loss – Beguine Again

Sep52018 by Jamie DedesNo Comments

JOY – We have lived! We have loved!

Grief, Joy, Poetry

“It is best as one grows older to strip oneself of possessions, to shed oneself downward like a tree, to be almost wholly earth before one dies.” Sylvia Townsend Warner, Lolly Willowes or the Loving Huntsman [recommended] On May 28, 2014 our Group for people with life-threatening illnesses celebrated the lives of those who have already passed on. I was unable to attend the memorial service due to bronchitis, but I celebrated all those people and two of my family with the poem I share below. Our Group is comprised of people from several different religious traditions and is hosted by our local Insight Meditation Center. The group was founded and is run by a Buddhist chaplain who has been very kind and is a stalwart friend to each of us. Though I continue to follow the progress o...

Gratitude for an MRI Epiphany

Gratitude, Spirituality, Theology

An MRI machine is surprisingly well suited for epiphanies. After all, you are required to be completely and utterly still, the machine is so loud that nothing can penetrate that noise, and for those 45 minutes you are not responsible for anything else. I discovered this last Monday at 6:45 am. Laying there staring at the alien head sticker placed above my eyes, I suddenly saw the past year and a half laid out before me as if to say, "Look at what you have done and who you are! Don't you see the connections?" It was a moment of sheer connection with the Ground of Being within myself. My God and I in communion. I am so incredibly grateful! You see I have felt scattered and a bit lost since I graduated from Seattle University. Or at least that is what I thought was happening. I also los...

Time of Orphaning

death, Grief, Short Story

It’s tough when you are orphaned at seventy. I say that without rancor or irony. I’d known Mrs. O’Donall and her daughter for fifteen years, which at the time of this story was the entire length of my life. The ladies - as everyone called them - were fixtures in our parish. Each morning they arrived at St. Anselm's at precisely six-fifty for daily Mass. Their consistency was such that my mom said she "could tell time by them." They generally made their way into church arm-in-arm and always sat in the first pew. While the younger lady was fragile, tentative and wide-eyed, the older one was stern, sturdy and quick-minded. With her daughter in tow, she worked on the Annual Church Carnival Planning Committee and in the Women’s Auxiliary as well, relied upon to help the nuns clean the sac...