[Dialogue] The Newkirk family

[Lynda Cock]

  _____  

From: Lynda Cock [mailto:llc860 at triad.rr.com] 
Sent: Sunday, February 03, 2013 6:00 PM
To: 'ljknutsen at gmail.com'
Subject: The Newkirk family


Dearest Newkirk family: Linda, Patricia, Jim, David, Lisa and families,
 
The letter from Linda via Carol Crow really rocks our being as we were
completely unprepared for this kind of news about your mother.   
Diane and I had hoped to make a spring trip to WDC to visit dear colleagues
and to visit our old haunts. Sadly, any trip now will be too late
to visit with Helen.  We send our heartfelt care and sympathy to you all at
this sad but sacred time of saying good-byes to an amazing woman of service,
strength
and determination, a dear colleague, and your wonderful loving mother and
grandmother.  
 
The past year for us has also been a journey toward "home" with our dad.  He
died this past August a couple months after his 98th birthday. 
Your stories of traveling sound so familiar to what we experienced with Dad.
Along with "Are we there yet?" and other traveling stories, 
one of my favorites was his saying to me that he didn't know what to wear in
heaven, followed by his telling me that I could find some
brand new underwear in his chest of drawers that he wanted to put on now.
Thank you, Lord, for laughter in the midst of our deep sadness.   
 
We were assigned to the Washington, DC house about 1972.  Bill and Helen and
Lisa were continuing on another year there and greeted us
with much fanfare and celebration. I can hear Helen and Bill's great cheery
chuckles as they showed us around  assuring us that we were in a great
place.
The Religious House at that time was in the old Carmelite Monastery on Rhode
Island Avenue.  The damp cracked plaster in  the basement was 
covered with burlap, creating a warm collegium space along with the colorful
felt symbolic banners. We were in the middle of the Local Church Experiment
then,
and had lots of visitors who were always welcomed warmly and graciously. 
 
I remember the wonderful homey meals that Helen oversaw for us. She was a
marvelous cook whose cranberry meatloaf is a trade mark of her specialties
of making even our simple fare look inviting and taste delicious. 
 
The Religious House was right next door to a big cemetery and in a rather
run down part of town.  One afternoon Lisa went up to their upstairs
apartment 
to find a young men there going through things and with her flute in hand.
My memory is that Lisa gave him a swift kick and grabbed her flute as he
jumped out the window onto the porch. Many folks would have packed up and
left after that kind of incident, but Helen and Bill took it right in stride
as one of the kinds of things that could happen when one decided to live
among the downtrodden.  Lisa demonstrated her strength and courage there
also.  
 
The Religious House was packed with families and children which Helen with
her great Motherhood experience, cheerfully and graciously understood. 
We spread out and opened the Richmond House and the Baltimore House with our
gifted staff of persons who were great recruiters, cooks, enablers and
teachers of RS-I and children's RS-I.  Helen and Bill's gracious presence
and standing in WDC always opened doors for the ICA in higher places, which
was a great help as we began looking for a bigger and more suitable location
for our Religious House in the nation's capital.  What a team they were.  We
are so grateful for the time we spent with them. 
 
They were truly the people of the Yes to the Way Life Is.  I know that same
spirit is carrying Helen now as she continues her transition and
transformation into
pure spirit.  We celebrate her life/their lives so freely given in service
to the world.  We hold you all in our hearts as you begin to release her to
the Great Beyond during these last sacred days with her.   
 
With care and gratitude for our families' journeys together. 
 
Lynda Cock (and John)
Greensboro, NC 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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