Importance of Spiritual Healing

Martijn recovered miraculously from radical surgery performed to save his life in September 2007. In this very brief message taped while he was just a week out of surgery, he explains in his own distinct way, how important the messages, wishes, thoughts and prayers of all of our dear friends, family and colleagues were in aiding his recovery. Today marks three years since he left this realm, yet his indomitable spirit lives on.

Three Year Memoriam

Our Parisian Honeymoon, July 1996

photo D. Sippel

Martijn died on July 25, 2008, three years ago. During these three years I have deeply and fully experienced the shock of my significant loss. Now, on the eve of this anniversary, I can say that I have passed the cocoon stage of grief's depression, emerging like a butterfly to taste the nectar of life. Previously I mused about the relationship of deep rest to depressed. Though my body has been in physical motion during this last year, relocating from my cherished Maastricht to my new home in sub-tropical Pompano Beach, my emotions continued in deep rest - allowing time to process. Now I am resurfacing. I gulp the moist air, plant gardens in Martijn's honor, create nurseries for Monarchs and Gulf Fritillary caterpillars who soar as butterflies to remind me that this is what he wanted for me.

It is time to organize and perhaps memorialize in a different way. I hope to write books, stories of loss and regeneration that at once capture the uniqueness of our love yet speak to the universality of all love.

Granted the creativity, I hope to distill and transmit to many, the quiet wisdom and profound generosity that defined Martijn's life and even his death. He managed in dying to help others feel alive and unafraid of that which we undeniably each shall experience.

Dear friends and readers, I want most of all that you know I move on a stronger, deeper, more fulfilled individual because the "Usness" Martijn so believed in is REAL. All you need do is to take quiet times, meditative moments, allowing yourself to understand that there is no life without death, no joy without sorrow, no movement without stillness. And should your life be graced with a love so transforming to be called an Usness, rejoice even when life parts you, cleaves you in twain, for the resulting pain is nothing more than a gift of memoriam. If you are in balance and can find your center, the pain will melt leaving you even more Whole as a Two in One.

I repeat here (please see: http://schaefermillennium3.blogspot.com/2008/09/our-usness.html) the translation of the final note Martijn left for me. It is a passage from his beloved philosopher, Ludwig Binswanger from which he was intending to use to complete his thesis about art and love beyond time and space. Read it slowly and rest assured love lasts:

But how are things when death does not meet

You but Me?

Even then, as your You, I am not dying;

even then the Usness in love does not decay.

I can only die as an individual, but not as the You of an I.

When I die as an individual, then yet in dying,

I am more than ever Yours, part of our Usness.

As I received “my life” from your hands anew –

from yours as the hands of the lover

as much as only through you,

the being in Usness “opened up” for me –

I put it back into your hands when dying.

I do not die the “heavy” death of an isolated “I”,

but say goodbye to you knowing

that even in this parting is still presence

because the lover as someone who was here

is still here in the sense of the existence of the Usness,

a Here that rips open the depths and abysses of existence even more;

that calls it even more into the eternal presence of love

and allows it to exist within that love.

Black Bird Song

Black Birds, actually, Boat-tailed Grackles, serenade on Hillsboro Inlet Pier,

Pompano Beach, July 20,2011

Pompano Beach Blackbird Song

Wednesday morning July 20, 2011, came as a gift. While the rest of the US literally sweltered in a murderous heat wave, our Pompano Beach early morning was crystal clear with a light sea breeze, perfect for my daily three-mile roundtrip walk to the Hillsboro Lighthouse Inlet Park.

It was a special morning, the anniversary of the birthday of my beloved late husband, Martijn, who had died exactly three-years earlier surrounded by friends and family in his native town, Maastricht, the Netherlands, far from this sultry sub-tropical city I now call home.

But we had both always intended that Pompano Beach would be our home, staying year after year from our honeymoon through 13 anniversaries at our beloved Light House Cove. Martijn found this corner of the world simply perfect and for the most part, so do I, now a resident for just over a year.

A prime benefit of living directly off the 14^th Street Causeway is the miracle of walking straight to the beach and ultimately to the fishing pier at the Hillsboro Inlet, strolling through verdant neighborhoods along the intercoastal and then to the sea.

As a regular walker I now know and greet the other ‘regulars’ – runners, cyclists, dog walkers and other strollers – content to take in the natural beauty of this almost secret pocket of South Florida, with it’s unspoiled stretch of natural beach and dense landscaping. Those of us savvy enough not to plug into headphones get to hear nature’s sounds along the way, from cheeps to peeps to jeeps.

So, when I arrived at the Inlet pier without another soul in sight except a lone fisherman, I soaked in the welcomed solitude, thinking about how my late husband assured me that if he could, he would always manifest as a black bird, letting me know I was never truly alone.

