September 21, 2025
As I wrote that date in my journal today, I realized today is my dad’s “earthly” birthday. He would have been 98 in earth years, yet departed this magnificent rock at 79. If he showed up right now in a flash within human form, he’d dispute that truth! In fact, he would claim that he had reached 80 years and a handful of months when he ventured beyond the veil. He’d also likely offer that with a wink and a smile.
We believed he was 80 when he passed, and celebrated that milestone with him in style just months before his sudden death. Being his only child and manager of all that relentless business that arrives when we die, I discovered while rifling through mounds of paper documents, he had altered his true birth year by one number in order to serve in the military during WW2 rather than wait a year until he was of age.
Why he held to this ruse years after his tour of military service was long over, we’ll never know. What I do know is that he continues to serve on my behalf through what I recognize as the collective Soul.
I hear you dad, reminding me, along with a chorus of others, that in these utterly complex and chaotic days playing out upon earth, the door is open. That it is upon me to choose whether or not to enter and sit in conversation with Soul. And then, in my time, in my way, to move in the world and take action from that seat. To truly lean into and listen to the guidance and wisdom offered there so freely and generously, rather than stay caught in the destructive churn and thrash spewing from the bowels of the human theatre.
From that seat, I am gifted with some gold. So many reside in ongoing grief due to the egregious and undue harm being levied upon existence by our fellow travelers, yet still, alongside that we are, nonetheless, pregnant with a new way longing for birth. Gestation takes time. How do we best care for and serve the greater good through it?
By shepherding this new way and while in deep grief.
detail of MOMENTUM by Patrick Shearn of POETIC KINETICS at Pittsburgh Botanic Garden
So in honor of my dad’s earthly birthday and his ever-flowing and loving service through collective Soul, I offer up one from The Golden Boat archives: Being a Bridge Part 1-I'm Still Here in the Blue Light When you want or need a longer pause from the rest, the door is open with a warm welcome to enter, sit and listen for awhile.
“My dad died taking out the garbage. He left the trash behind. Along with two pieces of chocolate cake on the kitchen counter that he and my mom would not have the chance to enjoy together, and the greatest and most loving gift of all...the one he tried, with all the might of his middle name ‘Atlas’, to give my mom and I while here, he gave us, by leaving first.”
