Community Holy Water and George Downey's Chalice Story

 
As per our annual UUC Groton tradition at the beginning of the Fall season… this week we had our "Gathering of Community Water" ritual during our first "big church" service of the Fall. As always, there was a huge turnout as everyone proudly told their story — I loved it. Moreover, this year that was especially great for me because it rained on The Day I took my US Citizenship Oath and I had gathered that rain water specifically for this ritual. So I proudly said “Dual Citizen” as my "word" that goes with the water and that was very meaningful for me.

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On the right you see a picture of the huge "card" that everyone got to sign for George Downey's 90^th birthday along with a recent picture of him. Below is the text from his story about his most generous gift to the UUC community sometime after the year 2000.

“The Chalice Story ” — by George Downey      Several years ago Jean and I arrived, joining with others in the congregation for Sunday worship at First Parish Church of Groton. Our Chalice then was a pewter vessel showing some dents, with a somewhat distorted rim, and sitting slightly askew on its base.      Some place in Elea's sermon that morning my mind strayed to imagining a new Chalice vessel: what shape, how big, how wide, how high, what wood, what artistic presence? Well, my mind got back to Elea's sermon, but I took all of those fleeting thoughts home with me.      First, it was to the drafting board: rough sketches, finally a satisfying idea, scale drawings, full-scale drawings, templates cut to the shape of the finished design. The wood should be mahogany, like the molding trim around the top of the box pews.      It was time to go to my woodworking shop. I had a supply of leftover mahogany pieces. The pedestal is a stack of disks of diminishing diameters. These are glued and clamped. While the glue hardened for seven days it allowed time for me to re-sharpen all the lathe chisels to razor-sharp edges.      The lathe will turn the pieces slowly at first. The pedestal and the bowl are shaped separately on the lathe. The speed is increased as the pieces are rounded, and increased more for shaping. The pieces are sanded on the rotating lathe. The pedestal and bowl must fit together precisely for the final assembly and gluing. The last step is a finish applied to bring out the beauty of the mahogany wood. To this point this is just a created object in my workshop.      When the wooden vessel made its way from my workbench to our sanctuary and was placed on its stand, with a flaming candle, it was infused with new meaning as Our Chalice, truly a metamorphosis in wood!      The flaming Chalice is the symbol of Unitarian Universalism, and it is a centering symbol of our gathered community.      Our Chalice flame embraces all who come! - Sept 2014

George tells me the "he's not on-line", so I guess he won't likely see this. But I wanted to post it nevertheless because I very much value our heritage and believe firmly in doing whatever I can to help preserve it. As you can read in my blog articles about my UUC participation, I've been going to this Church for many years yet I had no idea of the story behind our beloved mahogany wooden chalice. Thank you so much, George !
 

To Live Powerful Purposeful Lives — Why We Remember

During our UUC services we sing* the words you see on the right below… and today, it being Memorial Day 2012 and because of the amazing service we had, my eyes were opened and I realized that these words can also be taken in the much broader context of commitment to service and giving that I've seen in just the last few days:

Some recent, compelling, examples of selfless giving … • The men and women whose dedication to preserving everyone's freedom trumps their fears — that I can hardly even think about — of going to war, • Aging hippies whose sweet voices remind us of the 60s music from Woody Guthrie and Simon & Garfunkel and brought me back to what's important … • A young boy who practiced and learned to play grand piano and then had the courage to come and perform it for the entire congregation, • The gifted men+women quartet from the UUC choir whose harmonies of “America, the Beautiful” really showed what an incredible song this is. • Ellen's compelling testimonial, the result of tedious research, and Rev. Elea's “Why We Must Remember” sermon that inspired me to write this, • I'm grateful for the opportunity to be part of a strong, committed team of men who dedicate themselves to mentoring men, young and old, to realize their full potential as mature masculine men via the upcoming Legacy Discovery weekend coming up June 8-11th in Fishkill, NY. (sign up)

Thanks be to all who freely give, who guide us in the way to live, with generosity of heart… inspiring us to do our part. * Sung to the familiar melody of The Doxology — the one where I can just barely keep myself from singing “Amen !” when we finish.

On Memorial Day (and every day) we remember… so that each of us can do our part to move mankind forward toward the elusive — but very achievable — dream of every human being living in peace and in harmony with every other man, woman, and child on this Earth today and in the future.

