The morning of the day he died of a heart attack in 1993, William Stafford wrote a poem containing the lines:

“You don’t have to prove anything,”
my mother said. “Just be ready
for what God sends.”
I listened and put my hand
out in the sun again. It was all easy.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

These words came today and I needed to post them.  I have experienced the passing of two great men this last week and these words of William Stafford seem to be

the right ones to post.  We are always in transition, our life is ever changing, turning this way and that.  What has touched me and is etched in my heart is

the greatness and goodness of people and the natural offering of the human soul.  What has mattered is being among friends, community, being in the presence of

others, even with grief and pain.  There has been a kind of raw awe and beauty sandwiched between what has been unbearable and mysterious.

Death is a gift when I surrender to the teaching it offers and out of it comes an entrance into life and embracing ‘what is’.