With Love, To Lin Wellford

Lin Wellford and her rock paintings

 

When a dear friend passes on, we feel a void. It’s as though the world is off balance without their physical presence on it. Lin Wellford was a friend to many, an adamant advocate for nature and wildlife, an exquisite artist, a fine human being.  I share with you excerpts from a note she wrote me last year, when my life partner died. By sharing our memories, the world comes into balance again. You are loved sweet Friend …

“I know you are well prepared to traverse the experience of sudden loss. Beliefs are so powerful and comforting and necessary. Having dealt now twice with the unexpected death of a loved one, I've grappled with the little memories and expectations of a future that must be gently laid aside. It's a major housekeeping task, in my mind not unlike the work of labor to bring another soul into life. Only harder in some ways because of all the history, good and not-so-good, the miles traveled, the moments shared. It feels to me like each small thing that pops up must be felt and honored and then cauterized the way a wound needs tending.  It's wearying work because it comes and goes and what may set off a 'grief storm' is hard to anticipate.

Thank you for guiding me towards ACIM, which is now part of my lifelong journey and something I am forever grateful for. I know you will make your way through this experience, that you are well loved and comforted by a huge and varied community.  Just wanted to tell you I am among that network of people who care about you and are sending peace and energy for the days ahead.” Lin 

“When your body and your ego and your dreams are gone, you will know that you will last forever. Perhaps you think this is accomplished through death, but nothing is accomplished through death, because death is nothing. Everything is accomplished through life, and life is of the mind and in the mind. The body neither lives nor dies, because it cannot contain you who are life. A Course in Miracles - The Lessons of Love

“If the belief in death were obliterated, and the understanding obtained that there is no death, this would be a ‘tree of life,’ known by its fruits. Man should renew his energies and endeavors, and see the folly of hypocrisy, while also learning the necessity of working out his own salvation.” Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 426:12-16

Withhold No Blessing

Photo Credit: Blake Lasater

Do you ever feel guilty about feeling good? I don’t usually, but recently I had a moment of regret for being happy and contented. A number of us had enjoyed an hour of musical meditation and then went out to lunch at a wonderful restaurant. On the way back to my cozy, safe home, probably to take a nap, I suddenly thought about the people of Ukraine and their frightening plight. Quickly I corrected this useless thought, realizing that it makes no difference how bad I feel, it’s not going to help anyone. It may remind me to help my neighbor, to do everything I can to extend Love to the world, but my guilt will not improve any situation. This realization helps me extend Love  and healing to everyone, knowing that my happiness and contentment allows me to do this. I pray that we may love so passionately that it spreads exponentially all over the world!

“He will withhold no blessing from it, nor limit it in any way. He will join to it all the power that God has given Him, to make each little gift of love a source of healing for everyone. Each little gift you offer to your brother lights up the world. Be not concerned with darkness; look away from it and toward your brother. And let the darkness be dispelled by Him Who knows the light, and lays it gently in each quiet smile of faith and confidence with which you bless your brother.” A Course in Miracles - T-22.VI.9:7-11 

This Need Not Be

Unknown photographer

 Dogfish by Mary Oliver (an excerpt)

You don’t want to hear the story

Of my life, and anyway

I don’t want to tell it, I want to listen

To the enormous waterfalls of the sun.

And anyway it’s the same old story – – –

A few people just trying,

One way or another,

To survive.

Mostly, I want to be kind.

And nobody, of course, is kind,

Or mean,

For a simple reason.

And nobody gets out of it, having to

Swim through the fires to stay in

This world.”

“If you cannot hear the Voice for God, it is because you do not choose to listen.” A Course in Miracles T-4.IV.1:1 

Renewal, Resurrection, Spring

 

Unknown photographer

Spring by Mary Oliver 

“Somewhere

a black bear

has just risen from sleep

and is staring

down the mountain.

All night

in the brisk and shallow restlessness

of early spring

I think of her,

her four black fists

flicking the gravel,

her tongue

like a red fire

touching the grass,

the cold water.

There is only one question:

how to love this world.

I think of her

rising

like a black and leafy ledge

to sharpen her claws against

the silence

of the trees.

Whatever else

my life is

with its poems

and its music

and its glass cities,

it is also this dazzling darkness

coming

down the mountain,

breathing and tasting;

all day I think of her -—

her white teeth,

her wordlessness,

her perfect love.”

“My resurrection comes again each time I lead a brother safely to the place at which the journey ends and is forgot. I am renewed each time a brother learns there is a way from misery and pain. I am reborn each time a brother’s mind turns to the light in him and looks for me. I have forgotten no one. Help me now to lead you back to where the journey was begun, to make another choice with me.” 

A Course in Miracles w-rV.in.7:1-5

Choose Again

Akseli Gallen-Kallela - Spring Night, 1914.

 “The chief beauty about time

is that you cannot waste it in advance.

The next year, the next day, the next hour are lying ready for you,

as perfect, as unspoiled,

as if you had never wasted or misapplied

a single moment in all your life.

You can turn over a new leaf every hour

if you choose.”

Arnold Bennett

“In every difficulty, all distress, and each perplexity Christ calls to you and gently says, “My brother, choose again.”

A Course in Miracles T-31.VIII.3.2

Here and Now

Grant Haffner - Into the night, 1978.

 “It is easy to mourn the lives we aren't living. Easy to wish we'd developed other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we'd worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga.

It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn't make and the work we didn't do the people we didn't do and the people we didn't marry and the children we didn't have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out.

But it is not lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It's the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people's worst enemy.

We can't tell if any of those other versions would of been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on.”

Matt Haig - The Midnight Library, 2020.

Do Atheists Pray?

A friend brought me an interesting question, which I’d never heard before. He said one of his friends had asked him to pray for them, that they had an incurable disease and they wanted his prayers. He explained to the person that he was an atheist and he couldn’t do that. They begged him to do so anyway. He called me wanting to know what to do, mainly wondering what to say to them in order to not hurt their feelings by refusing. I assured him it wasn’t necessary to believe in a big guy in the sky which would grant favor if he asked; that it was perfectly acceptable to tell his friend he would send good thoughts to the universe, or something along those lines. Anything which expresses love is a gift, and one which may be given in a multitude of ways. Honestly expressing love to those in need is a gift which circulates freely to them, back to us, and out to everywhere!

“Truth has no consciousness of error. Love has no sense of hatred. Life has no partnership with death. Truth, Life, and Love are a law of annihilation to everything unlike themselves, because they declare nothing except God.” Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 243:25-29