Deeper Feelings on Memorial Day

As we prepare this mourning here in America to honor those who lost their lives in the many wars we have fought, I ready myself for the flood of emotion that often fills me as I watch the parade of veterans glide past my Main Street home today. “Service to country,” “honor,” “valor,” “ultimate sacrifice for the freedoms we enjoy,” all these words and phrases taught to me back when I was a child fill my mind and bring tears to my eyes. And then the flood of deeper feelings washes over me.

The loss that a mother might feel whose son was killed defending some unnamed hill in North Korea; the abandonment a child might feel whose father will never come home from some far away jungle in Vietnam; the betrayal an eighteen year old soldier might feel who left limbs in some dusty inconsequential town in Iraq. These are some of other human tolls of war, frequently unmeasured and forgotten when we take into account the cost of conflicts that are so often started for economic and/or ideological reasons and that devastate whole populations of innocent and mostly poor people for years or even generations to come.

We humans seem to have a proclivity for warring. Why is it so easy to make up our minds to war, to drive these huge economic and social institutions towards death and destruction and so hard to feel enough love for ourselves and each other to stand up and say “enough;” and in that breath, help lead our countries policies away from all this violence? Love is not a political issue, love is a human issue.

The practices of the Love, Loss and Forgiveness Project might just be one such catalyst, using love to help us heal enough- to make us strong enough- to stand up for ourselves and others and help make a difference in our world.

Letting Go, and the Lightness of Forgiveness

I suppose it is easier to let go when we are old. I find it fairly easy now, but I never tried it much when I was middle age and under. As I look back, I see that holding on is often quite ridiculous, yet we do hold on—for dear life as we might say. Fear and denial of death must have something to do with it, since if we have something to hold on to we imagine that we can’t drown, even if what we are holding on to is like the stone of Sisyphus. And of course we can’t possibly die if, for instance, we have children to hold on to who could not possibly survive without us holding on to them (or is it the other way round?).

Holding on has a lot to do with our judgmental mind. We hold on to our beliefs and to our goods and chattels (together with lots of insurance) and to careers and relationships that are deadly or moribund. We hold on to the judgments of others till death do us part, and to our addictions that give but momentary relief from our fear of living (as well as dying). What has become clear to me in my old age is that if we don’t love our self very much, we must hold on to something (and there are gazillions of sales persons that will sell us something to hold on to) for without holding on there is nothing if there is no love.

When I look around at most of the people near me, almost everyone seems to be clutching a cell phone and fingering it or talking to it or worrying that it might die at any minute. Perhaps if we loved and held on to ourselves more, we could also let go of our cell phones, because what comes through them is usually either overwhelming or underwhelming and distracts us from what we need. Forgiveness is another word for the wisdom of letting go, and we need to forgive, especially ourselves. So let’s throw away our crutches and become lighter, and not wait too long to do it.

--N. Michael Murphy

Love your neighbor...

I have had the extreme pleasure of spending time with Michael and John Carlson (my brother) as they record Pod-casts for this website. Michael often speaks of how we need to love ourselves more and how that love will allow us to experience love for others. It is the realization of the religious phrase, "Love your neighbor... as yourself." How can we love others if we don't have love for ourselves? While gazing in the mirror at myself, one of "Love, Loss, & Forgiveness' practices, is the person I see one that I love? Can I then express that love and care for myself to others?

Time and a Matter of Minutes

I have been reflecting on my good friend Jan today and I thought about the time a few weeks ago when I was feverishly trying to get myself ready to go an extraordinary business trip to a glacier in the Arctic. Jan and his wife, Magda, were visiting NYC and I spent a couple of wonderful days with them showing them around the city and was going to meet up with them again the day before they were to fly home to Antwerp. Because of my trip logistics, I had to delay seeing them until the morning they were leaving. During my three hour drive that morning to NYC, Jan called me but we had bad cell phone reception and it was too difficult to hear what he was saying. "No problem," I kept saying, "I will see you in a few hours."

Unfortunately, our drive took longer than expected and my wife and I missed Jan and Magda by just four minutes! I did not get to say goodbye to my good friends from Belgium. My Mother, who they were saying with said that Jan was not feeling too well and had a strange rash on his arm and leg that morning. She was concerned about his health, but said, "he just wanted to get back home."

