GREETINGS AND ALOHA

I woke up one morning (December 4) and after my usual stretches and my "ah so’s", and my "hail and hosanna’s" I realized that I was now 84 years of age.

Then a few days later, I started to receive your wondrous Christmas letters. I realized then, that I had not communicated with some of you for the past three or more years. So let me bring you up to date.

Moved to Pohai Nani, a Retirement Center, 1993
Lynne and I moved to Pohai Nani (surrounded by beauty) with its more than 60 varieties of trees and more than 20 shrubs and vines. About 176 residents are in relatively good health and about 34 persons are in our Care Center (24 hour services).
During the past five years both Lynne and I have created several new resources of healing:

• Talk Story, a program enabling residents to share their stories.

• A Support Group, each week. Just last week, we finished discussion of Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D.’s book, Kitchen Table Wisdom.

• Hui Noelo, a group seeking to know and willing to "move the mind". Our next discussion is on Water – the Miracle Molecule.

• Created a Japanese Zen Garden, a memorial to Lynne. Just last week we surrounded the Garden with 35 candles (one in each paper bag) as we sang Christmas carols and listened to Bing Crosby, White Christmas, Kiri Te Kanawa, Ave Maria and Mozart, Ave Verum.

• Creating a community where we could understand aging as a time when qualities and abilities come to full blossom only with age; and a time when we can give back to society the lessons and resources that have been achieved over a lifetime.

• A community where suffering, illness, loss of identity, a particular experience of loneliness unique to the elderly can all become koans. In the Zen practice of the koan, koan becomes a dilemma, a mystery which the rational mind cannot solve. The key to the resolution of a koan, according to Rachel Naomi Remen, "is a shift in the being of the student which allows for a new understanding of the question itself."

• A community where we could manifest and share with each other the spiritual dimension of life. I understand spirituality to be a force, a power, a resource within us that is constantly pushing us toward fulfilling ourselves . . . becoming more real, more authentic, more loving, more caring, more courageous. It is that quality of life connecting us with ourselves, with each other, with the universe, with God.

Producing a documentary, Living Through Dying: a Healing Journey
Ground work started in 1994. The documentary is a multicultural video project addressing the process of dying not as a frightening end but rather as an opportunity for positive change and personal healing. The video will focus on my work with dying persons, a work I started some 40 years ago. We hope to finish filming in another year.

The death of my wife, Lynne, July 1, 1996, age 76
A surgery revealed that a very active cancer had invaded her liver . . . that she had no more than three months to live (she lived seven weeks). She determined to live her dying. In living her dying, she manifested an irrepressible love of life deep within her, a force that she nurtured and trusted.

Three days before she died, she was so weak, she could not move any parts of her body, nor could she eat or speak. When suddenly in the last thirty minutes of her life, she slowly but steadily lifted both arms to embrace me. Then her lips, moved to utter in silence, "I love You".

Oh, my friends, in the presence of death, there is yet another force more powerful than death, the power of love.

A word about my family
My son, Galen, a graduate of Princeton, is a computer whiz working in Virginia/Washington D.C. His two daughters Elsa Marie and Suzanne Teresa are both in college, and all three are nurtured and loved by their mother, Lydia.
My daughter, Sophie Ann, who spent many years working with Ralph Nader and the Waikiki Improvement Association, is now fully committed to the remarkable Gary Young Essential Oils.
My youngest daughter, April, a delightful musician, is a harpist with the Yanni Symphony. She lives in Pasadena, California.

My wish for you and your New Year
I love to dance, in its many forms. When I dance, I think of Nietzsche who stressed the importance of dancing. He said the beauty and skill of the dancer is that, in dancing he shows his independence of the pull of the earth. Dancing is a gay mockery of gravity. It does not deny the earth. Nor does it scorn it. In dancing, the earth is used by man.
My friends, let’s face each other and say, "Shall we dance?"