Sudden Passing

Dear Friends,

Today is the Spring Equinox and the eve of the full moon. Hallelujah! I am excited to come out of hibernation and begin communicating regularly with you again. It has been a while since we last connected. Many interesting and dramatic changes have occurred in my life since I began writing to you nearly two years ago. Throughout the scope of that time, I have continued to enjoy incredible, amazing, and serendipitous experiences, replete with all of the joy and pain that inevitably accompanies those. I have been to the heights and fallen to the very depths of my being as I open to the possibilities with which I am repeatedly gifted while attempting to open and awaken my heart and mind. (Admittedly, this exercise is done sometimes with valor, often with clumsiness, and frequently with trepidation.)

There have been moments of bliss when I believe I have “arrived”– thinking at last I will never again suffer the piercing pain of life, which can bring me to my knees–this pain that can threaten to stifle and stunt the very growth I have been attempting to develop. Only to find that it will and does continue to penetrate the ever widening spirit-door into the secret garden of my soul.

Whack, my father dies suddenly. Then the editor, Winnie Shows, with whom I worked closely for over two years, was taken by the cancer that had carved away at her breasts and body for so long. Those two, my dad and Winnie, were tenacious fighters–strengthened by the work they were passionate to continue pouring forth, which seemed to sustain them–even when it looked like their physical bodies were literally wasting away. Still they pressed on. My father was 91 years old when he died and while I was halfway across the globe in India when it happened, I would imagine that he sat at his desk just prior to his final visit to the hospital. Winnie, I am told, continued sharing her creativity, talents, and gifts until the very end.

And so what to make of the sudden passings of these two extraordinarily important people in my life–albeit in quite different roles?  Ah, another weary reminder of the impermanence of things, however cruel and unrelenting the constancy of change can appear at times.

But I know there is more– so much more to this. For even while I feel and feel deeply the sadness that soaks me to the core, if I can broaden the aperature of my vision just a little, I am certain to notice a contrast to those feelings however faintly fuzzy and out of focus it might appear.

What about the enhanced relationship with my brother, his sons and their children? What, about the extraordinary lesson that Winnie taught by leaving as she did. I think I always believed that she would be there ready to bounce something off of or share another thought. How utterly ironic that it was Winnie in the end, who showed me about the folly of forever–the  essence of the message in the book, Happily Ever After Right Now, of which she had been such an intimate and significant part. I thought I knew the lesson. I thought I understood about impermanence. And today, once again, I humbly admit, I am still learning and probably will be forever a student of this fascinatingly perplexing subject as long as I am drawing breath. 

And so this pain, fully experienced, continues to do its work, which is to pierce, probe, and puncture. Our work is to feel the wounds to the extent that we are able, so that we can recognize what will be necessary to bring about the healing we are all so eager to enjoy.  If we remain numb to that pain, the wounds will ultimately fester and putrefy. On the other hand, if we do what is necessary for healing to occur (not always easy to be sure), we will ultimately grow strong in the broken places. Yes.  And the very injury which once caused so much suffering and anguish, will eventually be replaced by a bough in our hearts where the singing bird will come.

Thankfully, I have been gifted with a few boughs and birds already, and so I can trust, that the shock of these newly raw and tender ”sudden passings” will eventuate in another singing bird or two. Of course, I will have to keep feeling it all in order for this phenomenon to occur. Once again, the feeling is the cue that will lead me to the cure. And as I am so led, the people, healers, places, circumstances, and events will (and do) continue to show up. A miracle? Maybe. Though I suspect all of this is much more normal than miraculous. All we have to do is to be open to believing that it can be so.  

Rest easy. It is always better and easier than we think.

Love, Luann

www.luannrobinsonhull.com I www.happyrightnow.com

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On Happiness and the Holidays

Often during this time of year, I am reminded of Christmases past during which my best friend, Darlene, and I spent many hours cranking up our funding requests for a local foster children’s organization. I will never forget what she once wrote in a letter requesting help back in 1981. “Christmas is a time when abundance rejoices and want is keenly felt.” It was a sobering statement, and inspired me to take a personal inventory. What more might I do to help others in that “want is keenly felt,” state, and how could I offer my support in a way of meeting them where they were without trying to fix them or make things better? How could I just join them, while offering my love and concern?

Recently, I returned from an intensive 21 day process/retreat in India, where participants were rigorously guided through a series of exercises/meditations to assist in removing emotional charges, including feelings of fear, separateness and insufficiency, while guiding us more into states of peace, compassion, and love. At the end of this experience, we were each initiated with the ability to offer the blessings with which we were repeatedly endowed during our time there. And to our great delight, many of us are now giving those oneness blessings to others to help them along in their process.

 On the eve of my departure from India, I answered the call I never really believed I would receive. It was from my son, Stephen, who compassionately launched the conversation with, “I don’t know how to tell you this….” The message which followed was that my father had died. Immediately after hearing the news, I was embraced by the love of what seemed to be a hundred fathers and mothers. People came from every corner to show their care and concern during this impossibly difficult time of loss and change. They prayed with me; they shared with me; they held me; they provided prayer circles in honor of my father; they turned down my bed; and stroked my head, and much more.

The days that followed were a surreal blur of travel, funerals, and family. I went straight from India to my father’s eulogy, in which I had no part, save my insistence that a song from my great nephew be included. Further, the last time I had seen Dad, he was in his perky yellow trousers, waving good bye to me as I boarded the plane. This time, he was boxed up in a brown, walnut casket.  

There were extraordinary moments of relief from this intolerable nightmare, like when I read the card accompanying a dozen white roses (Love from your sisters in room 11, India). The love had followed me halfway around the world. And then there was the long visit with a lifelong, treasured friend, Mary, who has an uncanny knack for making you believe you are the only one who matters. Ya… the love was everywhere. All I had to do was notice. 

As can often be the case following a spiritual intensive, despite all good intentions, you can be disillusioned upon “re-entry.” Alas, humanity is where humanity is. People, including you, continue to do what they do. Just because you went “off planet” for a few weeks, doesn’t completely immunize you from a world out of whack. It is how you deal with that out of whackness that will determine your peace or misery.  

As always, I have had some sobering reminders that this humanity of ours hasn’t quite reached the lofty goal I share with a multitude of others: That one fine day, we will all see ourselves as simply individuations of the ONE Source, which connects us. And that duality, competition, greed, insufficiency, fear, separation, wars (both personal and global), along with other atrocities, will only be distant memories of our ancient, primal past.

What to do in the meantime? Well, maybe we could start with finding a person or group, whose life/lives may be in that “want is keenly felt” place, and realize the joy of sharing friendship. Maybe we can emulate my friend Mary’s knack for making them feel as though there was nothing more important than being there with them right there and then. Ya…I think that is what happiness and the holidays means to me. Thank you, Darlene and Mary, for the reminder.

Happiness!

Love, Luann

www.luannrobinsonhull.com OR www.happyrightnow.com

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