The next morning I got a call from Micheal with the tragic news that Jan had died on the plane home. Unexpected, unbelievable, heartbreaking. I was in shock. My first thought was that I missed my last chance to see my beloved friend by minutes. Maybe if we did not stop to use the bathroom, or I was more speedy in my packing, we would have seen him and maybe I would have convinced him to go to the hospital, maybe I could have help save his life?

Michael, in his hospice work, experience talks about how most people had missed the opportunity to "say goodbye" to their loved ones and how they later regretted it. My own experience with Jan has taught me how important it is to make the time to connect with those that I love before, in a matter of minutes, it is too late.

The Nurturing Nest

I have never been fond of the term "empty nester". Labeling anyone with any word doesn't sit well with me. Yet, after spending several days visiting my daughter who lives more than half way across the continent, the term pulls at my heart strings. It had been almost a year since we had spent time together and the days shared this past week were too short. We spent time doing things together and, far too little time for my liking, talking about what is happening in our lives now and re-membering our experiences in the nest together. But, we did speak the words, "I love you", many times. I am grateful to the practices of the Love, Loss, & Forgiveness Project for helping me to keep that front and center. Forty days until our next visit when we can share the nurturing of the nest together. What more do we each need to hear than, "I love you".

John Martin Schneider

John Martin Schneider died at his home on Tuesday April 12th, 2011. His distinguished work as a Professor in the department of Psychiatry at Michigan State University that included writing and teaching about grief was well known. Yet it was not to remember his academic accomplishments that a few of us, including his wife Sharon Olson, gathered on May 13th for a Month’s Mind Ritual.

John was such an attractive human being. In our sex-obsessed society, this would usually be imagined as a reference to his sexual desirability or a judgment that he was handsome or alluring. John certainly attracted people to him because he was a lover, but this was a matter of heart and soul rather than sexuality. John was a kind, gentle and loving witness and an enthusiastic spirit for anyone who would bring their grief and despair, and they received from him the love and courage that was necessary for them to heal themselves and move through the underworld of loss.

Our Month’s Mind Ritual allowed all present to speak about John as they held the Talking Stick, and a Love, Loss, and Forgiveness Practice allowed all to speak to him for ten minutes as if these were the last moments we had with his Mortal self. We all need to say goodbye to the Mortal nature of those we love, but very often, through the suddenness of death or because we put off saying what we need to say, this does not happen. We also had the opportunity to imagine how we could continue to use the loving experiences with John to fuel living and dying more lovingly.

In the last paragraph of his book The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Thornton Wilder said “Soon we shall die, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten.” And he ended: “There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.” I take this to mean that if we have lived a loving life, the love lives on, and if our life was barren of love, nothing at all remains but ashes. John lived a loving life, so his love is still available to us even though his Mortal nature is not. We have around us many seemingly powerful men and women who have made killings in the market place and the “playing” field and in other wars in bedroom and battle ground, but unconditional lovers are an endangered species, and only they will dissolve the hatred that is killing us.

Thanks you, John, then and now. I love you and the other lovers who were so present at your Month’s Mind gathering.

Michael Murphy

Alone

Having just returned from spending a few weeks in the wilderness of Northern Alaska I think back on how it felt when the plane that took me there lifted off the glacier and the roar of the engine faded to a deafening silence. Alone, without most of the things that I surround myself with at home that I feel give my life value and meaning.

Instead, I was there with only the mortal me, the one who was born and will die... alone. I felt strongly how I can fear both living and dying and how that fear can so totally get in the way of opening myself to the experience of myself and others. It occurred to me that I do not have to go to the ends of the earth to know wilderness, to experience that alone-ness and that being alone with myself can be just what I need to learn to embrace myself and live in love with my own true being.

We all share that alone place being human. Who knows, perhaps some day we can even learn to love a glacier?

Namaste Jan

From Arnhem, Netherlands, comes this letter from Christiane Voit, who attended the memorial service for beloved LLFer Jan Marissens in Antwerp, Belgium this past weekend. Jan died suddenly late last month, en route to Belgium from North America, where he had been traveling with his wife Magda.

Dear Tim,

My heart and mind is full of the impressions of this day. May I share some of them with you?

Here is a summary of the funeral service for Jan. Antwerpen is a good two hour ride from where I live. Early in the morning we hit the road. It was lovely to travel with two other LLFers to Antwerpen: sharing experiences and  telling of cherished memories and moments of insight and change. In the church there were around 500 people paying their hommage to Jan: the whole company of firemen, lots of young people, about 12 LLF members, neighbours, friends and of course the family. I was struck by the face of Magda. What grief and pain! There are no words for it. 

