ELDER WRITES, ELDER SINGS

SOULS AND SAINTS

One year ago I wrote a piece to celebrate Dias de los Muertos.  During the month of October our elder community said farewell to Connie Mahoney, a very moving and powerful force woman for the health of our planet, peace and justice issues.  She and I were creative collaborators for many special Earth Elders programs and seasonal rituals in Sonoma County, California. I believe she is still co-creating with me with energy and support for my very first children's book, to soon be released.  I wrote Souls and Saints to share my own experiences and reflections on death and remembrance.

To honor who has lived is a way to remember.  Death is a subject to be silent about.  The cultural ritual is not usually recreated in the spirit of anniversary.  To again and again bring back those who have left us, seems maudlin to most.

The saintliness to be discovered as a higher state for some and not for others.  No statues, no holy blessed medals or a place in the Ordo for your own Feast Day, for my grandmothers , for my sisters Anne and Julie, for my ex-husbands, for my mother and father.

In 1975, I learned of a medium, Trixie Oddingham,  from England, would be here in Palo Alto, sponsored by the Noetic Sciences Institute.  At the urging of an acquaintance we were encouraged to make an appointment with her.  Both my husband Richard, myself, my son Daniel, age 17 and Skye, only eight months old, made the trip to hopefully be in touch with family members from the other side.  It would be my first experience with the power of channeling and the medium as intermediary.  It was a daytime appointment.

We were invited, except young Skye, to enter a room where she was sitting.  She did not rise, we
We sit, she asks for our first names.  She closes her eyes.  We are in her presence and quickly she begins to tell us who has arrived to communicate with us.  First, my Grandma Tepedino, along with Aunt Anna, heer daughter to present me with roses.  My father then arrives speaking French, accompanied by a brown clad Franciscan monk.  He criticizes Trixie for her poor French pronounciation.  My father explains that he is helping and counseling young men who are arriving. Young male students were his specialty during his teaching career. 

An Native American guide also enters for me.  Richard's grandfather visits with words of praise for me and his approval for us being together despite my being eighteen years his senior, a May/December marriage.  He describes me as "an intrinsic piece of gold!"  My son's father, who took his own life in 1971, surprisingly arrives communicating that "he did not mean to do it" and that he has learned the whole Jesus thing truly exists, which was always a burning quest for him as a non-orthodox Jewish man.

In those days I was a total vegetarian/vegan living a very intense at home life with our new child Skye.  My sensibilities for communicating in psychic circles was at its height. I was already spacey, floating and very receptive both in awake and dream states.  I had been contacted before by people and loved ones on the other side.

It was an unusual outdoor setting in Maine, where for the first time I heard a voice in the woods call my name.  It was my son's deceased father, who had been gone for six months.  His ghost, ethereal body was very present on into the night inside our A-frame home under the loft where his sons slept.  He continued to be around the next day, making it neccessary for me to go out and stand on a rock in an open clearing to speak outloud to him  I reassured him that all was well, that Josh and Daniel would be fine and safe and were having an adventure experience with nature and a self-sufficient lifestyle.  I urged him to leave with my blessing.

As I am writing, I am reflecting that I am sure, knowing him, he must have been really concerned about our decision to leave Florida, buy land in Maine wilderness, build our own home in a setting and lifestyle he would never have been able to handle or choose.

This has been an intense period of time, with the passing of Connie and her memorial gathering to absorb and process, like a perpetual day with the dead had happened for me in a very personal way, accented by the impending passing of my sister Julie, which did occur on August 23rd, 2012.  I have been sufficiently immersed for this present season of remembrance.  I know what it is like to be watched, to be protected and prayed for.