I've changed my Initial "placeholder for an animation" icon, on the left, to be a link to what that "idea" became: a separate page to which I've given the name http://bit.ly/WhatIsUU where you can navigate the UUC banners or see them in an animation which features the 6 posters that we have depicting “The Six Sources of Unitarian Universalism”. And now that I more fully understand this, the page also talks about how that relates to the 7 Principles of Unitarian Universalism and features links and searches to a myriad of related resources.
 

Lighting our UUC Chalice on All Souls Day

I'm chosing today to blog this because it would have been my Mom's birthday, even though my subject is the "Chalice Lighting" segment that I did in our UUC church in Groton 3 days ago.

For now, the rest is TBS (waiting to get the transcript).

Steeped In History — our UUC — FPCoG, 1662 - 2008

Today we had such an inspiring service at The First Parish Church of Groton that I went back afterwards to take the pictures you see below. The thumbnails aren't all that inspiring, but if you click thru to get the larger images you will read what is essentially the roster of the UUC church leadership during the last 350 years.

The Groton Meeting House Leadership Throughout Our History
1662 - 1826	1826 - 1916	1916 - 1963	1963 - 2008

The oldest one is titled "Ministers of the Town" because back then it wasn't just a church — it was where every Groton Town Meeting was held. The next one starts in 1826 — the year the Puritains split off to form their own church because the FPCoG adopted Unitarian Universalism as their creed, and thus began our current "Ministers of the Parish" roster. The sequence continues thru present day with Elea Jesse Kemler (currently on sabbatical).

The four panels shown above are inside the church, roughly in the four corners of the sanctuary. So I have always wanted to see them all in one place to make it easier to see that they really do all fit together. And it was only today when we heard history highlights of the principle players in this long saga that I finally decided to capture the rosters this way and to "move this saga into cyberspace". Google the names in these rosters and you will read fascinating stories of every ilk!!

The 2^ndpart of today's service focused on the rich history available "Off The Walls" in the sanctuary. We heard the stories behind the commemorations inscribed throughout the church — from the external 1755 history, to the Dana, Moors, Dix and Young plaques. And since I was taking pictures… see also the pipe organ, chandeliers and Puritain-inspired box pews.

Dating from 1662... The First Parish Church of Groton (Flickr) is indeed Steeped In History!!

The Season of Joy 2013

There are at least three things that I'm involved with as this end-of-Fall before-Christmas season approaches, and though they're not directly related, I'm just going to talk about them all in this post.

 
The first is when I unwrap the sandwich boards for the Groton Community Christmas Concerts that I keep stored in my shed for most of the year. Then, round about Thanksgiving, I clean them up and rework the dates in preparation for putting them out in early December, around 10 days before the 3 concerts we put on.
The picture on the right — my first published selfie — was my stake in the ground for writing this article, and I used it during the Fall as a place to direct people to when they asked me about the timing of the 3 concerts we give each year in early December.

On the left is the traditional "flyer" that we have for the GCCC every year, citing the names of the songs that we sing in the concerts. And though I don't have many pictures of us singing during the concert itself, I did take this short video clip of our encore, "Down The Bethlehem Rd", as seen from standing on the stage.

The 2^nd Fall tradition for me is that I work with my men's team to take part in an annual community service project called "Operation ELF", where ELF stands for "Everybody Loves Families". The part of ELF that I did with my team this year was to go shopping for needy kids, fulfilling what they'd put on their "Wish Lists" as best we could from the fundraising we do. Click here for a picture I painted of this outing.

As per our Unitarian Universalist tradition, near the beginning of each service someone lights the chalice and speaks about whatever aspect of their Putting Faith Into Action that they want to. So in order to promote the GCCC, I signed up to do the Chalice lighting in our UUC service on Dec 15^th since that was the first day of the performances. In the full text of my Chalice Lighting I linked the GCCC and ELF together in a salute to "the Joy of Giving thru Community Service" and painted this picture of singing in the GCCC: "I stand up on the stage and see all those community faces… They show up tired and worn out from long days… But as the concert unfolds they begin to relax, and before you know it they are beaming with "The Joy of the Season".

Indeed — The Season of Joy 2013 — Let us all count the ways that we are all truly blessed.
 

What's Under that Stone ?

Analogous to the Easter story about "someone" rolling away the stone that had sealed off Jesus' burial tomb, Elea's sermon, and indeed the whole UUC service today, was about the surprises we find — how our lives can be changed — by looking under a stone.

