In Memorium

(for the first-ever music on Love's Freeway...
right click to open in new tab or window)





Wilbur Rudolph Jackson

March 1943 - September 2011

He goes free of the earth.
The sun of his last day sets
clear in the sweetness of his liberty.

The earth recovers from his dying,
the hallow of his life remaining
in all his death leaves.

Radiances know him. Grown lighter
than breath, he is set free
in our remembering. Grown brighter

than vision, he goes dark
into the life of the hill
that holds his peace.

He's hidden among all that is,
and cannot be lost.

~Wendell Berry

September 11 felt thick with emotion this year--much more so than other years. I attributed that to it being the 10th anniversary of "9/11". Little did I know that three towns away, at around 9 that morning, a dear friend was taking his last breath.

I learned of Jackson's passing thanks to an email from our mutual friend Cindy Walker on November 29, and ever since, I have been on a soul search. How could I have let us lose touch? In a coffee shop later that day, feeling shame and regret, I sat in Jackson's (nonphysical) presence while doing energy work with a mentor. When he showed up, I immediately burst into a smile.

"Hey, darlin' " I heard him say, that voice and playful tone so familiar.

Tears streamed down my cheeks. It felt so good to be with him--it had been so long--and I lingered there awhile. The last time I'd seen Jackson was years ago at Landmark on one of our favorite assisting agreements--a sort of volunteer thing we'd each sign up for from time to time. I took the opportunity, if a bit shyly, to slip him a copy of the draft of my second book. I knew full well that he had been walking the line between the two worlds, battling cancer. And though the book wasn't finished, I had wanted him to see the dedication page which reads, simply:

For Jackson

For Jackson because I knew the book (and then some) would never have happened if it weren't for him.

Nine years ago, Jackson was assigned to be my coach in a three-month leadership program. He was tough, and I was accountable, and it worked for both of us. In no time at all, we'd developed quite an affection for one another that would light up like the planets whenever we crossed paths. At the end of the three months, when I sat with him for our final coaching session, he had this to say about the prospect of my signing up for the next level, a rigorous six-month training:

"Girl? If you bring to that course what you brought to this one, you'll be hell on wheels!"

I trusted him. I did it. And ... well, it was the best "bad decision" (with a wink to Jackson) I ever made.

I'm happy he got to see that dedication page. I could tell he was pleased about it. He let me know he wanted a copy. I assured him he'd get one, of course--when the book was done. How I looked forward to putting the finished work into his hands, with pride, pleasure and gratitude.

I have written in this column before about the arc of a life, and how the end defines the whole. Seeing my friend Jackson's arc complete, I see a great light, a bottomless love--magnificence--and I feel deep remorse. I see a lost possibility, a missed opportunity. I see a chance for showing love that I did not take.

I missed the chance to be a closer friend, a true friend. I missed the chance to give love to a great man whom I love when he no doubt needed it the most. And I am sad.

So many times I thought to call or to ask after him. And I did not. I would go to ask, and feel myself stop myself. I was afraid to ask. Afraid of what? Afraid to learn he wasn't doing well--or worse, that he had died?

I think I didn't know how to be his friend, "on the outside." We were coach and coachee, then we were colleagues, work mates. Yes, we were friends in those capacities, but not on the outside. I think I didn't know how to do that, how to make the leap. Was there a leap to make?

Well, now he has died, and I've missed it. I didn't finish the book in time. I wasn't there at the end of Jackson's life. And I feel terrible about that. I feel I let him down.

Yet sitting with him in that coffee shop, I felt not a speck of judgment or disappointment from him. He was affectionate and playful as ever and greeted me warmly. It felt there was nothing there to forgive. And I felt no break in our connection, despite the break in contact. I felt his love alive as ever, and my love alive as ever, and that seemed to be all that mattered.

"You gotta fall in love every day," he coached me once. I've lived by those words since. But there's another part he didn't tell me, except by showing me, showing all of us: you gotta give it away. So I'm thinking now that there's no better way to honor Jackson's life than to pass on that bottomless love.

Can I love now... and now... and now, whenever the opportunity arises (which is, of course, all the time)? Can I love with abandon, with a brimming, a spilling over generosity? Can I love even when it's inconvenient or painful or costly? Can I love with a radiance, joyful in the giving? Am I able to love, that is to say, the way Jackson loves? I sure hope so. Right about now, it feels my life depends upon it.

Thank you, Jackson. I love you, forever.

images courtesy of the Jackson Family.

Get Ready for 2012

It's calendar time! And the 2012 Language of Love Calendar is bigger and better than ever. This year, I've scattered--count 'em, eight--bonus miniatures across the calendar for added enjoyment. As always, you can expect a high-quality, colorful, collectible calendar (with all new images, of course!).