Imagine, then, when a solitary black bird flew into my solitude, perching a few feet from my nose on the railing of the pier. This proud-feathered friend was most likely a Boat-tailed Grackle who is a permanent resident of our southeastern coasts, preferring coastal saltwater marshes and here in Florida, also inland waters. My iridescent black Grackle messenger came unusually close this special morning, and in a rare display he threw back his head, puffed out his chest and jeeped what I imagined was a heavenly birthday song! Within a minute his partner joined for a riotous chorus. Like Paul McCartney once sang, “Black birds singing….”

–The End –

Harry Potter reprise

Gentle readers, with the final installment of Harry Potter and the Deadly Hallows due to hit the big screen at midnight tomorrow, July 14th, I thought I'd reprint an Op/Ed piece I did shortly after the book was released. Forgive me for repeating myself, but as I look at the headlines that were flying like broomsticks in February 2008, when I first posted this, alas, the world is still in crisis and there is still an admirable, if not noble lesson to be found in J.K. Rowling's brave hero, our now long-time literary friend, Harry Potter and his endearing mates:

Whatever prior literary borrowing was committed, whatever J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series lacks in sheer literary merit, the seventh installment, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, warranted its intense exposure this summer. Claiming readership across generations, gender and geography, the book’s detractors, like its “Dementors,” simply suck happiness from life.

Real world “Muggle” headlines of war, famine, floods and random violence returned soon enough. Since sensation sells news, hurrah that the stir of a book had the power to whisk the war in Iraq, the primary election campaigns in America, the floods in Britain, the fires in southern Europe, and global terrorism off our minds, albeit for a brief summer respite.

In fact, real world leaders can learn a lesson from the boy wizard…

While multiple themes thread throughout the Potter series, this final volume touches on a topic more often found in the business or political press: Harry’s ultimate feat is attainment of collaborative, reflective leadership. The boy wizard wields soft power.

Western mythology has focused on solitary heroes attaining supreme power: Divine right backed by divine might; one absolute hero vanquishing or vanquished by one clear villain. From Beowulf to Batman, heroes act alone and conquer evil with reciprocal violence. The message is and always has been – an eye for an eye, dominate or be dominated.

As a scholar of European Union public affairs and politics I have observed firsthand the EU’s efforts for multilateral cooperation. Speaking at European University Institute seminar in Fiesole, Italy a few years ago, Harvard University scholar Joseph Nye defined and defended his soft power concept “as the ability to get what you want by attracting and persuading others to adopt your goals.” Years before I had heard Mssrs. Fisher, Ury and Susskind, the authors of Getting to Yes and Breaking the Impasse, respectively, similarly extol the benefits of “shared leadership” and collaboration at the MIT-Harvard Public Disputes Institute.

Joseph Nye

More to the point, last March, Riane Eisler, author of the stunning Chalice and the Blade, and the recently released, The Real Wealth of Nations, urged a group of women leaders, “to replace stories that perpetuate the domination legends with partnership myths.” Knowingly or not, J.K. Rowling has taken an influential step in this direction.

Although Lord Voldermort is the prototypical arch villain, Rowling counterpoints this caricature by crafting Harry’s development as a reflective, indeed reluctant leader. Harry emerges in the mold of leader defined by Barbara Crosby of the Reflective Leadership Center at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey Institute. Such leadership inspires and mobilizes “others to undertake collective action in pursuit of the common good.”

Flying like broomsticks throughout the Potter opus are themes of love, friendship, trust and loyalty, but in the end, the “pursuit of the common good” premise emerges prominently. And, the conceit isn’t overly simplified. Harry and other characters struggle to comprehend what constitutes “common good.” Teenage Harry’s reflective abilities are toughened as he learns that his mentor and hero, Dumbledore, had a youthful misunderstanding of the concept. Harry must not only grasp the nuances of Dumbledore’s transgressions, but also forgive them.

This ability to expose Harry’s fallibility and forgiveness renders Deathly Hallows a cut above the retributive pap of so many hero fantasies. Rowling encourages readers to think critically about what makes Harry a hero, what influences his choices. And since literally millions of these readers are juveniles, perhaps some will mature to consider soft power before obliteration as an option.

The parting 17-year-old Harry Potter is imbued with a finer capacity than sword or wand play or sheer magical attainment. Throughout the series he has fiercely sought truth; in this final quest he gains the valuable characteristics of understanding and self-knowledge.

In 1997, business writers Begley and Jacobs defined leadership as “the process of maximizing the capability of people to fulfill purpose through the development of character.” J.K. Rowling has penned an extended bildungsroman: Harry Potter the boy undergoes the requisite conflicts between his needs and those of the society around him, rising like Dumbledore’s phoenix as a more modern hero.

Choosing collaboration over his former preferred isolation to guide his choices, Harry advances his goals. He comes to understand and accept his own and others’ limitations, and overcomes his wavering mistrust of others. In this final episode, Rowling masterfully releases Potter to his potential as “a first among equals” – a prima inter pares – thereby producing the ripple effect of allowing others to lead. In fact, another ultimately wields the hero’s sword – it is an ally, not a solitary hero who literally slays the dragon, (well, snake). This real power of Potter is his triumph through partnership.