Grief & Wonder
The Garden in Brazil
This Morning
After a nightmare
I can’t change,
I awoke in a garden
In love with Eve
And the snake,
Savouring the apple,
Trusting my intuition.
Together at Noon
Totally pursuing
Pinnacle power,
Finding enough to make
A mass difference,
Loving the hard work,
Building not pyramids
But Jerusalem.
This Evening
Eve and I,
Stepping out to celebrate,
Issue an invitation:
Come friends and family
And strangers unknown,
Let us go dancing
On a carnival date.
Now at Night
Let us roost, make love
To create paradise
For kids to come.
Join us now
In this Eden
To sleep well,
Before it’s too late.
A Daily Office
Back to the Garden, A Prophecy | 1. The Peacock in the Garden | 2. The Garden in Brazil | 3. Are You The Gardener? | 4. Spoke the Prophet in Brazil
The Peacock in the Garden
Loitering,
I shriek out a striking call
Shimmering,
I fan out my feathers
Warning,
I array my eyespots
Alarming,
I count human bad luck
Dazzling,
I display my being
Winning,
I convince her
Inspiring,
Let’s do something
Beautiful together!
A Prayer of Oblation
Back to the Garden, A Prophecy | 1. The Peacock in the Garden | 2. The Garden in Brazil | 3. Are You The Gardener? | 4. Spoke the Prophet in Brazil
Awake to Ukraine
There is a dawn moment when the heavens are blue and the sun creates yellow above the horizon of the sea and you see a blue with a yellow stripe emerging beneath and at that moment we awake to the flag of Ukraine.
Please get up in the morning and reflect on the sunrise and the values that we wish to arise in us and the values that we wish to grow and we wish to make happen. But the sun will rise quickly and the bright light will blur all and the busyness of the day will flood into our lives and we will forget the point that we need to remember when we awoke.
We can live in horror at one man’s poverty creating destruction on another land, the brutal attack and destruction of the sovereign nation of the Ukraine and systematic murder of its people. And we need to hold that and remember and not forget but we also need to have a horizon that we can look out to and set sail towards. It is a horizon of our values that we want to rise to and we know that are true, are kind, are good, that build a loving and prosperous world. May we see the Ukrainian flag on the horizon at dawn and wake to work throughout the day to make life giving values alive for all.
So I give you a picture, taken from my home in March in 2021 at dawn, showing the sun rising at that moment when the Ukrainian flag can be on all our imaginations as the horizon of our hope. Let us wake, look out and remember Ukraine and the values of wonder in our hearts that we want to make real in the world and decide what sacrifices we will make this day to make wonder come alive for every person in the Ukraine and for every person in the world.
This reflection was inspired by the artist Karen Tusinski who paints stunning pictures of the horizon in Rockport Massachusetts and who has painted a Ukrainian flag on a canvas and placed it in the window of her gallery. I’m asking artists to paint pictures of the Ukrainian horizon to keep us inspired.
THE SONGS OF sOPHIa
Dedicated to the Co-Founders of OPHI
Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative:
Sabina Alkire & John Hammock
(En español haga clic aquí: LAS CANCIONES DE sOPHIa)
THE SONGS OF sOPHIa
- Wisdom
Sophia, wisdom, she comes to us *
And gently holds our hands.
With your hands *
Count and number things,
Shake hands to make friends, *
Make things that create a better world.
She places her hand on our hearts *
Feeling the number that pulses our life.
Live in your hearts *
And see the lines
That make out the lives *
Of the rich and poor alike.
- The Poor
Accompany me to be welcomed *
Into the home of the poor.
One room with a kitchen behind *
One seat, set aside for you.
You’re offered more food *
Than you can eat,
Wondering how to say “enough” *
Without being rude,
Wondering if you’ve been offered *
The family’s food for a week.
Sophia asks our host to tell her story *
A farmer’s daughter whose
Grandfather gave her *
Her dowry for her education.
She now supports the education *
Of a hundred young women.
How she can afford that? *
You wonder, and she in joy replies
It is the great happiness of her life *
To share what she has.
- The Rich
Come into the place of the rich *
Who are blessed
To live by a number *
The amount of money that they have.
They desire to make a difference *
And are measured in their response.
Asking, “How can I know *
How to make a difference?”
- When We Are Blind
Know when you are blind *
And cannot see
You have your hands to count *
And ears to listen.