Taken literally, as was the case for the Children's story, you see the surprises that had been written under the stones for the kids to experience. And they all had great fun doing so.

Taken not so literally… to me simply means looking for things (for "answers?") in unexpected places — a perfectly appropriate thing to be doing at this Easter juncture to shake away the Winter complacency that had hijacked my otherwise industrious spirit. As such, I'm sure I'm not the only person engaging in a little introspection today… a prodding to look under my own stones, inspired by this quote from today's order of service :

A Thought as the Service Begins quoted from :   — Victoria Stafford        “ All of a sudden, without warning, … Something promised us rebirth, the resurrection of our hoping. The rain rained down wet and clear, not thick and white, and without warning, Winter washed away and we were free.

Spirit of life and love, moving in every living thing, and in us, astonish us this morning. Startle us. Stun us… Shake us from our sleeping. For we are Winter-weary and disbelieving and our eyes have forgotten what surprises look like, and we are ready, we are more than ready, to open them and be amazed. ”

My Own Epiphany — Listening to "The Voice of the Water"

I've been wondering when I would have an inspiration upon which to base my first blog entry of the New Year... and how appropriate that the epiphany I was looking for came during the UUC service I attended today on Epiphany Sunday. My first hint was from the weekly bulletin, in A Thought Before the Service Begins :

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If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.

—Antoine de Saint-Exupery

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The image of our "First Parish Church" — shown on the right — is from early October, so it's not the Wintery snow banks that I saw there today. But I like this image because it shows the changing of the seasons — just like we were doing today with Elea's sabbatical.

Below is the Rumi poem, read by Becky Pine during the Chalice lighting today.

Everywhere, something begins to arrive every soul is seeking truth; every soul parched with thirst they've all heard the voice of the quencher of thirst everyone tastes the love, everyone tastes the milk anxious to know from where wisdom begins to arrive waiting in fever; wondering ceaselessly when will that final union begin to arrive people of all beliefs raising their hands to the sky their chanting voices in unison begin to arrive how happy is the one whose heart's ear hears that special voice as it begins to arrive clear your ears, my friend, from all expectations so you can hear the sound as it begins to arrive if your eyes are marred with petty visions wash them with tears your teardrops are healers as they begin to arrive keep silence, don't rush to finish your poem the finisher of the poem, the creator of the word, will begin to arrive                —Rumi, 13th-century poet

Becky's poem opened my mind to listening for and really hearing "The Voice of the Water" — the metaphor we have chosen to symbolize our congregation's quest for spiritual rejuvenation which we will be doing over the next four months during Elea's sabbatical. Ever since I first read Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha as a teenager, appreciating the sound of the water (and the wind, and most of nature)... have brought me closer to my true inner self. So I'm totally on board with this metaphor!! As background for this journey, I offer an audio-made-into-video of Rev. Elea's sermon on "Grace". Described also in my sister Nanci's "Gifts of Grace" blog, click on Part 1, Part 2, or Part 3 of "The Breath of Something Incomprehensible", divided into clips solely due to YouTube size limitations.

Palm Sunday In Groton

Great service at our UUC in Groton today. I wanted to capture my palm frond after the service so here's my snapshot from right in front of the church - with about 1' of snow still on the ground.

The other thing that happened today was that I finally got rid of the binder twine I'd been using for our "Pammett" sign, and replaced it with chain that looks a lot better and I hope will require less maintenance.

Privileged to be Such a Happy Father

 
Today, on Father's Day, I feel so happy — honored, privileged, blessed, lucky, amazed — to be the Father that I am to my two sparkling young daughters, and the loving husband to "My Beloved and my Friend", my sweet wife — now for more than 3 decades. Wow! Talk about “Count Your Blessings” !!
On the left is the card that my youngest daughter skillfully made and presented to me today. It was from a picture that she took during a Mother's Day family outing we did to a local state park (Willard Brook in Ashby) for a picnic last May. And though it looks like I'm a happy and balanced "tight rope walker"… the truth is that that skinny log was very wobbly and were it not for the 10' balance pole that I had — and used to hold me up (more like a crutch) for most of the way across the river — I would have been in the drink about 5 seconds after I started. She managed to capture me in that space of confidence and control during the only 2 seconds that I was in that space during the entire "adventure". She also did an amazing job of enhancing the color contrasts and the "lights and dark greens" in the photo, which in its original form really wasn't that great a picture. All 'n all it was a very loving gesture.

