In the Redwoods

I had the opportunity this past summer to attend a performing arts family camp with my daughter and two grandchildren, Athena, age 4 and Samuel, age 6 1/2.

We spent the week in a tent, on a wooden platform, with cots and sleeping bags...very uncomfortable, but hey! It was camping.

My daughter signed us up for circus art, which I thought involved painting our faces and wearing red bulbous noses...but no!  It was balancing on cylinders, pedaling small mini-pedals, walking on stilts..all in preparation for a big performance on Saturday night in costume.

 I saw immediately that risking 70-something hips and knees was not good, so I spent my time documenting our experience for a photo book.

The camp is beautiful....set in the heart of towering redwoods north of Santa Rosa, with music and creativity filling the air.  Athena spent most of her day with arts, crafts and games in Kid City, and we all gathered for time at the pool. 

I became immersed in photographing our experience, and the many classes and performances throughout the camp... from swing dancing to rehearsals of “Mama Mia.” 
I consider myself a family paparazzi...capture the moment; create a legacy.  Photo books are my special legacy.  The grandchildren love them, and they’re well worn.

In the midst of all this life affirming activity, the topic of death came up frequently from Samuel.  What’s death, grandmama?  He chooses to ask me because I seem closer to death.  Are you the oldest in the family?  How old are you?  Are you going to die soon, like Larry?  Larry was my husband, who transitioned over four years ago.

Who was my great grandmother; my great great grandfather, my great great grandfather?  I’m going to live to be 100. Are you?

Once I said, Samuel, I’m having a fantastic day...I’m living in the NOW.  What’s the NOW?  It’s living right here and right now, in this very moment, experiencing life, love, joy and happiness.

Back in San Francisco, the father was off on a meditation retreat on the subject of...death and dying.  I read through a couple of books in his library....The Denial of Death, which discussed how most  human endeavor could be explained by an unacknowledged undercurrent of death anxiety.  Amassing wealth, becoming a hero, creating legacies, tending to the next generation. These were all manifestations of death denial.

Another book, by Irvin Yalom, focused on existential psychotherapy...as we are aware of ourselves and our amazing consciousness, we are also aware of our earthly existence as eating, excreting beings and eventual mortality.

Yalom sees a nothingness before birth, our brief sliver of life-light, then nothingness after.  Religion was invented to comfort us, to assuage our death anxiety.

Despite this atheistic view of death as opposed to our spiritual view of the immortal soul, the conclusion on how to live is similar...make the most of this life, live our best lives at full throttle; have no regrets.

Ernest Holmes says...knowing we are Spirit having a human experience, we prepare not to die but to live.  The thought of death should slip from our consciousness altogether, and when this great event of the soul takes place, it  is as an eagle, freed from its cage, soars to its native heights. Thus the soul, freed from the home of heavy flesh, will rise and return unto its Father’s house, naked and unafraid.

The grandchildren are not exposed currently to any spiritual teachings.  As a grandparent and ordained Science of Mind minister, I’m figuring out how best to help them. 

And so it is.