The service was held without Jan - he was still on flight coming home to Belgium. (How difficult it must have been to leave him behind in Canada, I thought. And have the children actually seen their dead father?) So they set up a table with his picture and belongings: his fireman outfit, his climbing ropes, tools from his toolbox, paint roller, cooking instruments, some lit candles. The priest that led the service must be a good family friend. He was invited  for the birthday dinner: Jan died one week before he turned 54. In the freezer they still had some spaghetti Jan had made for another get-together. Jan must have been famous for his spaghetti with sauce. So they had Jan's spaghetti on his birthday. The whole service was conducted informal, striving for simplicity and heartfelt commemoration. Just as Jan preferred to keep it simple and straight. He acknowledged that Jan was a Christian and was seeking to find expression for his spirituality. One way to do it was by zen meditation (That is something I talked about with Jan and also his love for the mountains. He went climbing in Switzerland, he loved the nature).

Magda gave a short relay from their vacation in New York. It was their first - and last -  far away trip together. How heartbreaking it was to have to call the children "your father has died". Magda was ever so thankful for the great support of friend Marijke during their dramatic flight and time in Gander, Canada.

Music was played by friends, guitar was accompanied by an electric piano and singing!

Son Bert showed that he was wearing the shoes from Jan. With those shoes Jan had walked thru New York and had worn them thin. A smile went thru the whole church.

Namaste Jan

Jan Marissens

Namaste is a sanskriet word and means: "I honour and bow before the divinity in you". This mantra Jan brought home on a poster he had bought in Ireland.

I honour the place in you that is the same in me.

I honour the place in you where the whole universe resides.

I honour the place in you of love, of light, of peace and of truth.

I honour the place in you that is the same in me.

There is but one.

The children gave the following meaning to these words:

Namaste, Jan, papa,

We greet the divine in your love for life,

your family and your follow-men,

we honour the divine spark that also resides within us

around which the whole universe is turning.

This spark within you and us, this is love,

truth, light and peace,

it makes us one.

Aid us and nudge us.

Help us to be strength and warmth for each other,

so that we can go on

hand in hand.

It was a long service of 2,5 hours. The bright sunlight was streaming thru the stainglassed windows. There were moments when I could linger on my memories with Jan when everyone went forward to the front to virtually greet Jan where they had placed his mountaineering picture.

Not till I was in the car that the three of us said: We LLFers should have stood up to sing "may the blessings of love be upon you... We should have picked up the sha! for Jan".

We shared a lunch along the way home to keep, body mind and soul together.

Namaste Jan!

With love,

Christiane

(Pre) Postcard from the Edge

From The Love, Loss, & Forgiveness Project

When this blog entry posts itself today, I will not even be anywhere near my computer. In fact, I will be hundreds of miles from the nearest road on the McCall Glacier in northern Alaska. True wilderness.

I grew up in New York City, but my spirit prompted me as a young man to go to North. I started my college education at the University of Alaska, in Fairbanks, to be close to sublime mountains and the last wild open spaces left on the planet.

There is something about going into the wild, away from the buzz of civilization. For me it allows me a full mirror view of myself, as all the noise in my head gets focused on the fact that I am alive, and if I am going to stay that way, I need to become present. It is a wake up call of sorts that life can be even shorter than it already is.

Consider this a postcard from the edge, think of me today, on a massive flow of ice moving slowly towards its destiny, as a small drop of water in the Arctic Ocean. It is amazing how in this technological age we can keep up on our communication even when we are “nowhere to be found.”

-Many Blessings to all my LLF friends, John Carlson

The Untried Path

Leaving my comfort zone through work, through interactions with friends and family, through reflections on myself often gives me a wild and uncomfortable journey. When I am in that place my calves tighten, that flight or fight mode kicks in full bore. I am finding with age, (one of the beauties of it, actually) is that when I am on that untried path now I more embrace Love (which itself, can be untried, if not true). With Love, both for myself and for others, my friends, and yes, foes alike, I can be more at peace with myself. Then, the untried path can become a path of new and unexpected life changing and fulfilling magic. The Love, Loss, and Forgiveness Project, is one such untried path for most of us, at first, anyway. What might feel like a jump into the unknown at first, can be full of goodness and illumination when we take Love's hand for that ride.