A Good Friday Prayer : For Lilia

It started out as one of those normal good Fridays : coffee , paper, and the dog outside for a whiff of the finally spring air while marking his ground. The sacred day was upon everything and everyone. The pilgrim didn’t realize how holy it was about to become

“We all mark our ground in one way or another,” the pilgrim reflected.

To watch the dog no one would surmise that cancer had invaded his physical being as he carefully observed birds dart from here to there. He and his human companion listened to what seemed to be the first songs of spring from a robin that anointed the scene from above.

For the first time in what seemed to be forever the sun rose without a cloud to hide her beauty as she commenced the gentle warming of everything in her sight. Yet, the pilgrim couldn’t shake the picture of from his head of the once majestic forest of his younger days that had been swept down by some angel’s broom. That which was needs to fall make room for new seeds and new stories to be lived and told.

“ Everything changes, everything says goodbye,” his poem turned song lyrics had become a mantra.

And so it began, while those chimes softly echoed with the assistance of some divine breath. Then just like that…the universe stood still… absolute, silent, pure, peace and grace-filled. That moment of solitude and solace was shattered by a distant call where a brotherly tear-filled voice proclaimed that their mother, who had insisted on going home, had finished her journey and moved on to just what she had desired.

For hours lightening flashes of a million memories constantly zipped through his head. His spirit draining his heart finally rested with the awareness that the sun had reached her peak. It wasn’t until a friend’s words, “Let love lead you into mystery,” that he understood .

And just like that again .... he awakened and it was Easter.

Do not stand at my grave and weep

I am not there. I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow.

I am the diamond glints on snow.

I am the sunlight on ripened grain.

I am the gentle autumn rain.

When you awaken in the morning's hush

I am the swift uplifting rush

Of quiet birds in circled flight.

I am the soft stars that shine at night.

Do not stand at my grave and cry;

I am not there. I did not die.

Mary Elizabeth Frye

FAITH

I want to write about faith,

about the way the moon rises

over cold snow, night after night,

faithful even as it fades from fullness, 

slowly becoming that last curving and impossible 

sliver of light before the final darkness.

But I have no faith myself 

I refuse it even the smallest entry.

Let this then, my small poem, 

like a new moon, slender and barely open, 

be the first prayer that opens me to faith. 

-- David Whyte

                 "A Time to say good-bye"

                        In Memoriam Lilia Avogadri Sobecki

 

 amdg