White Light

At my father's funeral my brother gave a long eulogy, which did not glamorize my father's life, but instead set bare the threads of courage and grace woven through his harsh existence.  It made us all cry, and especially for me, appreciate the tenderness he cultivated over the last 20 years. 
One of many memories I hang out with these days is the several years of family meetings we had when I was  teenager.  In these meetings my father read to us from the bible, spoke of his family history, fraught with anger, failure, and alcoholism, and encouraged us to pick up the pieces to create blessings out of them. 
When I was 12 my father stopped drinking and made a truly conscious effort that "the sins of the fathers" would stop with his generation.  He wished so much for the blessings of the fathers to be what got passed down, and so he began living those blessings.  He educated himself, talked to us, listened to us, and was present as only a turtle can be.  He often reminded me of a turtle, sitting there smiling, not judging me, just listening and talking late into the night...

In this upside down time of change and healing in my life now, I remember that the piece of the family are there to pick up, that the blessings are there for me to pass down.  The courage of my father is within me.  A potent image which comes to mind is that of a fractured heart, torn down the middle, lying on the ground.  From inside of this heart a white light begins to pulse, to grow,until it is so smelting hot that the suture is welded clean, the light is brilliant, and the heart is crystalline in its array of rainbows. 

Thanks dad, for loving yourself enough to heal and to grow, for loving me.  It is good to be here, in the vast warm California desert, a bright milky way looking down on us at night, soft pink hues cradling us in sunset, ocean breezes tumbling our hair, sunlight to tickle our feet and stitch us together. Ohm.