[Oe List ...] Earthrise @ Retirement

Sat Jul 7 18:54:14 PDT 2018

Justin and I were there in spirit.

From: OE <oe-bounces at lists.wedgeblade.net> On Behalf Of isobeljimbish--- via OE
Sent: Friday, July 6, 2018 11:22 PM
To: Order Ecumenical Community <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net>
Cc: isobeljimbish at optusnet.com.au
Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] Earthrise @ Retirement

Hello again,

 Further word about the Service for Garnet:

There was a greet cloud of witnesses present.

Including colleagues from South Australia, southern New South Wales and other even more remote places.

Vale Garnet and remember Lis and her family in our country.

xx

Isobel Bishop

Sent from my iPhone

On 7 Jul 2018, at 2:46 pm, Isobel and Jim Bishop via OE <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net <mailto:oe at lists.wedgeblade.net> > wrote:

Dear colleagues, one and all,

Thank you for all  these marvellous writings.   Each one has a pearl that I  have touched and seen  within it a pure moment of truth.  

Words are such an extraordinary medium for enhancing the feelings, diverse emotions, and experiences we are all noticing on our personal spirit journeyings. 

I can only say from down here in Oz “ journey on, journey on’ 

I was so privileged to attend the Funeral of Garnet yesterday in Melbourne. We shared in his extraordinary life;  from his childhood to his  death and all that encompassed his  own crimson line. 

In peace and love,

Isobel Bishop. xx

Isobel and  Jim Bishop
isobeljimbish at optusnet.com.au <mailto:isobeljimbish at optusnet.com.au> 

On 7 Jul 2018, at 7:09 am, John Epps via OE <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net <mailto:oe at lists.wedgeblade.net> > wrote:

Thanks Margaret for a moving and profound statement.

John Epps

On Fri, Jul 6, 2018 at 2:54 PM, Margaret Aiseayew via OE <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net <mailto:oe at lists.wedgeblade.net> > wrote:

Since the United Methodist Church was going to kick me out into retirement next year, I decided to beat them to the punch and retire this year instead.  This decision was encouraged by the fact that I was experiencing the church as not very united, not particularly 
Wesleyan, and not reflective of the dynamic of the Church in history these days.  Since this decision, I had been praying for a door or window to open that would allow me to focus my next lifetime’s work on death and dying.  Just three weeks before the Iowa Annual Conference retirement ceremony I connected with the Death Midwife network and jumped through.

Now that might seem like the interference of magical thinking rather than a God Wink, but there is no doubt in my mind that final reality was ultimately engaged.  My stepmother, Dorothy Mae Appelgate died the next week.  The week after that, I heard that my college roommate and dear friend Dixie Binning had also died.  There was almost a weeks “respite” while we did Vacation Bible SchooI (for which I am too old) before learning of the deaths of Garnet Banks, Bev Salmon and Mamie Tucker.

I am beginning to wonder if the window I should have gone through may have been about grieving.  Not only have these five companions completed their journeys, most of my connections here are in need of reevaluation due to retirement.  It has been quite a kick in the seat of the pants.  “You want to go in a new direction?”  well let me help you take off.

I am interstitial space.  I have been working my way through a stack of books I want to read.  Most incredible has been the Lakota Way.  I close by attaching a long quote from it and this quote from Shubert Ogden:  “Whatever else may befall us and however long or short may be the span of our lives, we are each embraced in every moment within God’s boundless love and thereby have the ultimate destiny of endless life in and through the eternal.” 

Blessings, Margaret

When all is said and done there is only one truth that is unwavering.  It has endured and will always endure because it will stand unabashedly and without apology.  That truth is death, and it is the one that is avoided and most feared by American society.  But it should be the standard for truth against which all others are measured.  And we will find that nothing can compare with its honesty and faithfulness.

Death does not kill.  Disease, accidents, rage, old age, stupidity, among others are killers.  Death is only part of the process of life.

The truth about death is simple.  It will happen.  Nothing is more inevitable, no matter how vigorously we deny it or fight it.  Death will come for us regardless of how powerful, famous, rich, beautiful, influential, irreverent or lowly we are.  There is no way to fight it.  We can fight to live, but we will always lose the fight with death.  Thinking of death in those terms creates the illusion that it is an enemy, but it isn’t out enemy; it is, when all is said and done, our truest friend

The most profound and reassuring truth about death is that it is a part of life.  Life begins with birth and ends with death.  With no other journey you travel can you know how it will end.  We begin dying the moment we are born, which means living well is dying well.  That is the truest measure of any being.

The final—and perhaps the greatest—truth about death is that it is the great equalizer; it connects all living beings to its truth.  Every form of life shares with us the same journey that begins with birth and ends with death.  No one being or species, not the most powerful, nor the most arrogant, nor the wisest will ever alter that truth.

Excerpted from pgs. 121-123 of the Lakota Way by Joseph M. Marshall III.

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