[Oe List ...] Fwd: Knowing and loving Janice

[Nancy Lanphear]

Dear Jaime,

Thank you for your words of wisdom and strength.

Love,

Nancy

On Tue, Aug 6, 2013 at 5:49 PM, Jaime R Vergara <svesjaime at aol.com> wrote:

>   Alice of Sydney, Joyce of Maui, Del of Seattle, and Maya of Saipan, I
> trust you are keeping well.
>
>  Taking after Nancy's Song, in the Saipan Tribune one day in May:
>
>
>   OPINION
> Tuesday, May 21, 2013
>
>  A candle for Janice
>
>  [image: Jaime R. Vergara]
> By Jaime R. Vergara
> Special to the Saipan Tribune
>
>  American Janice of our acquaintance formerly taught in the Philippines,
> then married a Filipino who worked for Eastman Kodak in Rochester, New
> York. They acted as guardians (an organizational and functional category)
> to a social movemental force I was an active member of in the '70s and the
> first half of the '80s, operating out of Chicago, Illinois. We performed as
> a global servant (word used intentionally rather than the neutral
> “service”) force in human (economic, political, and social) community
> development.
>
> The group labored under a highly intense social engagement for almost
> three decades, then organizational inertia and entropy set in, but the
> group had enough selfhood that when it realized its meeting its own body
> needs replaced its passion for its mission, it intentionally dissipated out
> of being with the same lucidity as it did in its own analysis of the rise
> and decline of other organizations that preceded it. It was called Order:
> Ecumenical, for those of us who thought it was revolutionary to be *
> oikumene* when others were parochial in their religious orientations.
>
> Of course, being ecumenical grew old and irrelevant so fast that it is
> just as well the group disbanded.
>
> I've used the word “intentional” in two paragraphs now. A global network
> of "those who care" (nebulous but real) intentionally remained in touch
> while each expended one's self in one's own burst of light-into “a thousand
> light,” in elder George Bush's imagery. The group's program arm was
> actually referred to by the GOP of Orange County in U.S. congressional
> record as “communist,” so the group's dissipation into numerous lights in
> essentially GOP terminology is more descriptive rather than ideological.
>
> Janice and I exchange messages in a common listserv we are a part of once
> in a while, on the state of our being as well as our vocation. Slightly
> older than I am, she has just joined a few of my colleagues in bouts with
> chemotherapy. As has become customary in the last three years, I light a
> candle on my ledge to lift up the facticity of those in my circle of
> acquaintances continuing to be treasured and celebrative presence on the
> planet even in the midst of battling the onerous challenge of cancerous
> cells.
>
> I lit a candle for the late Ruth Tighe of Saipan, the honored maven of
> local commentators, until she gloriously downed her last swig of Scotch.
> She once commented that I eulogized her exit too early. She outlasted her
> doctor's prognosis a few years longer. She once bought me lunch at a new
> health food restaurant, driving to the place with her oxygen tank in tow.
> In her retinue, imminent death had no dominion.
>
> Our current five now includes Janice of New York joining four others from
> Seattle, Maui, Sydney, and Saipan. Specific as to who the candles
> represent, taken as a whole, they manifest our relationship to those
> considered by society to be “differently-abled” (including
> the "handicapped"). Being father to two autistic children, the act of
> regularly lighting candles are personally of deep significance.
>
> Janice's forte is music and the arts, and a colleague offered for her the
> lyrics to Cris Williamson's Song of the Soul, metaphors of the heart in a
> song. It turns out to be a song sung by an intentional community out of
> Seattle that was a result of my group's thousand light bursting. Part of
> the lyrics are:
>
>
> *Love of my life I am crying
> I am not dying, I am dancing
> Dancing along in the madness
> There is no sadness
> Only the song of the soul*
>
> Chorus:
>
> *And we’ll sing this song
> Why don’t you sing along
> Then we can sing for a long, long time
> Why don’t you sing this song
> Then we can sing along
> Then we can sing for a long, long time*
>
> For those who follow our reflections, they would not be surprised to see
> us latch into Williamson's imagery (which, we gather, may have been derived
> from a Walt Whitman poem). *I am not dying, I am dancing* fits the
> sentiment of one of our candle persons who went through chemo for nine
> months and is prone to ask, “Why are folks afraid to talk about dying?”
> That, and a small dynamo we know down Sydney way two-steps us to the great
> dance that is life!
>
> As a former Methodist clergy, one could say that we have had our share of
> sending off personages into the great unknown. While grief is a legitimate
> response to the reality of death, I used to conduct funeral services not
> for the dead but for the living. I did not hesitate to remind my audiences
> that the reason we grieve is not primarily for the departed as that the
> parting reminds us too vividly of our mortality. It is the affirmation of
> our finitude that is celebrated in the completion of a life!
>
> The song for Janice is also a song for all our lives.
>
>
> j'aime la vie
>
>  *Yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today, participate. In
> all, Celebrate!*
> *
> *
> *******
>
>  -----Original Message-----
> From: Nancy Lanphear <nancy at songaia.com>
>  To: Order Ecumenical Community <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net>
>  Sent: Wed, Aug 7, 2013 7:50 am
>  Subject: [Oe List ...] Knowing and loving Janice
>
>  Dear Ones,
>
> In hearing of Janice's illness, I sent her this song.  It has continued to
> be symbolic of her life for me, one who lived a life of spirit.  When you
> play this song, please imagine Janice waltzing to it's melody.  That was
> her response to the music when I sent it early in her illness.
>
> Continue to dance, Janice as we celebrate your life and death with
> gratitude!
>
>
>  ******
>
>  This really hits at the core of the sound of silence.
>
>  'Nite, Janice, good night!
>
>  See you all in the morning!
>
>
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>
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