On May 7, my dad died. He was 92 and had a long "struggle with an angel" - like the man
who wrestled with the angel in Rilke's poem - to get to his last breath. He was an amazing person...humble, humorous, holy. I am so unbelievably lucky to have such a father.
who wrestled with the angel in Rilke's poem - to get to his last breath. He was an amazing person...humble, humorous, holy. I am so unbelievably lucky to have such a father.
My siblings and I have been working
together to clear out his home which he shared with my mom, his wife of 53 years,
until she died in 2012. They were children of the depression and they were
hoarders, like many others who grew up during that era under the constant
anxiety that their parents would lose the farm/ the homestead / everything. Mom
and Dad's house was JAMMED full of everything: bags and boxes of memorabilia, gadgets,
scrap paper .... you name it. There were boxes full of bags and bags full of
bags. As my sisters and brother and I worked to clear it out, we felt respect
and tenderness. Clearly their life had become overwhelming.
And yet.....
Even in the middle of the three-centered
and overwhelming mess of his aged body, mind and home, Dad continued to be a
life-long devotee of the Divine Mother. He LOVED
her. She was his Satguru, his True
Teacher.
(Satguru is a sanskrit word meaning an enlightened saint whose purpose is to guide one to Love). And
She was his ishta devata (another sanskrit word meaning "cherished deva / divinity).
Dad’s devotion continued to expand
and grow brighter – like a waxing moon - even within the clutter of the dogma of the church which claims
that one should only worship Jesus, must not worship the Divine by any other
name or face and so must not worship Mary but only honor her as a pointer to
Jesus. (But even in the church different priests have different degrees of dogma-itis. For example, I recently heard a Jesuit priest address an opening prayer at a Gonzaga graduation event to "Mother God").
Well, regardless of whether church dogma condoned it or not, Dad worshiped Mary. Really nothing
could have changed that. Towards the end I would sit with him, we would pray
the rosary and he would gaze at her image hanging on his wall with such open-hearted
longing and love. It blew me away. After he had his brain hemorrhage and was
only days away from death, his mind was “off-line" but his fingers
continued to move the beads of his rosary. Wow. The level of his devotion to
his ishta devata was embroidered into
his tissues.
Tomorrow - July 8 - is the celebration called Guru Purnima - the full moon
of the guru. It is a day of devotion and gratitude for the existence of
teachers of all kinds, including Sat Gurus – such as the Blessed Mother Mary was /is to Dad. The
grace of the guru principle is said to be a thousand times more active on the
day of Guru Purnima than on any other day.Dad would not have been interested in Guru Purnima - except in so much as it was interesting to me. He had his own Guru Purnima holidays: Holy days devoted to Mary.
But for me this is a wonderful day of remembering my teachers and my Guru and my dad. I will be thinking of the big full moon light that is my dad and his devotion to the Divine Feminine in the form of Mary, a devotion that continued to expand and wax brightly even as his house and body and mind became incapacitated and overwhelmed. Jai Guru!
Thank you for such loving, inspired writing. Especially dear was your description that "his devotion was embroidered into his tissues". I'm sad for your loss, but heartened by your love for your father.This is Victoria Dickinson even though it says Fish Folks - default setting
ReplyDeleteThat is absolutely beautiful Karen.I sure miss your imagery and voice. I could hear it so loud through this journal entry.
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