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
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(a)songaia.com>
To: Order Ecumenical Community <oe(a)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!