What better way to start this highly significant year than with a grounding in the Sonoran Desert? Again, I'm producing a limited quantity; if you want one, act fast. If you wait, they'll be gone gone gone. To view thumbnails, and to order, click here.

Dust to Dust

I've never really gotten the "ashes to ashes, dust to dust" thing. I couldn't see how I came from ash or dust, exactly. I knew that I was born of my mother and father, of flesh and blood, and I couldn't see the relationship between that and dust--at the point of origin, anyway. I could always see its relationship at the end point, of course.

But standing in the middle of the Arizona desert two weeks ago, it couldn't have been clearer: I am earth, born of earth.This is perfectly clear when I stand over a Reiki client as well. But now more than ever, after sitting, standing, and walking in the Arizona desert, I see: we are particles of earth, la terre. Terrestrial.

And with that understanding, so much organizes, so much makes sense. The balancing capacity and aligning effect of Nature; the inexplicable attraction I feel for lands, people, and cultures where life is lived close to the earth, in tune with the earth, in partnership with it rather than in Dominion over it; my draw closer and closer to her murmurings since the birth of Love's Freeway; the ailments and suffering of those not attuned to those murmurings.

In a conversation with my sister this past weekend, chicory came up--first as the primary ingredient in my mother's new favorite "coffee" drink, and then as the root that a friend harvests from various untamed tracts of land around the city.

"You know it, I think," I tell her. "Or maybe not, in suburban sprawl, I don't know. It's that "weed" with the tall spires and the powder blue daisy-like flowers scattered down them." She thinks maybe yes she does know it. But she is more fascinated by my friend's urban foraging.

"How does she do it!?"

" She digs up the roots, dries them, grinds them, and that's her coffee for the winter."

"No way!" she says. "How does she grind it?"

"I don't know - in a coffee grinder, I imagine. Or maybe a blender."

Maybe a VitaMix, my sister suggests. Maybe. Anyway, I tell her I've been thinking of trying it myself.

Our conversation stays with me later, for some reason. And then today, opening my community newspaper, I find a familiar face smiling out at me, alongside an accompanying headline that catches my eye:

"New cookbook greeted with rare herbs dinner" the page announces.

I own the cookbook, and I know its author, Chef Didi Emmons. I also knew the dinner, or thought so anyway, until I read the article. This was a post about an upcoming dinner, another promotional event following the palate-bedazzling book launch I recently attended:

"A bestselling local author's new cookbook about rare herbs will be welcomed with a special dinner featuring the unusual ingredients on Nov. 2..."

Rare? Unusual? I imagine Didi balking at this, moving to educate the journalist and any readers who might be intimidated or led astray by this perspective.

It sure does seem that in the modern world, a substantial portion of the population believes that food comes from the supermarket shelves. That those markets get that food from distributors. That the distributors get that food from... factories perhaps? My sister's coffee comes from Costco, along with lots else in her fridge and larder--including her Thanksgiving pies, she tells me.

My sister has never before thought of digging and grinding her own coffee beverage, and I do think she represents the rule and not the exception amongst metropolitan-area consumers. Some might shudder at the thought of ingesting something pulled from the ground of an abandoned city lot. For many, coffee at home comes from sanitary, vacuum packed Keurig K-Cups, and that's that.

There's no problem with this, per se. But there is the matter of all the fossil fuel it takes to produce, package and ship these individual servings of squeaky-clean coffee, and the matter of the refuse that results--as well as the matter of the planned obsolescence of the Keurig rigs themselves. And there's the matter of the nutrient loss in the packaging, handling, and shipping, the long delay from snip to salad. But even more concerning to me than all of that is the commercialization of natural resources. Maybe we're not all meant to be farmers, or urban foragers. And I'm sure there are plenty of good reasons to put our foodstuff in a central location where non-farmers can come to procure it by trade or by coin. But I daresay the balance has struck a point of imbalance when common--or even unusual-- weeds, plants and fruits the earth would offer aplenty if given half a chance are considered rare, scary or unsanitary.

When a gift turns commodity, things have gone haywire. To forget where our food comes from is to forget where we come from--to forget the true source of our life and nourishment. Gone in no time at all is the awareness that by preserving (or destroying) the integrity of the earth's land, air, and water, we preserve (or destroy) our very selves. It is not that one is linked to the other; rather, they are one and the same: terre and terrestrial. Earth and flesh, dust and dust.

