It was a year ago today ...

... as I was gearing up for another day at work in the Fields of the Lord @ the Lambeth Conference in Canterbury that we got the phone call from home that my 83 year old mother had passed in the night at her home in Alexandria, Minnesota.
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Here's the piece I wrote from Lambeth that day ... a year-that-feels-like-a-lifetime-and-yesterday ago ... which ended " ... and my feelings today are that the best tribute I can pay to her life and love and support is to continue with the work we are doing here at Lambeth Conference -- to continue to challenge our Anglican family live up to the Christian Family Values my mother didn't just talk about but lived."

And today I'm thinking about all the things that have happened in this year-past that I wanted to pick up the phone and say "Guess what NOW!" ... and hear her predictable Minnesotan reply, "Well, there ya go, then, yah!" (Right up there with "Ya, sure, you betcha!" in the Minnesota lexicon.)

Since she's been gone (just to name a few):

• We added a new puppy to our family ... Juno the Wild. (Mother would have loved her!)
• My niece Christine had a baby girl in May ... the first of a new generation.
• We gained and then lost marriage equality here in California.
• We survived another General Convention of the Episcopal Church.

It's not the same without her and yet today is a day to give thanks again for her life -- for the gifts she gave all of us who were part of her life -- and to remember that we claim a faith that assures us the love that bind us together in this earthly life is but changed -- not ended -- even as we continue to grieve the ones "we love but see no more."
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We miss you, Mom! Hope you're cleaning up at the Heavenly Bingo Table and know that we give thanks for you and your love and life every day of ours!
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