Let This Be Our Prayer

Let this be our prayer, when we lose our way / Lead us to the place, guide us with your grace / To a place where we’ll be safe.

Doug was really the first to teach me about death and dying.  He was a young mental health worker, the same age as my eldest son, and we had lived in neighboring suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio at the time the boys were in high school and where they very possibly competed in athletics.  I grew to love Doug as a fourth son and was devastated when he was fatally injured in, of all things, a soft ball game.  His parents flew out from their home on the east coast and his friends and the people he worked with gathered around his comatose body in the hospital at different times, held his hands, talked to him, told him how we loved him, and prayed for his recovery.  He underwent three brain surgeries to decrease the pressure.  A strange thing happened to me then; strange for that time in my spiritual growth.  Doug appeared to me during the day; a third eye appearance if you will, and told me that he would not recover but would not be leaving us for another week or so as there was still work to do.  This sent me flying to see my spiritual counselor and I remember exactly my opening words as I walked into his office: “We need to talk about death.”  And so we did.  But what should I pray for?  Doug’s recovery?  He’d told me that he wouldn’t recover and he hadn’t responded to the surgeries in any visible way and yet I didn’t want to believe that he was going to die.  Still, I couldn’t deny that very real vision so I prayed for his mother and father, his sisters, his sweet fiancé, for his many friends, and for myself.  I spoke at his memorial service in Denver before his parents had the body shipped back home for burial.  That was twenty-seven years ago and I find myself in tears as I write this.

I’m not inclined to seek out  a psychic for communication with my loved ones on the other side but there are stories of those who’ve had that experience — incredible stories.  Dr. Mary Neal included one such story in her book, To Heaven and Back.  The wife of a former patient had driven miles to share her experience.  “She told me that in the time since her husband’s death, his spirit would occasionally visit their home and give her guidance.” 

“He told me that I (Mary) had been in a terrible accident and that he had asked the Heavenly Father if he could be one of those sent to save me.  As he described it to her; his request had been honored and he was so pleased to have been able to walk beside me and lift me up during that time.”  The wife had known nothing of Mary’s drowning in Chile and yet was “able to relate details of the scene that were only known to those present.”

I am learning about death and even more about the process of grieving.  I still have questions about prayer.  The one I probably use most is, “Thank you, God.”  I especially liked Mary’s inscription in my book and would have used it at the time of Doug’s transition, “May you always experience God’s constant and loving embrace.”  I know that he was held in the arms of the angels.  I don’t try to tell God what I want.  He/She knows.  Instead, I Will to Will Thy Will.  Let this be our prayer.

We ask that life be kind / and watch us from above / We hope each soul will find / another soul to love.    

                                                      The Prayer.  Carole Bayer Safer & David Foster

 

 

 

Love it is a Flower

Some say love, it is a hunger/ an endless aching need./ I say love, it is a flower/ and you it’s only seed.

During her Near Death Experience, physician Mary C. Neal (see December blog) went through a life review, but it was more than a linear, chronological life review flashing before her eyes.  In her book, To Heaven and Back, she writes: “I was shown events in my life, not in isolation but in the context of their unseen ripples effects.”   She continues, “Through this experience, I was able to clearly see that every action, every decision, and every human interaction impacts the bigger world in far more significant ways than we could ever be capable of appreciating.

Imagine the rippling effect of your every thought and action in just one day much less all the yesterdays.  It’s easy to see the ripple effect from people who have done extraordinary things during their life; the people we read about in history books, magazines; Nelson Mandela, for example. Our local little theater recently staged Little Women, the musical.  Louisa May Alcott’s character of Jo March continues to excite young women to follow their dream 146 years after publication.

December 28th would have been the Rose Man’s 78th birthday.  I invited the family over that day as my brother and sister-in-law were visiting from Colorado, and I braved the challenge of making the Rose Man’s signature dish, Beef Burgundy.  (It got stars of approval.)  I had prepared the family that I wanted to toast the Rose Man with wine that our eldest son had sent from Germany so that he would be with us in spirit(s).  Pun intended.  And then we gathered to watch the DVD of his life that had been shown at his memorial service.  It was an emotional experience for all and a perfect illustration of the ripple effect Mary wrote about.  You won’t read about the Rose Man in history books.  He was an ordinary man who lived an ordinary life; who provided for his family, raised three wonderful sons, loved his daughters-in-law, was devoted to his grandson and granddaughter, and who knows what other unseen ripple effects he had on other lives.

Mary Neal knew that there was purpose in her survival; that she was returned to life on earth for a reason, and she is clear on what those reasons were.  There is purpose for each of us; call it our soul’s purpose.  I can only guess at the purpose “I took birth for,” as author, metaphysician, Stephen Levine, would phrase it.  Do you know yours?

There’s already new growth on the rose bushes and pruning time is around the corner, but for now the roses in January are to be found in grocery stores.

And you think that love is only/ For the lucky and the strong./ Just remember in the winter/ Far beneath the bitter snows/ Lies the seed that with the sun’s love/ In the spring becomes the rose.  (Amanda McBroom/Bette Midler)