You don’t know what it is like *
So you are in the dark,
Like Justice you are blindfolded, *
So live like the blind,
Use your hands *
To count your surroundings.
Gently feel around. *
What do your fingers find?
- Know Your Poverty
Do you find walls in front of you *
Or are you living outside?
When you kneel and touch your floor, *
Do you touch dirt, concrete, planks or carpet?
What food are you preparing? *
Do you have enough for the day?
For the week? For your family? *
Careful! Don’t burn your hands,
Are you cooking with dung? *
Or wood or fuel of another kind?
You eat a palmful, *
Are you still hungry?
Checking your child’s head for fever. *
How far is the hospital?
In your pocket you feel for your money. *
Can you pay the bill?
How much schooling do you have? *
Does your work speak of learning?
Can you fumble around to find some tools. *
Do you have any for earning?
Thirsty, feeling for a tap, *
Do you have running water?
Is it safe to drink? *
Or you are reaching for your kettle?
Do you boil the hottest tea *
Your mouth can bear?
You need to go so bad.
Do you have a latrine?
Or do you go outside? *
Or pay to go to the village loo?
Outside you stumble on something *
A piece of rubbish,
Rubbish that is never collected *
And is strewn everywhere.
Blind, you know you’ll trip *
Whichever way you turn.
- Know Your Un-Wellness
Even in places where more money grows *
Other forms of poverty emerge,
Is there sickness of the mind? *
Is there sickness of work?
Is there crippling over-indebtedness? *
Is there growing futility
Numbing the senses with despair? *
Is the rage doped up,
Or intermittently lashing out *
In growing cycles of violence?
And know that there are hands *
That measure this lack of wellness too.
- See and Make Progress
When you have counted all these things *
The blindfold will fall from your eyes.
Light will fill your vision *
You will see all the things
That count towards poverty. *
The number Sophia counts
That paints a vivid picture *
For the rich to see the poor,
That says that there is much to do *
And many ways to help.
Sophia returns again and again, *
Counting again and again
For all to see progress *
That delights rich and poor alike.
- Who Comes to Help?
Now the rich can see, *
They wonder how to help.
Sophia kneels in the dirt *
At the unshod feet of
The poorest of the poor *
And with her numbers
She holds the hands of the rich to be there too. *
The rich come as rulers,
People of trade, *
People of medicine,
People of learning, *
And people of building,
All united by Sophia’s number *
That captures the demons of poverty.
- How Can We Help?
First remember, don’t even count *
Unless you plan to make a difference.
Find ways for poor and rich to sit together *
With the numbers as they sink in.
Ask how are our minds opened? *
Do we have space to play with new solutions?
Ask what does Sophia’s counting *
Say about our priorities?
Are we ready for her to come back in *
To measure the difference we’ve tried to make?
As leaders do we give weight *
To Sophia’s equal measure?
- An Alliance of Rich and Poor
Now there’s an alliance of rich and poor *
Who understand one another
To ensure that there is enough *
To make a difference.
This alliance knows that there are *
Three great measures of mankind,
A measure called your heartbeat, *
Counting how we are all equal.
A measure called money *
Counting how we go up in the world
And a measure of Sophia *
Counting how we go down into poverty.
With these three numbers *
We grow in compassion
Together counting *
What truly matters.
- The Balance Scale Breaks
People love to compete *
With one another
To tip the balance with money *
Up in their favour.
Does the other end of the balance *
Tip down?
Showing a decrease in poverty? *
If not what do we see?
A balance scale tipped up with money *
Just for the rich
And the other end that measures poverty *
Not tipped down for the poor.
We see the balance scale is broken *
And Justice weeps.
- The Balance Scale Pivots
Sophia asks those with money *
To set aside enough
To always be able to count poverty *
And ensure the balance scale measures
Increased wealth *
With decreased poverty.
So in the cathedrals of learning *
Sophia invites the rich
To sets aside money *
To keep the brightest minds
Finding counting ways *
To hold the poorest of the poor
In the minds of the richest of the rich *
And to create an alliance between them
To celebrate *
That we all have a heartbeat.
