19 February 2023

If I say this every year, you’ll forgive me, won’t you? 

How quickly the hours of our time together have passed. How strange … The same hand I offered you in greeting is now and suddenly pressed in parting. 

This, then, should be farewell.

But before you go … walk with me … through Elizabeth’s galleries, through our histories. 

I come here often to contemplate the milestones of our community in what seems like solitude.  Yet I am never alone here. Your voices call softly to me still; your laughter rings out. 

Ahhh, you can hear it too, yes? 

We might pause to count the number of our reunions, but see how Elizabeth blends the years together, the first into the next into the next, without a limiting edge? Soon Elizabeth will record the essence of this gathering on her walls, in paints both bright and shadowy, dark and light – the colors of life. 

Our lives … forever celebrated within our shared Dream. 

Starlings know the magic of it, when they, as many, become one. 

We, too, are a murmuration. 

We come together in this secret place, cast off the cloaks and coats and armors of the world above, become light and frolicsome such that fear is forgotten, affording each and all the comfort to simply be. When we circle at last, when we lift our clasped hands, we know confirmation: we are a singular thing – a vibration of waves and curves, downswings and risings. A coalescence. 

Our leave-taking does not break the magical formation. Our center, indeed, shall hold. 

And so, fare well, my friends, my family. Journey joyfully and curiously. Write to me of love and hope and hearts that endure. Know that you are longed for and beloved. Come back to me … in truth and in spirit … and take my hand once again.

Always,
Father