this as the exercises of Love, Loss, and Forgiveness had their effect on me, which was first to crack the thick crust that had formed over my inner life. As Leonard Cohen says, the cracks are how the light gets in; very quickly, I began to feel alive in ways I had longed for but had not known how to achieve.

Once Soul is stirred, life takes on a texture and depth that feels almost miraculous. My emotions woke up to a different space. As I have begun to feel more deeply within myself, I find I am able to respond more genuinely to the outer world. One aspect of our personal soul is the way it connects to the souls of others, and to the larger mystery of Soul that unites everyone and everything. It's a thing called Love. As Soul has come alive in me, my spirit, which before had been largely a mechanism of responsibility, duty, and stymied dreams, has begun to grow its muscles as well. I have experienced a new level of creativity, confidence, and courage, outward manifestations of Spirit. Spirit animates the world, literally sets it in motion. And so we can begin.  — Timothy Cahill  

Good Mourning

Last week I attended a funeral service for a stillborn infant of 23 weeks. The young twenty year old parents were surrounded by many friends and family members. The priest greeted us with the words that most of heard as ‘Good morning’. How strange I thought. She acknowledged the strangeness of the greeting and clarified that she really meant ‘Good mourning’, that we were going to take our time to mourn the loss of this infant, and to acknowledge that the mourning would continue. And that is the way it would be…

Ah, now I understood the profound greeting and immediately thought of the Love, Loss, and Forgiveness Project. My first experience with the LLF Project allowed me to experience the loss of my Dad in very powerful ways. One way was through the realization that his death was an intense ‘scream’ in my life, a time when one feels a deep loss and a scream, whether voiced or internal, is the sincerest response. My Trio- myself, and two others who acted as a witness and a guide- gently allowed me the expression of that loss in a way in which I could embrace the love that my mortal Dad had given me and to acknowledge that he would no longer be here as he had been. Yeah, Dad! You are still in my heart!

-Kate Reid

The journey started for me...

There is a ring I wear on my right hand, a ring made up of three interlocking bands of gold: yellow, white, and rose. Even though each one is lovely in its reflective, pure nature, the three bands cannot be fully separated from each other, and all three are necessary to make this trinity ring. You are able to spread them apart, you can allow air to blow freely through them, but they are forever entwined.

I’ve been wearing this ring since I first put it on last May in my “wedding ceremony”, standing on the banks of a lovely cove in the middle of formal gardens in Ireland. My dear witnesses were two women whom I had never met until five days’ previous. I was pledging to love and be faithful to myself, and to respect and honor all aspects of my being: mortal, soul, and spirit. Thus, the three interlocking bands. This was the culmination of an amazing week with people who had been strangers to me but who had all experienced a life-changing workshop on Love, Loss & Forgiveness.

This journey started for me when I attended a weekend mini-workshop with Michael a year ago in Troy, NY. I experienced the first steps towards profound changes in my approach to life, to those in my life, and to myself. I took a risk and signed up for the week-long workshop in Ireland, which led me to that little cove, accompanied by other seekers. And I’m thrilled to have this opportunity to impart my experiences with you all, and hear about yours in return.

You and I are able to connect through our stories, how we got involved with the Project, our first tentative steps, our fears and enthusiasms, those “Eureka! “ moments as well as the slow awakenings to self-love, and our applying what we’ve learned to “Real Life”. We do the work ourselves, but how wonderful to be able to bond and learn from each other as well!

It is my intent to write a new blog entry at least once a week. I also hope you will write back and take advantage of this opportunity to build our little supportive community around the globe.

May the blessings of Love be upon us! CD