Vive la Différence

Given the number of people I've known with extraordinary talents who are so-called "learning disabled" and struggled a lot with their schooling, I'm more inclined to think that it's the teaching that is disabled rather than the learning. Standardized teaching methods can't possibly work for all the students all the time. I know that there are private or charter or Montessori schools that no doubt allow for and encourage the various learning styles and needs of their various students. But it seems this hasn't been so much the case in public school systems--and even in colleges, apparently. In 20 years of teaching creative writing to adults, I've encountered too many a bruised and battered creative impulse.

To expect a human being to thrive where his or her individuality is supressed is like expecting the whole world to...well, just be at peace, already! A peaceful world it does not make when "Let's all get along!" means, "You do what I want." A peaceful world in those terms would have to require everybody wanting the same thing. That could never work. What would work?

"Abraham" has a suggestion:

The ultimate experience is everyone having their experience and launching their individual rockets of desire, and the Universe yielding to all of them simultaneously. And everybody not worrying about what anybody else created...then allowing what they are wanting. What a world that is, when there are endless desirers who are allowing the fulfillment of their own desires.

I am reminded of my time in a psychiatric halfway house--not in residence, but on staff. Eighty to 90 percent of our residents were gifted with one sort of artistic capacity or another. One was phenomenal on the piano, another was a fine painter and a poet, for example. One heard the voices of the trees: she was medicated for that. And here I stand a couple of decades hence, having heard the watercress express its joy at being present at a book signing event I recently attended.

We aren't cookie cutter creations to say the least. We each possess unique inclinations, perspectives, and visions. Would that we'd always nurture, applaud, cherish, welcome--and lead to, speak to, teach to--the uniqueness and individual gifts we're here to express.

Vive la différence!

No Blame

It is important to realize that in the world of energy, likes, not opposites, attract. If my boundaries aren't clear for example, I vibrate the energy pattern "I have wiggly boundaries," and should not be surprised when people step over them. The energy is "dumb," and that's important to remember as well.

"This horrible thing happened to me: you should have compassion!" one might cry, as if such things happen at random. Such things happen because energy is reading energy all the time, matching with what it matches and bypassing what it doesn't match. The so-called "law of attraction" is not personal; it simply does what it does, without playing favorites and without exceptions. Still, some jump to blame at hearing this:

"You're saying I attracted that?!"

Did [yesterday's Reiki] client attract his broken arm? Did he want his mother to break his arm? No. He did not want his arm broken, and he did not attract the injury. But his arm did, his energy did, unbeknownst to him. Clearing that [longstanding energy pattern], he is free from drawing injury to it again.

Excerpted from BostonReikiHealing.com. Read the full article here.

Go, Green!

I was thrilled to receive my first order of kidney support herbs and plant essences from my online pet store last week. But once I'd unpacked it, there was the matter of the dreaded peanuts. What to do? I knew they weren't recyclable. Right? I headed for the computer to double check and found this:

Traditional packing peanuts are made out of polystyrene and are now color coded to indicate the origin of the material they contain. Polystyrene takes hundreds of years to decompose in nature, so recycling it is key.

Mine were pure white, though. So I kept reading. Happily, I found a bright spot on the topic:

Some [peanuts] are now made from a vegetable derivative and closely resemble their plastic counterparts. If they disintegrate in water, they are made from vegetable matter.

So said eHow. Off to the kitchen I went to test mine. When I needed the weight of a spoon to keep one down, I wasn't hopeful. I picked up another peanut and tore it in two. It sure looked like plastic to me grimace, grimace. Visions of writing the online pet store swam in my head. I find it troubling when big merchants like Starbucks, for god's sake! don't recycle, when their practices seem environmentally unconscious.

I should have known better in this instance though, and wasn't I delighted to find that before long my sunken peanut had completely disintegrated--hooray! Suddenly I had a box of cornstarch on my hands, rather than nonbiodegradable, toxic landfill. (They'd said as much on their packing slip, incidentally, but I hadn't read it until after the fact. Note to self: assume the best, and read the fine print!)

Go Only Natural Pet! Go human ingenuity! I thank you, and the Earth thanks you.

Manifesting on Air

I will be a featured guest of Victor Venckus once again this Saturday (October 8) on the Expanding Awareness show from 10 - 11:00 a.m. Boston time. Tune in to 90.3 FM or online to listen. My esteemed teacher, Walter Ness--master of the energetic realm, gifted clairvoyant, performer and poet--and I will be sharing from our experience of working with the energy, and offering methods for immediate manifestation.

I hope you will join us--and maybe even chime in when Victor opens the phone lines in the latter half of the program. After Saturday, the show will be available via the wzbc archive for the next two weeks (until October 22). Once you enter the archive, simply scroll down to Saturday October 8th 2011, 10:00 a.m. Expanding Awareness, and click "Listen."

reprinted from BostonReikiHealing.com