We’re just back from Kalamazoo where we celebrated the life of a friend who lived a very long time (in human years).
We sang in gratitude for that life.
We acknowledged human frailty.
We met new friends – students who are the future of contemporary music.
Today is Jeff Day.
(Jeff would love that there is now a community
of all young people embracing our music!)
On Jeff Day we celebrate the life of our co-founder Jeff Dinsmore,
who passed away, suddenly, April 14, 2014.
Eight years ago.
That’s half the life of The Crossing.
Hard to believe.
The beauty of the passing of the years is the way in which memory replaces sorrow.
It eventually wins the struggle between grief and gratitude.
It educes a kind of calmness; like that captured
in Maya Angelou’s “When great souls die”:
And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
In our blooming peace, we find the memory of two other charter members of The Crossing who left us this past year: Mark Panuccio and Rebecca Whitlow. Very different personalities, reminding us of the amazing array of singularities that make our world so worth visiting for however long we have. Mark and Rebecca: each a kind of bottomless vessel of creativity, generosity, and kindness – attributes that continue even in their absence.
On Jeff Day 2022, we also recognize that these passings were in the progress and process of nature, unlike those of Ukraine, where grief must be unimaginable. The concept of peace blooming is too distant, even irrelevant, for many. We pause in gratitude for the lives of those we never knew, while owning our anger – anger that wildly surpasses what we have felt when our friends leave us unexpectedly. Anger and frustration at our frailty, at our inability to make it stop.
We share the love we find in the memory of Jeff, Tom, Mark, and Rebecca, and we hope the families of Ukraine can feel the strength we wish to send them, celebrating life – the lives of their friends, families, and those they never knew – as we find strength in the wisdom of Maya’s words:
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.
Donald and the Whole Community @ The Crossing