Theme for 2018
Jamie Coats
Sermon on The Transfiguration of Jesus
SERMON For Saint John’s Episcopal Church
Beverly Farms, Massachusetts
The Transfiguration of Jesus
By Jamie Coats
March 2nd, 2014
Last Sunday after Epiphany
Readings: Exodus 24:12-18, 2 Peter 1:16-21, Matthew 17:1-9, Psalm 99
Reference: Luke 9:37-43
Thank you for inviting me to your beautiful church to reflect on the Transfiguration. I bring you greetings from the Brothers of the Society of Saint John the Evangelist, the Episcopal monks, – a wonderful band of kind men for whom I work. I know that you have invited the Brothers here on many occasions. They are grateful and send their love.
In today’s reading we learn of two different men in different times who went up to the mountain top, communed with God, and came down to the valley. The messages of Moses and Jesus are very different.
We hear in the last verse of Psalm 99 that we should
“Proclaim the greatness of the LORD our God
and worship him upon his holy hill; *
for the LORD our God is the Holy One.”
We are to “worship him upon his holy hill.” I believe that in the story we hear today in the New Testament Jesus disagrees, it is not enough to worship God upon his holy hill. We have to be able to come down the mountain, into the valley and look into each others eyes and see the love of God.
But let us go back to Moses. He goes up to the mountain top. He is changed and he brings down badly needed laws, the Ten Commandments that patterned God’s love into the lives of the wandering Israelites, and to a great extent patterns our lives to this day. This is good top-down stuff.
But you can have too much of top-down. By Jesus’ time the laws brought down by Moses had been expanded upon, a purity system had developed, by a few, who so-to-speak claimed the mountain top for themselves and dictated from their elite height how the rest of us were to live. People were kept in their place, told what they could do, could not do, who was in, who was out, who was loved by God, who was not.
Jesus shows up and starts breaking these purity rules. We hear time and time again the religious authorities being appalled at Jesus’ behavior including daring to heal on the Sabbath. What message does Jesus bring down the mountain?
I have it on good authority that in the Eastern Orthodox Tradition it is held that nothing happened to Jesus at the Transfiguration, he was not changed. He already was the son of God, the man of light. What changed was the disciples, the love of God flowed through them too. What changed because of Jesus is the knowledge that the love of God flows through every one of us, without exception. Orthodox icons of the Transfiguration show the light infusing everyone.
Understanding this explains the story that Luke tells about what happened on the next day. Luke describes how Jesus is off the mountain in the valley amid a big crowd. A man comes to him whose son is desperately ill, in the clutches of an unclean spirit, and he tells Jesus that the disciples have not been able to help. Jesus first rolls his eyes at the disciples saying “”You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you and bear with you?” In other words, don’t you get it, you have the power to heal this boy too, why don’t you heal him. He says some unrecorded words to the boy and the boy is healed.
Through my association with the Brothers of the Society of Saint Evangelist I think I have an idea of how Jesus connected to the pain in the boy and also what you and I are capable of doing to help heal each other and bring in God’s light.
In 2010 I found myself in a similar situation to the man in Luke’s story whose son was ill. Except in my case it was not my child but my oldest sibling, my sister Emma. She was hospitalized in a psychiatric hospital in Oxford, England. I flew back and forth to England with my boss at the time, Br. Curtis giving me all the time I needed. Sadly there was no Jesus to say the necessary words to Emma, to connect with her and release her pain. She went missing, there was a large police search. Nine days later we learned of an unidentified body at the foot of a sea cliff. We knew it was her from the description.
Just before I flew from Boston to England to organize services for Emma Brother Curtis called me. He had known me for four years and he is pretty good at looking into another person’s soul. He said, “I have been praying for a word for you to take with you, the word “wonder” keeps coming to me.” I thanked him but felt it would be a long time before I ever felt wonder again.
The year before Emma died she wrote a long poem that described a walk through a wood in Devon, England. On what would have been her 50th birthday we gathered with her friends where Emma described sitting at the river’s edge. We read her whole poem. I waded in and poured Emma’s ashes into the river, into her poem. At that moment I was flooded with wonder.
Afterwards, to work through my grief I wrote a series of poems called the “Grief & Wonder Trilogy.” The first poem goes:
We all have tragedy.
Will it hold us
And we pass it on
Tragically?
Or can we let
Our friends hold us
So hold our own tragedy
And then let it like ash
Spread into the stream
Returning to the cycle
Of a greater love
And experience wonder?
Br. Curtis had looked into my soul, knew what I needed and gave me one word, Wonder. It is an amazing spiritual gift that one man or woman can do that for another. I am not a monk. I am not very good at looking into the soul of another and producing the right word, as Curtis did for me and Jesus did for the boy.
