Words fail me here, but it was something like watching the cosmic balance tip for everyone present, with harmony asserting itself as the only reality.  It wasn’t just the dolphins.  It was perfect weather despite a bad forecast; perfect arrangements despite misunderstandings; and the perfect poem gifted to me by a friend who didn’t even know my need.

I can’t explain it clearly.  But it feels like a “tipping point” in my Scientific understanding!

Last Sunday I participated in an amazing memorial gathering.  Talk about Life abundant!

The person who passed was a dear friend, my yoga teacher for 15 years or more.  She always taught beneath a sign that said:  “Reverence is the nature of my love.”  And reverence is exactly what she felt for each student.  She bowed to our “borrowed light.” She showed us our sacred nature.  She taught me how and why to love myself - my real child-of-God self - and she did the same for many, many others.

So when our teacher ended up in intensive care on the darkest day of the year, more than a dozen students met in tense clusters under the bleak hospital lights.  For years we’d been connected, but always through her.  Now we searched each other’s eyes and began to find . . . unexpected treasures.

She passed under our loving watch.  We planned the memorial together.  One day, in a flurry of emails about food and décor, I started to hear a faint new heartbeat.  It was barely perceptible, and fragile yet.  But it felt like a new community preparing to be born.

Then Sunday, on our teacher’s birthday, 150 people gathered at the edge of a vast salt river that dazzled in the afternoon sun.  On the beach we formed a V like flying birds and did a “moving prayer” - a slow, yogic dance choreographed by our departed friend.

As if summoned by our single, primitive drum, several dolphins appeared near shore and began to mirror the humans in their own joyful dance.  Through an hour of solemn ceremony, the dolphins leapt and dove and gaily gyrated their tails - none too patient with our mourning.

My heart was with the dolphins.  It was our friend’s birthday, yes. But also the birth of this new community, born in the light of the Love she so brilliantly expressed.  I said so to the gathered group, then read this benediction: http://hirak.blogspot.com/2011/04/ee-cummings-thank-you-god-for-most-this.html

More than a dozen people rushed up afterwards to say:  “YES!” and “I feel healed!”  We all laughed and gorged and spent hours more enjoying beach, bonfire, music . . . and one another.

Honestly, I’ve never experienced such a perfect conspiracy of the “divine ‘Us.’”  Women and men.  Dance and poetry.  Sun and sea and sky.  The dolphins asking that we remember our joy.  We did indeed accept that invitation - together, as a community.

Thank you so much for being here!

I’m on a road trip with my best friend – my husband – right now, and yesterday we took the scenic route.  300 miles on the Natchez Trace Parkway through Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi, and all along the way I marveled at the late-Fall trees, rich and rust-colored, that lined the Trace and the gentleness of the journey.  It gave me time to think over our first year of marriage and how it has been the epitome of abundant living, even during times when the voices around us were whispering that life was anything but…

Abundance is fullness and plenty, and something in the word always makes me think of having a such an overflow of blessing that you just can’t help yourself from sharing it.  When Jay and I married last September, we felt that way – that “our cup”, our lives, were so full that we couldn’t wait to share it and the life-lessons we have been learning with the world.  Holding that thought in your heart is a powerful way to live.  Opportunities have opened up this year for us to do all kinds of amazing and stretching things – record our first CD, perform at the Annual Meeting of the Christian Science Church, work together on a 2012 Presidential Campaign, and so many other big and small adventures that I could go on forever. The basis of this abundant year has been Christ Jesus’ gift of guidance that life be lived abundantly – all blessings shared in the knowledge that Life, God, is All-in-all – that life, good, IS abundant for all of us.

But what has been most noteworthy in all of this is that living Life (another way to say it would be “reflecting God as the image and likeness of Life”) abundantly – without reservation or fear or selfish interest/worry – has meant that that abundant feeling didn’t crash or drain away even when my wonderful Dad passed away suddenly 6 months after our wedding.

Jay and I, and our family, learned deep lessons during that time – and since.  We learned that it was the very abundance of life – absolutely abundant love and care expressed by our whole community – that lifted us from darkness to light, death to life, against all odds.

