Tribute Detail

Sandy Parker ( Wed, Apr 15, 2009 )

Dearest Joanna.

You have been much in my thoughts over the last three months, facing my own death, and seeking to reconnect I stumble across the death of Fran three months ago. I have such wonderful memories of Fran - especially walking the streets of Barrow-in-Furness with him from the workshop at Conishead Priory in 1987 shortly before my mother died in Scotland. His gentleness, his strength, his love and compassion.

In simple memory, I post below an "epistle" I wrote at the end of March

Dear Friends

This letter of Rainer Maria Rilke to a young poet has long been amongst my favourites:

Be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart. Try to live the questions themselves. Do not now seek answers that cannot be given because you would not be able to live them, and the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then, without knowing it live along some distant day into the answers.

Towards the end of February as the tinder-dry state of Victoria erupted into the "Black Saturday" fire-storm I underwent neuro-surgery for a brain tumour. I was privileged to be in the Royal Melbourne Hospital beside some of volunteers injured fighting the fires. Excision of the tumour was successful. Histology showed it to be an aggressive anaplastic astrocytoma likely to recur.

I shortly embark on a 6 week course of radio-therapy which may delay the recurrence, and despite the associated tiredness will hopefully enhance the quality of the remaining period of my life. As a close friend has said, such a journey is like joining an air flight not knowing the destination before you depart.

We are deeply grateful for the wonderful world-wide support we have received, and continue to receive from so many. I talk daily to my 6½ year old grandson, Peter, in the UK. My sister, Pat, from the Juneau, Alaska is presently visiting.

Many have become, for me, like jewels in the 2,500 year old Buddhist metaphor of Indra’s Net!

I am thankful for the varied ways in which you may be able to be alongside us as we continue ‘living the questions’. - at the same time to protect our privacy and my likely need for rest, we ask Friends not to contact us directly without prior invitation.

Grace and peace to you at this time, with memories alive of workshops with you and Fran at Findhorn, and especially"

Easter Mysteries" with Matthew Fox in 1991 I have been re-visiting, and re-entering, my own "Holy Saturday"

and I seek to chronicle my own journey at http://thephoenixinthecompost.wordpress.com

with deep love and thankfulness for all that you and Fran each have contributed to my life

March 2009.

<sandyparker.56@cantab.net>

PO Box 81, Lara, Victoria 3212

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