But we are told that Jesus knows that we can transfigure one another. That is the story of the Transfiguration, it is about you and me helping each other. It is about us letting our friends hold us. It is not about truth on high coming down the mountain top. It is about when you greet each other after this service. Jesus knows that we can transfigure each other, even in coffee hour.
And here is one way I have been learning about Transfiguration. Some of you may be aware that the Brothers publish a very short daily meditation by email call “Brother, Give Us A Word.” A couple of years ago in 2012 I was joking with the Brothers that in Lent we could ask instead for friends to “Give up a Word.”
So I thought I would give it a try. I set off to ask anyone I might encounter the following:
If you could give up a word for a week that would transform your life for the better, what would it be?
What happened amazed me and continues to.
A woman told me that in her head she always called her self “Stupid” as her mean older sister had done when she was little and felt destined to go the grave calling herself “Stupid” until she gave up the word.
Br. David Vryhof said to me that he needed to give up “Should” because other wise at the end of day he can’t be grateful to God.
Once on a plane a fellow passenger gave up the word “daughter” to her own horror and went on to explain how she struggles to relate to her daughter. She spent her life saving to put her daughter through college and currently her daughter is not saving for her own children’s college and this causes this lady so much anguish.
I have asked people in bars, restaurants and planes. I should warn you that asking this question in Gloucester produces very salty replies.
A few words can transform a situation and it is transforming me. I was at an airport restaurant and I was grumpy. But for some reason I asked the waitress if she would like to give up a word. Her word was “No.” Then she said, “I say it to my little boy all the time but if I gave up “No” I am scared I would hit him. I am so tired. I so need a vacation.” I went from grumpy to tears.
In another restaurant the food was terrible. I had even sent the coffee back because it was cold. But when I asked the waiter if he would like to give up a word, he smiled joyously, and also told me that his word was “No” because he needed to begin saying “Yes” to more things in his life. Our whole relationship changed. The food was still awful but our time together was good.
What I have been learning with these conversations is that we can break our own top-down, from on high, purity system and bring healing this sabbath day. All we need is simple words of the heart. Not your normal, conventional phrases like “What do you do?” or “How do you do?” Or even “How are you?”
When greeting people if we try phrases like “What do you most love to do?” “What is your life dedicated to?” “What is your passion?” the world will change. Today I invite you to ask each other “If you could give up a WORD for a week that would transform your life for the better, what would it be?”
You might like to try this for Lent.
Try this question, share your word to give up and I think you will have a sense of how Jesus connected to the boy in Luke’s story and understand Jesus’ belief that you and I can transfigure each other.
Amen
Further reading:
Writings by Jamie Coats: www.wingedboots.com
Give Up A Word: www.giveupaword.org
Society of Saint John the Evangelist: www.ssje.org
Brother, Give Us A Word: www.ssje.org/word
Wonder?
We all have tragedy.
Will it hold us
And we pass it on
Tragically?
Or can we let
Our friends hold us
So hold our own tragedy
And then let it like ash
Spread into the stream
Returning to the cycle
Of a greater love
And experience wonder?
Part One of the Grief & Wonder Trilogy: Wonder? Wonder, Wonderful
Jamie Coats February 2011
Wonder, Wonder, Bounding Tiger
Awoke to find a tiger
By my bedside.
“Resolve to pray your day
I’m from your sister.
I am here to give you courage
No fear you need to have.”
“At night you sleep well?” she asks
“I fear what lies under my bed,” comes my reply.
She nuzzles me, says,
“My eyes catch demon lines
In the swirling dark underneath.
I catch and hold them tight.
By morn I know their names
They no longer need to know mine.
They turn to ash,
Added stripes on my back.
Come! Bound through meadow
Come! Bound to the stream.
Plunge to the middle,
The sun will sparkle on the water.
Let their tragedy wash out to sea.
Wonder at the cycle of nature.
On the river bank there are
Sisters and brothers,
A whole church of friends
Whose prayers call for the
Beauty of the land.
Once parched, now green.
Weeping restores life.
Now rest by the stream.”
I lie against her rich soft fur
She grooms herself.
She talks of her feisty cubs,
Her fierce love for them.
Up she gets and I experience life’s
Wonder, wonder, bounding tiger.
