Eulogy for Mom

Dearest Beloved,

I want to start by acknowledging there are no words to completely express the feeling surrounding loss of my mother, Martha. Just this morning, a whole new eulogy came to me that started with “In the last days of my mother’s life, I saw her begin to see her own light in a way she hadn’t seen before. She was at an inflection point in her growth and she became fascinated by The Four Agreements. Always be impeccable with your word. Don’t take anything personally. Don’t make assumptions. Always do your best.”

No amount of new eulogies will be able to truly match the note of loss sounding in my heart. So here’s the tapestry I’ve been carrying in my phone all year. The sound it makes is the note which sounds like the simple fact of all our being here today in grief and in celebration of my mother Martha.

So, I will begin by lamenting that today, I am in the wilderness without a map. I am lost with no map and only a compass that does not point North.

I want to define this compass. I love to consider my heart a perceiving organ. An eye and an ear unto itself. It is a cathedral which holds space for the blood which has been all around the body. 

My heart holds my blood, it listens to the stories, confessions, longings, faith, prayers and celebration told by the chemistry of that blood which knows my organs. My heart responds mysteriously with hormones and electrical signals, adjustment to pressure. 

The heart is always hearing and speaking exactly what needs to be said to the body. A benevolent guide, the heart listens with absolute curiosity, the heart takes in, and the heart pumps out precisely what it means to say. The heart is never lost because it is always lost, the heart is always listening.

I want to begin with an invitation to listen to your heart which is always listening, always whispering what needs to be heard, which is different or all of us.

I say all this because when I said goodbye to my mother in her final hours, all she had to speak was a fragile heartbeat, amplified over a monitor. Her heartbeat is all I had to listen to, all I could speak into as I peered over the edge into the free fall of loss I am shouting from today.

I want to open by saying my mother Martha taught me to lose, and that only when I’m lost, do I get to really listen. 

Every day I would wake up and walk down the stairs, my mom would have a mug of strong hot black coffee in my hand before I sat down. She’d keep my mug full and warm all the way until noon and then, when the morning couldn’t get stretched any further, she would ask what I would like for breakfast. She showed me how to have fun just getting lost in the morning.

My mom taught me how to lose a game of checkers, too. I lost to her at arm wrestling. She taught me how to lose a set of keys and how to improvise at a grocery store when you lose your shopping list. She taught me how to be lost in a car by losing the last page of MapQuest directions. 

She taught me I can be lost and still wake up early to watch the sunrise, that the wilderness is full of beauty to photograph, and that you can caption even the most dire moments with a joke, given the right timing.

When I was a young boy, my mother told me that if I ever lost control of my wheat truck and it started to flip over, I could say Shit as many times as I wanted. 

My mom taught me how to lose a part of myself when she lost her body. I thought that having a body was important for living, but now I believe my body is only a scaffolding, a chrysalis for who I really am. 

I want to close by saying that the thread I have followed in my grief is that loss is not the end, it is not something to be feared or corrected. That being lost is full of jokes and laughter and good music just like home. Losing is surrounded by love. Losing still offers the gift of life.

I want to close by saying, Mom, here I am lost in the wilderness. Here we all are. All our beating hearts. Taking in the sound of the wilderness of having lost the way you were and losing the way we all got to be around you. 

I want to close by inviting you to be lost with me. To be right here with me. To ask what is here today? To listen for the answer not with your ears, but your heart, see what it is you need to hear, and sing out what you find there is to say.

A photo taken by my mother of the view from
her favorite spot to drink her black coffee.

On 28, Intentions to Live

Dear Beloved,

I began writing intentions a few years back to create a reference point for embodying more conscious growth, rather than reacting to conditioned "growth". Last year, I published the intentions I kept in my journal at the time, and in tradition I am publishing the intentions I have in my journal today. 

Each intention is written in the present tense, given an energetically-affirming adverb (lovingly, gently, enthusiastically) to describe the way in which I am actively embodying my intentions. 

While these intentions are all written in the present-tense affirmative, I want to say for accountability that I often deviate from these commitments in order to tend to my process and conditioning, that I, of my own self-chosen values, have very intentionally built in self-compassion to this growth, rewiring, and reparenting process. 

I offer my gratitude for those who have supported the refinement of these intentions:

• My community, friends and family, You who are reading this, Who call me on the phone, Who send me messages of listening and of sharing, Who think of me, Who wonder if I think of You, Thank you first and foremost.
  