Have you ever wondered how to respond when something terrible happens to a friend or a neighbor – or, heck, to a total stranger? One of the most prized lessons I learned from this experience is that you respond with abundant love.  You bake them dinner, you come and help them serve all of the family and friends who arrive in town, you pour your love into a card and then include a laminated poem like “Death is Nothing At All” in it so the family can carry it around and lean on it like a staff, you sweep their walk, you just silently hug them and then go buy them groceries,  you love, you love, you love in any and every way you can think of.  The abundance of care and grace and kindness that flooded our home after my Dad passed was a resounding confirmation that Life is abundant and that death is less than nothing.   In the abundance of eternity, Dad continues living abundantly, and so do we.

We had a huge celebration of life for Dad (I call him “Papa).  I worked on the program and with the help of my husband, his mom, and many other family and community members, we greeted that day in this beautiful hall and waited for Dad’s friends and family to arrive.  There were 250 seats.  We stood at the doors, ready to hug everyone that came in. And they came.  They just kept coming, and coming, and coming until there was standing room only, 3 people deep along the walls.  We were in awe to see the results of Dad’s abundant living of compassion, of care, of gentleness, and of humor roll in on waves upon waves of friends, family, and acquaintances who came to celebrate life with us.  There must have been 500+ people gathered in that hall by the time we started. There was such joy in that room that people marveled at how full they felt after the New Orleans jazz band marched us all out at the end.  It was beautiful.  It taught me that the real power in life is not held by those who are aggressive or driven by material interest, but by those who live life abundantly – who live kindness, openness, and gentleness with such a bountiful sense that no one is ever left out. That is my Dad, and though, as one card we received read, “his life is different now”, we know that he continues to reflect God in all of those wonderful ways that he always has.  His abundant life continue to inspire us daily.  Our cup continues to run over with goodness.

It’s a funny thing to read this Radical Act and to have my first thoughts be of our year of marriage and my Dad’s passing, but both have taught me so much about what it really means to live life.  Living abundantly is the only way to really live.  Each of us can do it, I promise. In fact, I’m certain that it is how we’re meant to live – thinking of others even when you’re worried about yourself, continuing to listen attentively even after your phone beeps cause it received a text, welcoming a traveler (like me and Jay!) into your home on a moment’s notice, committing time to civic engagement and the progress of your country, praying for others when your heart sees their need, and dropping everything you’re doing to love another person when their world suddenly turns.  If you live this way, listening for God’s guiding in each step, oh, what a Life you have ahead of you to live.

I was listening to my iPod when I read it. Some teen age friends of mine loaded it with songs. Somehow it got on the mode where their songs were all mixed up with my old favorites. It was kind of surprising, but soon my toe was tapping. My arms were lifting in a woot woot wave. I was up and dancing.

I realized that I have rhythm!

And rhythm is beautiful and powerful and all around and ever continuous. And even if I am between life phases I am safe.

A friend pointed me to Psalm 8 where the writer says “I look up at your macro-skies, dark and enormous, your handmade sky-jewelry, Moon and stars mounted in their settings. Then I look at my micro-self and wonder, Why do you bother with us? Why take a second look our way?”  The Msg.

Isn’t it because we are all “an active portion of one stupendous whole”? MBE My. 165:16

As I was dancing I felt part of the harmony of the moon and stars and of your “glittering” tides and everything and everyone.

Autumn is here… another season. I am cozy in its warm colors and warm cider and warm fires. And rich in rhythm.

Last Sunday we went to the beach, to a quiet  cove we love.  She bobbed in her lime green inner tube, begging me to spin her round and round.  I obliged while she shrieked and giggled.  Then we looked up and found the sky filled with Monarch butterflies,  dozens of them.   Unusual, because the spray the government uses here to control mosquitoes leaves Monarchs dead in the grass.

Butterflies are the universal symbol of transformation.  Each goes to sleep a lowly worm and wakes up a winged beauty.  And Monarchs — true royalty.

Blue cove, blue sky, my daughter in her happy orbit, tawny wings everywhere like confetti.  In that moment we were truly rich — graced by Kings and Queens of possibility.