Theme for 2011
Part Two of the Grief & Wonder Trilogy: Wonder? Wonder, Wonderful
Jamie Coats February 2011
Wonderful
There is nothing more wonderful
Than to have ones way
Blocked by an angel,
Holding a gift from God
A practice when received
Let’s us feel God’s love.
Blind
We bump into the angel.
“Get out of my way”
But the angel does not move
If we fight we lose like Jacob
If we turn the angel moves around.
Fear comes to attack
But sees a man confronted by an angel
Receiving a gift from God.
Fear can not confront
As the angel is in the way
And its wings wrap the man in love.
He lets the angel
Place his broken heart
In a nest of feathered love
Where broken pieces come
To lie and heal
To rest in wonder,
And the Angel says,
“Know in your church of friends
You can place your hurt heart on the altar
And know there will be no hole in your chest
But a space filled with the heart
That God gave Jesus.”
Part Three of the Grief & Wonder Trilogy: Wonder? Wonder, Wonderful
Jamie Coats March 2011
Emma is the Butterfly
Spoken at the Memorial Service for Emma Coats 22 July 2010
By Jamie Coats
Emma is in the light. Emma was brave. Emma prays for us. Emma asks our help to create a church of light. Emma is the Butterfly.
Emma’s room at the Abbey was adorned with many images of the Madonna and Child, including one of herself with her new born niece Clara, taken last summer.
When I took Emma out of the Warneford Hospital in March she asked to go to a church and we went to St Mary Magdalen’s and she prayed to Mary, the Mother of God, and told me afterwards she prayed for me too.
When Emma was taken from the John Radcliffe Hospital Trauma Unit back to the Warneford, she was terrified and in her wheel chair she prayed the Hail Mary.
Her last words in her note book were “Help me goddess Mary, help me Mary, to call my soul forth, help me, HELP.”
So I have prayed to Mary to try to say some words.
Emma is in the light.
While Emma was at the John Radcliffe I had a vision of Mary which I told Emma about:
I was swimming in the river of life itself, it was stormy and turbulent. Then I realized next to me, held two feet under water was my sister, Emma, held by two bonds, one male, one female to a stone at the bottom of the river. Mary, the Mother of God appeared on the bank of the river, and began to wade in. With something unseen she cut the bonds and lifted Emma and carried her to shore on the edge of the river of life and stood her upright. For a long moment I thought Emma was dead. Total fear and anxiety gripped me. Then Mary breathed into Emma, and she choked alive. Emma still was bound around with ropes, Mary began to peel these cords and I saw Emma writhe in agony, the bonds had cut so deep.
When Emma went missing I saw Mary cradling her dead body in her arms. I knew then that when the binding ropes had been cut Emma’s body had fallen apart. I knew that Mary had lifted Emma completely out of the river of life.
When I prayed for words for today Mary said, “Assure them Emma is in God’s peace, she was in total agony, she is absorbed into me and you may say, “Hail Mary … blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Emma.” There is no sacrilege in that, whatever old patriarchs of dust might think.”
Emma is in the light. Emma was brave.
When I met Emma at the Trauma Unit she said looking down, “I am damned, you must be so disappointed in me, angry.” Somehow I scanned my body, not a trace of anger, not a trace of disappointment did I find. Emma had called me forth to love like I never had before. I said, “Emma, I love you, nothing has changed I have but one regret, that as your brother I have not expressed my love more clearly and firmly before, but I say it now “I love you, you are beautiful.”” It was hard to connect. Then I said to Emma, “Jesus, as he died on the cross said, “Eli Eli lama sabachthani?”, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”” and she looked up, we connected and she said, “I understand.” She had become his female counter part on the cross.
Emma’s pain from what she called, her “wounded roots,” was so great but she had a brave determination to stop the pain, to name the pain and on no account pass it on. She refused to have children, she was worried she’d hurt them. She could say quite hurtful things and did to some of you. When murderous thoughts arose she went into hospital to be held. She did not want to hurt. As she became more dependent she was traveling back in time to a place of pain that our individual love could not solve. When pain is in the roots, it is underground. You cannot pull up the roots to save. Only universal love can reach that deep. Do not blame yourselves. You could not have done more; you loved her as best you could.
Inside Emma was a last remaining strength of adult anger at the agony at the root of her life. With that final strength she figured out how to walk away from institutions, family, and friends, in order to carry away the anger and to take it into light, to ensure its end. She stepped off a white cliff into universal love.
