No Hallmark Occasion: In Remembrance of Maya Lauren Penn

No Hallmark Occasion
December 20, 2006

There is no Hallmark card made for such an occasion.
There is no adequate explanation of feeling nor summary of emotions.
There is often a struggle to let go, to gain understanding.

So our minds wander, wax and wane,
And though we may feign to “know” how to act, how to be, how to support
We only follow the patterns of those before us with our own dash of zest.

Many explanations can be given for what happens now…
Christianity would say that a comfort should lie in that a soul is in a place of peace.
Modern Judaism follows the same pattern of belief: that the soul is immortal.
Buddhists would grant that a life of innocence is one of a truly open mind and therefore the equivalent of the enlightened being, moving infinitely through time.

None of us can make the choice of how another perceives life. The one known entity, the one commonality between all of us is that we have a choice to make for ourselves that can make the soul soar. The universe has provided that alone as our private consolation.

During times when there is no sense to the jolts that come with experience
And no logic or reason to change;
Here is the opening for clarity. For meditation and expression.
For mourning. For candid dialectic. And finally for finding our inner smile again.
How it’s found is up to each of us, uniquely individual, bonded together.

So now what? We find the intangible of love expresses itself in ways not seen before.
And we’ll start down a new path, saddened and slow at the start, trickling and winding;
then gaining agility. Gaining velocity. Gaining strength. Starting anew in the body, the mind, the soul.

It is precisely when no Hallmark card applies that new paths and connections are formed,
old bonds are strengthened and new ones take shape.
Lao Tzu said, “When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.”