After getting that card and others, I went off to sing with my UUC Groton choir — our last "official duty" before the congregation switches to "summer mode" until the Fall, and that was very enjoyable and satisfying — as it always is.

Following that we had a terrific picnic at our local lake / beach (Sargisson Beach — Knops Pond, Lost Lake) in Groton where my sweetie and I sat on canvas chairs with our feet in the cool lake water as the heat of the day took over and left us not wanting to be anywhere else imaginable.

And then as the day cooled off we all went into Boston to meet up with our other daughter and her beau at NEU. We ended up feasting — a seafood extravaganza — at a favorite, The Barking Crab, on the Boston waterfront… followed by a gleeful promenade from there to Faneuil Hall following The Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway — my first real experience of the whole project, now that it (appears to be!?) finished. Can anything associated with The Big Dig ever actually be "completed"!?

Ah... such is life for me in the family that I have been truly blessed to be part of.
 

Celebrating the Return of The Light

 
I'm surprised, this morning, to realize that it's been a couple of years since I've blogged about the Winter Solstice Celebration, but it's still an important milestone for me. Indeed, “the Return of The Light” truly is a grand reason to celebrate; I never miss the chance to recognize it. Most years at our UUC Groton Church my sweetie and I look forward to a Winter Solstice celebration, but this year we didn't get to do that; I'm not sure why.

But this year we have another celestial phenomena that coincides with Winter Solstice 2010 — a full Lunar Eclipse, captured marvelously by YouTube's "peteherron", embedded below…

Click on the "Play" Icon on the right to watch the video which shows an amazingly smooth time lapse of the eclipse, compiled from shots with a still camera on a rotating telescope mount. Wow! Due to cloud cover, I didn't get to watch the eclipse though we had planned a "wee hours" sauna so we could be out there watching the shadow of the earth creep ever so slowly across the face of the moon… An article from The Huffington Post today quotes a Montreal Gazette article with a NASA claim: “the last time these astronomical events took place in sync was on Dec 21st, 1638, — 456 years ago — and it won't happen again until at least 2094”. Imagine: even my grand kids (not that I have any) could be dead by then!

Another thing to note is that this was also the first morning this Fall when I woke up to an overnight snow fall — our back yard was completely white, though a lot of that has melted as you can see in this picture of our dog, Lady, on the Winter Solstice day, 2010. Not to worry… there'll be lots more from where that came from; I'm sure !
 

Carolyn McDade's “Spirit of Life” — both verses

 
Almost a year and a half ago, in my Winter Solstice article, I wrote about a recording I made of me singing Carolyn McDade's “Spirit of Life”. In order to have piano accompaniment, I found the music for this well-known UUC hymn and I was surprised to discover that it has two verses. When we sing it "every Sunday" in our Unitarian Universalist Church (in Groton), there is only ever one verse. But just having seen that there are two verses… ever since then I've wanted to reRecord the song in its full form. So finally, on this fabulous New England Spring day — with the sounds of the birds chirping and the bees buzzing in the blossoms of the weeping cherry tree in our yard — I was inspired to sing the whole song.

“ Spirit of Life ” Spirit of Life, come unto me. Sing in my heart all the stirrings of compassion. Blow in the wind, rise in the sea; move in the hand, giving life the shape of justice. Roots hold me close; wings set me free; Spirit of Life, come to me, come to me.                                               — Carolyn McDade Spirit of Love, come unto me. Deep in my soul all the mystery of creation. Teach me to care, Peace let there be. Lead me to truth showing forth the paths of wisdom. Roots hold me close; wings set me free; Spirit of Love, come to me, come to me.

None of the on-line references to this song that I could find mentions that it has a 2^nd Verse. Moreover, this very interesting article describes in Carolyn McDade's own words how “Spirit of Life” came to be and therein she implies that "all the other verses" were not part of “her original prayer.” That is why I did the attribution as you see above where I nevertheless posted all the words that I found in our hymnal. And I sing both verses in my rendition of the song that you can hear by clicking on the YouTube player, above, or by following this link directly.
 

Proud to be an American — Citizen Pammett

At long last it finally happened — I made my way through all of the tedious steps and have just taken the final step — the pledge of allegiance to the USA. Yup. Citizen Pammett and I am Proud to be an American!