And Mary said, “Emma handed me the ax of anger she feared she’d use on others, with it I cut the bonds of pain that held Emma under, I called her soul forth into my love. She was brave enough to step into my arms. She is held in total love for this sacrificial act.”
Emma is in the light. Emma was brave. Emma prays for us.
Emma wrote amid her despair recently, “I honour and bless, my father, my brothers and sister, my friends, the hospital, all who give me support and I bless Mary.” Long lists of blessings fill pages of her Warneford art-book. She prayed for us.
There is pain of generations and as historians will tell you continuity of pain is often stronger than any change that brings new life. Emma worked to stop this continuity of pain through the generations. She was always “Opening doors on creativity.” In her words “I specialize in creative approaches to continuing organizational change.”
Mary said, “Emma saw my son Jesus as her brother in life. She was like him, a confrontational non-violent rebel against a system that holds people in pain. She shared his compassion.”
Emma’s journey asks us to forgive our parents, our grandparents, and great grandparents and so on and let in God; God as our father and mother in our lives or “the creative spirit” as she would say – a spirit that can the stop the mindless continuity of pain and allows new birth to happen. In her poem Emma said, “She is entranced, fascinated by the powers of imagination and life.”
That strength of Emma’s final act has pierced my heart, as I am sure it has yours. I experience Emma’s prayer for me and her final act as a lance piercing a boil of anger deep in my heart that had made me perpetuate the pain that I received and pass it on. With the boil burst I now better hear Emma’s profound prayers of compassion for us, she did not blame us, she celebrated the beauty of life, and she calls us to see that beauty in all of us.
Emma is in the light. Emma was brave. Emma prays for us. Emma asks our help to create a church of light.
Mary son’s body went missing. God knows what happened to Jesus’ body. Whatever happened, whatever you believe, the apostles did the right thing. They spread out, they said that love is more important than pain and they did not just tell it to their blood brothers and sisters, they told it to their adopted family and to strangers, to people in foreign lands. As we searched for Emma we started to do the same all the way to telling strangers via the media, and fliers to businesses all over Oxford.
A friend asked me on day seven of the search, “How do you keep it up?” “Church” was the word that entered my mind. Emma was not a church-goer, she saw a church where patriarchs had hidden abuse, denied women power, wounded the roots of the very church itself. In her life work and through her radiant beauty Emma called for new forms of church and today as we are gathered here we that church of light Emma asks us to create.
We will dance in this church with joy, for sister Emma, a Christ figure for me and I hope for all of you. We have to forgive ourselves, honour Emma’s agony and the pure joy of creativity that she called forth, and let us feel it in the rhythm of the song that my brother has chosen to celebrate her life.
And Mary said, “Go, sisters and brothers of the sister in my womb, go tell the story that must be told and let it touch the hearts of all throughout the world.”
Emma is in the light. Emma was brave. Emma prays for us. Emma asks our help to create a church of light. Emma is the butterfly.
The butterfly, an early Christian symbol of the resurrection, was Emma’s symbol. It featured strongly in her work to bring in Emma’s words “resources to awaken creative working.” A painting by herself of a butterfly was the treasured image she had at the Warneford.
Recently I found myself in prayer for Emma in a Monastery chapel that is dedicated to Mary and this is what came to me:
There is a wasp, called an ichneumon wasp that lays its eggs in the caterpillar of a butterfly. The caterpillar in time turns into a chrysalis and begins its metamorphosis. You can see in the chrysalis a fully formed butterfly. Something hatches within and eats the butterfly alive from inside. A wasp appears intent on destroying more lives.
I am certain that the butterfly in the chrysalis has a choice. It can struggle mightily inside and if it knows the wasp is winning it can make itself die and with it the wasp so that no more butterflies will be hurt.
Emma has a beauty inside which we all deeply love. Never have I experienced such love support as I have from all of you, friends of Emma. What a circle of loving-life she brings about.
Emma is the butterfly, especially for every woman whose beauty of her soul has been denied.
I will forever honour her struggle against the wasp, stopping its cycle of life, and for being the butterfly who reminds each of us that we are as beautiful as flowers and in our darkest heart is the love-giving nectar of life.
Alleluia, Emma is love, Emma is courage, Emma is compassion, Emma is family, Emma is risen. Alleluia.
Emma is in the light. Emma was brave. Emma prays for us. Emma asks our help to create a church of light. Emma is the butterfly.
Halleluiah!