meg-HAN!

i have an internationally renown difficulty with letting go.

and that applies especially in regards to friends who move away.

but in 7 years of living in a transient community like Missoula, i've come to learn that people coming and going is just a part of life.

you embrace those who enter your journey as gifts unbidden.

and you release them to continue their journeys, celebrating their unique presence in your life and community, wishing them well as they move on, knowing that they remain in your life in Spirit (and via numerous means of connection, electronic and otherwise).

my dear friend for the past 7 years, Meghan, who arrived here around the same time i did, is leaving in two weeks for Belfast, Ireland, to work with very specially gifted adults in the L'Arche community there. she moved here from Queens, NY literally because of the last two pages of 'A River Runs Through It'. she heard something in those words that moved her Spirit enough to make a move across the country to a place where she had no job or friends awaiting her. she moves on to Belfast because her Spirit has been moved once again, not knowing exactly what awaits her, but going nonetheless.

the Spirit doesn't just inspire Meghan.

it MOVES her.

and causes her to MOVE.

not just from city to city, but experience to experience, moment to moment, person to person.

among the beautiful poor, and on the dance floor.

she is a life giver, a Light weaver, a laughing lover of giggles and grace.

and Missoula will miss her.

my friends and family will miss her.

i will miss her.

and so, to honour my dear friend, who just today displayed her MASTERY of literature and language at her Master's thesis defense, i have cobbled together an attempt at some poetically-inclined words to say thanks and wish her well...

Meg-HAN!

she’s twirling in the tension

she’s spinning in the space

she’s swirling in suspension

she’s groovin’ in the grace

she’s laughing on the line

betwixt eternity and time

away from all she leaves behind

embracing more than meets the mind

she’s waltzing on the wire

less to impress than to inspire

a crazy impulse to conspire

to set this whole damn world on fire

with lines from Keats and four-leaf clovers

Nia moves for Irish rovers

radiant smiles and laughs, moreover,

shining Love the whole world over

she’s a rebel on the run

she’s the fountainhead of fun

in the darkness, she’s the one

who dances, shining like the sun

  

‘until we meet again’…sláinte, salaam shalom, and lots of love…blm

17 July 2012