• My own personal talk-therapist
• Katie Colman
• https://www.katietempletoncolman.com/
  
• Jefferey Marsh
• http://www.jeffreymarsh.com/
• Holistic Psychologist and the Self Healers Circle
• https://theholisticpsychologist.com/
• Sarah Peyton - Neuroscientist, "Your Resonant Self"
• https://sarahpeyton.com/
• Dr Gabor Mate - Intergenerational Trauma and Addiction
  
• https://drgabormate.com/
• Brene Brown - Vulnerability and Shame
• https://brenebrown.com/

These are intentions, and they are written as a sort of vision-board for myself.

Each day, I consistently and with relief, return to these intentions whenever I feel listless or "between" obligations.

Each day, I am whimsically returning to the nature of the work, to imagine beyond what I am conditioned to believe.

Each day I cultivate faith lovingly as a garden by invoking the names YHWH (Yahweh), God, Christ, Spirit, Source, and the Holy Ghost to move behind, through, and in front of me, that I may see, realize, inspire, by the lamplight of Christ in all of us.

Each day I am generously offering my attention, time, and resources to build space in reverence to the Void, which I perceive to be Unconditional Love

Every day, I am lovingly disrupting the patriarchal and whiteness institutions within me, which I constructed in fear, and am dismantling with love, in pursuit of the restoration of my humanity

In each interaction, I am whimsically speaking clearly and firmly from a place of center.

Every day, I am gently investing my time, awareness, and abundance to the creation of connections, generation of gratitude, and the protection and reclamation of the commons.

I am always impeccable with my word. I speak and act in ways which are for Myself, my heart, my True Self, which is of Love and Interconnectedness. I take responsibility for my actions and realize I cannot hold blame or judgment without harming myself. 

Each day, I am releasing self importance by the easeful realization that others' Word is more about them, and not about me.

I am always gently and curiously seeking understanding, which I notice most when assumptions arise in me.

I am eagerly choosing actions which I would enjoy doing for their own sake. I understand this is how I do my best.

Each day, I am lovingly bearing witness to the dying institutions of "The Judge, The Victim, and Book of Law", (as defined by Miguel Ruiz in "The Four Agreements")

Each day, I am grieving the death of who I was and so am bearing witness in awe to the emergence of who I am.

Everything I consciously choose points me toward the path which leads to Mastery of Awareness, Mastery of Transformation, and Mastery of Intention, whcih are all Gifts from God to embody God's love.

Each day, I am patiently aware of when I refrain from expressing emotions, with the intention of expressing them in all their most benevolent timing. 

I skillfully and with delight recognize repression of emotions, I understand how repression goes against myself and so also others. I use emotion to take joyful loving action for its own sake. 

I gracefully recognize my core wound beliefs are part of me and will not simply go away, but are more energized when I am out of balance

I gently and firmly return to balance, name when I recognize being triggered, and plant seeds for naming boundaries to stay centered and resourced.

Each day I am choosing actions which joyfully manifest my intention to be authentic, aligned, and in congruence with my truest, highest, and most loving self.

Every morning, I wake up and take actions which most lovingly manifest my intention to be authentic, aligned, and in congruence with my truest, highest, and most loving self.

Every day, through writing, conversation, and thought, I am inventorying self-limiting and fear-based beliefs, with the intention to express myself, my light, and my gifts more fully. 

I am joyfully living into the incarnation of Love, which I believe to be the realization of the Truth of Interconnectedness.

I am graciously accepting the soveriegnty to choose to witness the riffles and eddies created by flow over the rocks and stones of my beliefs without judgment.

I am creating and gifting myself the space to witness and inhabit my center.

I am joyfully cultivating vocabulary and awareness of the transitions in and out of a state of playfulness. 

I am happily and easily aware of the state I am in, conscious of its capacity to transform, and be shaped by intention.

I attentively listen to the needs of my body so I can fulfill them and see what I create from a place of subsistence, safety, and consciousness. 

Each day, I am lovingly recognizing my fears and befriending them with curiosity.

Each day, I am imagining, envisioning a good life and then manifesting that life by embarking on treasure hunts which are worth pursuing for their own sake.

These intentions are a small altar forged in reverence to Christ (which is written here to mean the physical incarnation of God, which is the whole physical universe). These intentions are of Christ, for the sake of Christ in You and the sake of Christ in Me. These intentions are offered up freely in reverence to the eternal well of God, from which I drink.   

In Truth,

Riley