Wow, I didn't expect to start crying, when I signed on to accept the invitation of a friend of mine, Todd Hunsdorfer, to join his network....but I see in my own network, my father....who passed away this past October.

My father is a tremendous influence on my life, and I still feel his presence around. Even though I am sad, and I do let the tears fall when and where they may, I feel that our relationship has not ended, it has merely changed, as he has passed from living relative to ancestor. Our ancestors are always available to us, and fervently wish to be engaged by the living, as they have so much to offer us. I feel that they have a certain perspective from "the other side:" they can see where they have erred in their ways. They do not wish for us to blindly imitate them, but to LEARN from them, noticing the "bad" as much as the "good."

Only in the last few years had I come to appreciate just how much I take after my dad. I was an accidental conception, and my mother told me that he felt a great deal of turmoil and guilt about bringing me into the world. The first Club of Rome report on overpopulation had come out only a few years prior, and he thought it was irresponsible and ill-advised to bring another child into the world, although I would have never guessed it from how he regarded and raised me. From the moment he laid eyes on me, he was madly in Love, and I have never doubted his devotion to my well-being. This is indeed how I try to regard the population of this planet, with compassion and Love, accepting what is, instead of wishing things would be somehow easier, if only all of this inconvenient history had not happened.

Thinking of my father’s love for the world, which transcended love of self alone, and his sense of personal responsibility and connection, I am reminded of the strength of being in the world in a certain way. I often repeat to myself these lines from the poet Barbara Deming, when I find myself caught in frustration about this or that: "Will look at everything/ will not turn eyes down or sidewise./ For it is not for me to say where the hope lies/ where death is made life."

One more poem, Dad, for you....how ironic that I had just committed this one to memory in the months before you parted! Or perhaps not....I had premonitions, but did NOT want to look, I did want to avert my eyes.....as if the profound grief which all Love ultimately generates could somehow be avoided, or transcended. And yet, you are still here, with me, even more now in some ways. I Love You. Thank you for bringing me into this troubled world, and giving me this chance, as all of our ancestors, however anyone wants to judge them, has given us all this chance, this opportunity to CHOOSE LIFE. To choose to Love and accept the grief--and the transformation--that it will bring, without trying to look away, to run, to hide.....

After my father died, I, one night, in a dream,
Entered the ground in which they had planted him.
I found him, not asleep, but lying at anchor, propped
In a narrow boat, on his elbows, as if rising in bed.
The ribs of the boat were his ribs, old wood,
and his head, toward me, was its figurehead.
A tangle of matted roots, his hair
Had sprouted thickly through the air.
Air, earth, or was it water? All here
Was one dark but transparent matter.
In awe again of parting with him, I dropped
To my knees. Despair of meaning in our lives
Fluttered in me. I groped to touch him. Unreasoning
Hope then thrust my hands
Into the thicket sprung from his brows.
The floating shaggy web embraced me;
I felt my blood race back and forth to me along the vine,
And my breath stop; the sour strong perfume
Of upturned earth choked my lungs;
And in one harsh stroke
I felt my life renew, and woke.

--Barbara Deming, 1959