Once again I wasn’t going to write anything on the anniversary of her passing. But I got a call at 5 PM yesterday saying, “The tombstone is installed!” To say I was surprised is putting it mildly, I talked with the stonemason just a few days ago and assumed he would call me so I could be present at the installation. I had been waiting for the tombstone to get here, and the waiting was much more difficult than I thought it would be . . . the waiting was a weight. Perhaps it’s the final finality of it.

I recruited Elaine and Anouchka to go with me to see it – it’s simple, natural granite with the green hills in the background.

I won’t send a photo until Anouchka and I can get it re-planted next week, the present plants suffered with our extreme weather these past months and masons are better with stone than with plants. Plants need more tender handling . . . .

Below is one of Richard Rohr’s meditations, it sums up the emotional path I’ve been on. It actually began many years ago, as I look back I can see how the Lord was leading me out of living totally in my head (left brain) and to getting in touch with my heart and emotions. Little did I think I would ever say that!

At the end of his meditation RR says, “My emotions are still a mystery to me” and I can say ‘Amen’ to that. But I don’t want to miss a single thing of all that the Lord has for me.

Thanks again for your support and encouragement,

Tom

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Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditations

Emotion               Meditation 35 of 52

We must go through the stages of feeling, not only in the last death of anything, but all the earlier little deaths. If we abort these emotional stages by easy answers, all they do is take a deeper form of disguise and come out in another way. So many people learn that the hard way—by getting ulcers, by all kinds of psychosomatic diseases, depression, chronic irritability, and misdirected anger—because they refuse to let their emotions run their course, honor them consciously, or find some appropriate place to share them.

Emotions are not right or wrong, good or bad. They are merely indicators of what is happening, and must be listened to, usually in the body. People who do not feel deeply finally do not know or love deeply either. It is the price we pay for loving. Like Job we must be willing to feel our emotions and come to grips with the mystery in our head, our heart, and, yes, our body too. To be honest, that takes our entire life. My emotions are still a mystery to me, and without contemplation they would control me.

Adapted from Job and the Mystery of Suffering:

Spiritual Reflections, pp. 54-55