Aug. 5

Hard to figure another year has passed from the date on the Death Certificate, but when was time ever easy to figure? At this rate, stages of life & lives, too, pass in the blink of an eye….

I add this now on August 5, 2021, two years later. Last year, I put up some notes of hers found on notebook scraps in a pile–

I don’t understand death–
from where I am, it just doesn’t fit.

The body’s set up for it, so they say–
cycling, renewing, reforming,
giving others something to eat.
But now I’m such a klutz! I step on
everything! I chew & swallow for pleasure,
I breathe & release toxins. Can you tell me
one thing I do that only causes life, or good?

Eye to eye, matching seed to seed
the life giving/ the death dealing–
how can it be that the mind just disappears??
the scales hover/ in absolute equality:
~~~~~~~nothing!~~~~~~~
that’s what we’ve got–nothing!
(but I don’t quite buy it)
—————————vrb [undated]

Roughly scribbled, these were more notes than poetry, uncharacteristic of either her “classic snaps-shots” or her adventures in form, memory, & pondering, yet sharing her tendency to surprise. Like notes she never came back to, her observations here suggest kinds of speculation she rarely articulated. Such things, at the heart, weren’t matters of doctrine or even belief so much as of being & feeling, the actual (inner, personal) experience of oneness/ connection/ love–whether of persons for each other or for places, devotional dimensions, principles of relation, entities & their representations.

Virginia’s capacity for empathy, for feeling the feelings of others, came with an ability to distinguish qualities more or less directly, not from ideas but from an amalgam of observation & vibration, less a matter of belief system than of the individuals practicing. She didn’t theorize, in other words, but practiced her own devotions–“life-study”; motherhood; music & dance; yoga & poetry; gardening & painting; teaching & friendship…. Whether visitor in someone else’s sacred space, or simply observing inwardly, she experienced qualities of sacredness with an open heart & mind.

However willing to share, she didn’t generally talk about her experience. Though she wore a family cross in some wedding pictures, she didn’t consider herself a member of any one religion, but friend of most, very much including belief in the physical sciences. She was far too attuned to life (as lived & observed) to believe the sciences were all that mattered, however, or that they’d really come very far yet in resolving the main mysteries.

Among the spiritual teachers & traditions she respected most, Basho & Tagore stand out purely from the writings; plus Sri Aurobindo & Mother, from our time in India, where a 3-day visit to Pondicherry turned into a 7-month immersion in ashram, school, & preparations for Auroville. The Mother’s principles of education especially aligned with hers, exemplified in the school’s approach to “free progress” education, the individual’s integration of holistic practices.

The teacher’s job was certainly not to indoctrinate, nor to stuff with a conventional curriculum, but to “draw forth,” encourage, inspire by example, experience & share the joys of learning, as well as of working & playing together…..