Janet and Jeanie
My sister Janet died in the middle of February. On the day she died, I opened to this poem by St. John of the Cross from the book, Love Poems From God:
My soul is a candle that burned away the veil;
Only the glorious duties of light I now have.
The sufferings I knew initiated me into God.
I am a holy confessor for men.
When I see their tears running across their cheeks and falling into His hands,
What can I say to their great sorrow that I too have known.
The soul is a candle that will burn away the darkness,
Only the glorious duties of love we will have.
The sufferings I knew initiated me into God.
Only His glorious cares I now have. (p. 305)
In the last days of her life, Janet was in a tremendous amount of pain as her bones disintegrated from bone cancer. With any movement, she would moan in pain. From brain cancer and the morphine, she really wasn’t able to talk much, and not like before. As I was with her, I would sometimes think, “Oh my gawd. I want to do all the inner and outer work and the healing and growing that I need to in order not to end up dying the way she is.” The beautiful thing about it was that she knew these stages were coming, and as Rumi says, she allowed herself to die before she died. She contacted everyone that she knew and cleaned up any lingering unfinished business or wounds. We didn’t have much to clean up and I always I felt so treasured. She saw the best in me, the beauty of my inner bring, and she forgave the rest or else gave it no energy. Ultimately, she did that for everyone.
I think that through this very powerful experience, Janet burned away huge amounts of karma and illusion. When I attune to her now, I see her in mists of golden and white light as she prays for her family, her loved ones, and all of humanity. She surrendered deeply to Love, dying to her old sense of separation, and she is now reborn into an awareness of what Rev. Donald said in his prayer on Sunday, “I now know that all is Love.”
With her death and transition, something new was born in me as well. It is a deep desire and commitment to love and to see the highest good in everyone; to forgive, so that I can be free to let Love Itself flow through me in the way that my sister Janet learned to do. She truly took a “Leap into Love,” surrendering everything, and as a result, experienced who she really is and Life Itself. For her modeling of that to me, I am deeply grateful. I just hope to do it without going through what she did, but instead, clean up and transform my life every time I remember to remember that it is all Love. In that way, I hope to take on “the glorious duties of Love” that St. John of the Cross wrote about in his poem. I want to do it by choice, without being faced with a terminal illness as she was.
It is not easy to even contemplate, but through her, I can experience the glorious end result. For this parting gift, I give my deepest thanks.
--Jeanie Underwood
I Am Love
I am Love. Will you let me in?
To have me in your heart is to receive an essential element of life. Just as your lungs need air – you need Love.
I am Love and I’m not blind. I love you as you are today, unconditionally – a precious soul in a perfect life. I am God’s gift to you. Accept and trust me and allow yourself to take me in without fear that I will leave.
I make life worth living and inspire you to reach out and perpetuate the eternal connection with others so you all shine like candles in the darkness of doubt, fear, loneliness and uncertainty.
To express your unselfish best unites and transforms lack and limitation into all possibilities – ever growing, ever rising – miraculously new in every moment. This is Love.
Love is the key that opens channels blocked with resentments. It brings the fences down and opens ways to see anew without boundaries. Love grants wishes for forgiveness and makes dreams of a better tomorrow come true.
Can you stand and sing of beauty, filling empty spaces with your own vibration? This is Love.
Imagine what it would be like to see only the best in everything. Without judging, analyzing, and defining people, places, situations and things as positive and negative, simply make the decision to lift the things you do not understand about yourself and others up for the Sacred explanation, for it expresses solutions through Love.
Notice and feel the numerous moments in your day when I lift your spirits, your thoughts and your gait with kind and encouraging words and random acts you perceive as miraculous strokes of good luck.
I am Love and I am never wasted. I am never offered with limits and conditions. If care is given selfishly, I’m not there.
You cannot hear a child’s laughter without me being there. I bring the sound of angels singing to the tune of child’s prayer, for I am Love.
I reside in the unprotected layers within your heart, stirring emotions you thought were hidden under all your masks and shields. Even if you hurt, I am there.
My essence will shine brightly through your soul in every unselfish moment and tender expression of kindness. When you show Love, the angels dance to the rhythm of your heart and blessings abound.
So, Beautiful Child of God that you are, make this your quest – to express unconditional love and grant forgiveness; to live humbly with gratitude and joy in your heart; and graciously accept the gift of God’s rich blessings.
I am Love, God is Love and so are you!
-- Serina French
Where I Look From Determines What I See
Say what?
When riding to a work site with a colleague, he was bemoaning how nothing was working the way he wanted it to and how unfair life was. It was his favorite litany, his well-worn groove, describing how he experienced his life. The next thing I knew, a sparrow fatally dive-bombed itself into the windshield of our rental car. Startling to say the least, it reinforced my colleague's perception about everything wrong in his life.
While stopped at a red light today, I saw a single dandelion growing in a sidewalk crack. It was perfectly formed, tall and proud. Glorious. It brought to mind an incident with the homeowners association (HOA) where I used to live. Texas was having a drought then too; we were on water restrictions.
One November day, I got a nasty-gram from the HOA about the weeds in my front flowerbed. I looked. It did need weeding, so I did. In December I got another nastier nasty-gram on the same topic. That letter I ignored, because I had weeded and thought it looked pretty good for a flowerbed in winter. In January, I got a very irate nasty-gram which said that they were going to send someone out to weed my flowerbeds, and send me the bill, because obviously I was ignoring them.
So I went outside and looked again, determined to see what they saw. Eventually it hit me. They weren't recognizing my flowers as flowers because they were different than everyone else's flowers. What I was recognizing as native plants, they saw only as nasty weeds. I went inside crafted a letter, letting them know I wasn't ignoring them, I had in fact weeded in November upon receipt of their first letter. I also explained that I had worked with a horticulturist who specialized in native plants that could prosper in the absence of supplemental irrigation, since we had been limited in our water usage for a while. I offered to have this horticulturist speak with them about plantings that would be better for the environment, if they were interested. The silence deafened.
I also recognize the truth of this viewpoint when it comes to interpersonal situations. If I believe someone is basically on my side, then I am more likely to take any apparently challenging comments as useful and if I believe someone does not have my best interest at heart, I am much more likely to take it badly. Its just human nature, and at the same time, its a decision over which I have huge choice about.
As Master Teacher Jesus said, and Holmes so often quoted, "it is done unto you as you believe". It is this perspective that I strive to look from and my belief about the world and how it works that determines what I see in my world.
Is this true for you, too?
-- Janis