Never having seen such a naturalization ceremony, I didn't know much about what to expect, so it was pretty interesting. First lesson learned: When they say "it starts at 10:30", what that means is that some people will arrive by then, but they don't actually start the ceremony until after everyone who is going to arrive has had their paperwork checked, and they're all sitting in their seats. So in my case that meant that we actually got going just after 12:30.

Then the interesting part started. First up, they said that we were 643 applicants, from 95 different countries. Then they called out all of the countries in alphabetical order, encouraging everyone to stand up and cheer when their country was called. Not unlike the Olympics… it was an amazingly long time until they got to Canada at which point I did cheer loudly to make my presence known — as if it wasn't already obvious enough due to my Uncle Sam top hat and celebratory garb. Much to my surprise, it was the only such hat that I saw all day. The festive garb was the brainchild and birthday gift from my baby girl, shown with me on the left when we went out for lunch afterwards with my longtime friend, Austin.

The ceremony was actually more interesting than I expected, featuring a very inspirational "keynote" from the Judge — herself an immigrant — who presided over the ceremony. Her quote, which totally enrolled me, was [that I was] “Pledging myself to an enterprise in human freedom”. Yeah !   I totally get it. After the Oath, tears came to my eyes as I sang “The Star-Spangled Banner” for my first time as an American Citizen. I was also touched by the symbolism of it being such a rainy day (new life). When I got home I put out a container to catch rain drops and I will use that water as my "Citizenship" contribution this Fall when we do our UUC tradition of combining community water to make ritual water for the coming year.

For comparisson — on the right you see what I looked like when I got my green card in 1982, which was already 5 years after I'd come to the USA. Yea... things change. How many times have I had to explain that at border crossings?
Which brings me to answering the question everyone asks: Why did I do it ?
Basically, to me it was a mater of Integrity. Technically, I'll always be a Canadian. But I have lived and worked my entire life outside of Canada — years in France but mostly in the USA. And at this point in my life I want to "go home" when I retire — home to my country. And though I have lived elsewhere for almost half my life, deep down I feel like this is my home and always will be. So I just wanted to make the commitment officially and take my rightful place doing my part in “The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave”.

So that's my story and I'm stickin' to it  !
 

My Christmas Chalice Lighting, Dec 23rd, 2018

Below is the text I created when I led the Lighting the Chalice ritual at our UUC in Groton, the day before Christmas, 2018. Since it was the Christmas service, I skipped over some of this during the actual presentation in the interest of time.

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It is such an honor to be here this morning — to share with you my perspective and my excitement about this very special and important time of year...

For many of us, it's a time to experience our extended families - we see people we love, and we rekindle fond relationships. Maybe there are folks we're happy to see only once a year — but even that keeps us in touch, and it replenishes our thirst for connections to our past, present and future.

So in many ways, this is The Season of Joy.

Indeed, one of the great joys I have already experienced this year happened because my wife made an off-hand comment about "The Clapper" as we were trying to unravel the mysteries of all the lights on the Christmas Tree.

So I did it — I succumbed — even though I vowed I'd never buy "The Clapper" because I thought it was only for really old people ... Now just imagine the joy when this (clap, clap) makes all of the holiday lights go on, and (clap, clap) makes them go off. Pure Joy!

But as Elea reminded us last week, let us acknowledge that the road thru our yearly Chanukah and Christmas celebrations, albeit paved with the best of intentions, is not necessarily a smooth passage.

It could be fraught with memories of previous seasons where all did NOT go well. Maybe we have lost loved ones who have left us yearning to be with them again. Or maybe this season especially reminds us of regrets too numerous to elaborate. You all know what I'm talking about.

For that reason, many of us set out to "Be on our best behavior" — pretending that everything is OK, even when it isn't... so we avoid "making waves" — a kind of a "hiding out"... Sometimes that "works"... but I would like to suggest an alternative.

Be open to the positive side of everything that happens, whilst still acknowledging the reality of our situations. Fully experience whatever happens and look for the blessings, in gratitude.

In my men's circle we use phrases that articulate "ways of being" — ones that we aspire to hold. Here is one called "Feel the Burn" — I brought this picture to illustrate the point. I know this is too small for most to see; if you're feeling brave, Google "picture, burning man".

Recently I found a much better way to say this... In her cyberspace blog called "DailyOM ", Madisyn Taylor writes in her article called "Honoring All Experiences":

• It is important when pain comes our way to honor the experience, as it is usually a great teacher.
• Honoring the experiences we have in our lives is an invaluable way to communicate with life, our greatest teacher.
• We do this when we take time at night to say what we are thankful for about our day, and also when we write in a journal.
• Both of these acts involve consciously acknowledging the events of our lives so that they deepen our relationship to our experiences.
• This is important because it brings us into closer connection with life, and with the moment.
• Only when we acknowledge what's happening to us can we truly benefit from life's teachings.

So I light the Chalice this morning for each and every one of us — that we fully appreciate who we are, and that we totally bring our present selves into these holidays... as they unfold thru New Years.

Using My Creative Energies To Promote Unitarian Universalism

 
The story behind the webApp whose image you see below started when a set of very colorful and inspirational posters or "banners" suddenly appeared in the sanctuary of our Church, the First Parish Church of Groton, in Groton, Ma. I'm sure they were long in the works for those who created them, but at that point they were all new to me and I admit I was quite taken by them. They were the inspiration for what I describe in this posting. 

What fun — and what a learning experience — it has been creating the page that I call: http://bit.ly/WhatIsUU. From the beginning, I dreamed of having a web page where you could just see each of those banners as an animation because that's exactly how I 'see' these values and principles playing out in our UUC community.  

A secondary motivation that I had for WhatIsUU is that I was looking for an excuse to brush up on my JavaScript because it has been a while since I used the technology and because I wanted this to be a standalone page — using client-side scripting, if necessary — but otherwise not needing any special support from the web server.  

And then there were the end-user requirements: I wanted someone to be able to really read the page, so that meant that I had to do more than just have it be a picture annimation — because people read at different speeds. Hence "next / prev" vs. slide show modes which are mutually-exclusive and intended to support both reading models. To add a little flexability to the slide show there is a DropDown where you can chose how long the WebApp waits before it shows you the next UU banner.  

A final JavaScript challenge was to see if I could provide a search capability on the page where the thing that you end up searching for is a function of which banner you're looking at. For that one I tried several different techniques, and although each one of them quickly led to a solution for one browser, typically it wouldn't work with other common browsers. That's why I ended up with what you see on the lower right-hand part of the page where it says "Find Out More".
 

A Breath of Sunshine on a bleak day in October

Recently when I had a little time to fill in between early-morning choir practice and our usual 10am Sunday morning service, I wandered out into our "UUC Memory Garden" and took the snapshot that you see, here, of "Gaye's Memory Brick". Click here for my blog article about Gaye's brick per se; here I tried more to capture the garden itself within the environment where it rests. You'd never know that this is right in the center of our town, Groton, Ma.

What a peaceful place it is — standing on and reading the 100s of bricks that memorialize loved ones from our congregation, looking out over the magnificent New England Fall, as you see it here, and listening to hear Gaye's voice in the wind, as I've written about before. This voice is not a lamentation; it's about everlasting joy — the joie de vivre that characterized the life she lived, albeit way too short.

Alas, I doubt that this view looks like that now because we've recently had three days of rain so I suspect most of the leaves have now fallen. But that's OK; it's perfectly appropriate. I actually like this view in every season, even on frigid cold days in Winter, or like today, a pretty bleak end-of-October day.

So where's that "Breath of Sunshine" ? It's easy — just listen to the soundtrack from "The Sound of Music" and imagine living your life like that. Every day's an adventure. Every day the glass is always half full. It was Gaye's lifetime context of "Climb Every Mountain" — with all of the UPs and DOWNs that entails — that taught me about why that's so important. It's all about embracing life as it is. Fully appreciating today, not waiting for something that might come… because this moment — right now — is all that any of us really has. It's about being truly happy with what is within your reach.

Climb every mountain… — from "The Sound of Music" soundtrack Climb every mountain, Search high and low, Follow every byway, Every path you know. Climb every mountain, Ford every stream, Follow every rainbow, 'Till you find your dream. A dream that will need All the love you can give, Every day of your life For as long as you live. Climb every mountain, Ford every stream, Follow every rainbow, Till you find your dream A dream that will need All the love you can give, Every day of your life, For as long as you live. Climb every mountain, Ford every stream, Follow every rainbow, Till you find your dream.

Thank you, and I miss you, dear sweet sister Gaye. Thank you for the life you lived, and for what you continue to give to me by still being present in my life every day.