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Riantee,</div>
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My beloved soul sister, thank you deeply and dearly for your courageous spirit, brave and strong demeanor and authentically vulnerable BIG and generous heart. May you know how in awe I am of you and learn so much from your transparency about your lifelong
love slowly dying. May you continue to be held in the truth of who you are, loving awareness, and allow yourself to be the hollow bamboo through which all feelings, thoughts, emotions, perceptions and BEingness flows through. SO MUCH LOVE to you!</div>
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In loving gratitude,</div>
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Sue</div>
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<div id="divRplyFwdMsg" dir="ltr"><font face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-size:11pt" color="#000000"><b>From:</b> Thespiritexpress <thespiritexpress-bounces@lists.mcn.org> on behalf of Cornelia Gerken via Thespiritexpress <thespiritexpress@lists.mcn.org><br>
<b>Sent:</b> Thursday, April 3, 2025 6:21 PM<br>
<b>To:</b> thespiritexpress@lists.mcn.org <thespiritexpress@lists.mcn.org><br>
<b>Cc:</b> Cornelia Gerken <corneliagerken@gmail.com><br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: [Thespiritexpress] Poem read Tuesday</font>
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<div dir="ltr">dear Riantee,
<div>how beautiful, yes I see the sad, but it is elevating me, in celebration of life, as was as is as will be. Just beautiful. Thank you</div>
<div>Cornelia</div>
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<div dir="ltr" class="x_gmail_attr">On Thu, Apr 3, 2025 at 9:15 AM Riantee Rand via Thespiritexpress <<a href="mailto:thespiritexpress@lists.mcn.org">thespiritexpress@lists.mcn.org</a>> wrote:<br>
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<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">The Last Harvest</font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">My lifelong love is slowly dying.</font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><br>
</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">On my early morning walk I come to a field of daisies</span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">and I pick the brightest,</font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">plucking one petal at a timeless time </font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">to mark our way to the finish.</font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none">“<font face="Times New Roman, serif">What is this life about?” I ask the daisy</font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Petals aflare as so many bodies of experience,</font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">full of faces, events, places</font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">full of people remembered </font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">with the clarity of an uncompromising now,</font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">experience-bodies with my name, my many names,</font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">consciousness traveling with the pulse of the moment </font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">through roles assigned by parents, teachers, friends, strangers,</font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">a flow of memories projected in the aperture </font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">through which the eternal observes the manifested.</font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Half way through I encounter an obstruction,</font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">a commitment I made early on </font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">to make something of myself, be someone I could never be.</font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">I tried very hard but I was stuck and soon </font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">I did not try at all. </font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">I just went against the flow.</font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Against the flow </font><font face="Times New Roman, serif">I </font><font face="Times New Roman, serif">bond</font><font face="Times New Roman, serif">ed </font>with
those bold Parisians </p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none">that fame snatched in their early life.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none">Sagan, Seberg, Bardot, Godard, Truffaut, </p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none">authors, actors, film makers who captured the spirit of the time</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none">and released it on a consenting crowd</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none">while riding its energy to burst out of a corseted society. </p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none">The existential track had opened my way </p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none">to this new wave <font face="Times New Roman, serif">of taboo breakers </font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">and I responded to t</font>he lawless call</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none">following for a while the murmur of that crowd,</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none">doing as they did, trying to be as they were. </p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><br>
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<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">B</font><font face="Times New Roman, serif">ut </font><font face="Times New Roman, serif">when I </font><font face="Times New Roman, serif">noticed a </font><font face="Times New Roman, serif">new </font><font face="Times New Roman, serif">window </font><font face="Times New Roman, serif">of </font><font face="Times New Roman, serif">opportun</font><font face="Times New Roman, serif">ity</font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><span style="white-space:pre-wrap"></span>I jumped.</font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none">The spirit of the time landed me in the New World</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none">among those singing in a newfound tongue, </p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none">adventurers who drank the magic potion </p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">carr</font><font face="Times New Roman, serif">ying</font><font face="Times New Roman, serif"> </font><font face="Times New Roman, serif">them </font><font face="Times New Roman, serif">to
other dimentio</font><font face="Times New Roman, serif">n</font><font face="Times New Roman, serif">s</font><font face="Times New Roman, serif">.</font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">When </font><font face="Times New Roman, serif">I came to the </font><font face="Times New Roman, serif">last </font><font face="Times New Roman, serif">few </font><font face="Times New Roman, serif">petals</font><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font style="font-size:12pt"></font></font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">the </font><font face="Times New Roman, serif">fragrance of each decade was </font><font face="Times New Roman, serif">disclosed</font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none">so pure it could be received</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none">and given away in the same instant.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none">One more petal <font face="Times New Roman, serif">as </font><font face="Times New Roman, serif">I listened to </font><font face="Times New Roman, serif">the language of </font><font face="Times New Roman, serif">my </font><font face="Times New Roman, serif">heart</font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">bringing </font><font face="Times New Roman, serif">back to myself the power I had given other</font><font face="Times New Roman, serif">s,</font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none">and as the reminiscences faded away</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">I questioned the daisy in my hand:</font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none">“what do I truly want at the crepuscule of my life</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none">when my lover is dying?”</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none">It’s all there, inside, all there with such clarity,</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none">the world, the friends, the events, the settings,</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none">a full 3D color movie with all flavor, all movements of soul.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><span style="white-space:pre-wrap"></span>Don’t you see? </font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Y</font>ou have been handed the key that opens the passage </p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none">to every body of experience until the last. </p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><span style="white-space:pre-wrap"></span>Don’t you see? </p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none">The being in all beings is the same being,</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">so hear all the voices </font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">without the judgment of your thinking mind,</font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">d</font><font face="Times New Roman, serif">on’t shrin</font><font face="Times New Roman, serif">k</font><font face="Times New Roman, serif"> in fear </font><font face="Times New Roman, serif">but
expand in love</font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><span style="white-space:pre-wrap"></span>a</font><font face="Times New Roman, serif">s you j</font><font face="Times New Roman, serif">ump into old ag</font><font face="Times New Roman, serif">e.</font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">It’s the last harvest, </font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">surveying </font><font face="Times New Roman, serif">experiences </font>while divesting your self of experiences</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">in </font><font face="Times New Roman, serif">a</font><font face="Times New Roman, serif"> </font><font face="Times New Roman, serif">l</font><font face="Times New Roman, serif">a</font><font face="Times New Roman, serif">ndscape </font><font face="Times New Roman, serif">that
is </font><font face="Times New Roman, serif">the mind of go</font><font face="Times New Roman, serif">d.</font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Your </font><font face="Times New Roman, serif">l</font><font face="Times New Roman, serif">ong</font><font face="Times New Roman, serif">i</font><font face="Times New Roman, serif">ng </font><font face="Times New Roman, serif">for
the past </font><font face="Times New Roman, serif">is love itself </font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">filtering through the veil and glowing</font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">like a memory of eternity you long to return to.</font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><br>
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<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Remember, the self of every self is god infinite,</font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none">so jump, </p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none">die before you die,</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none">die with your loved one. </p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><span style="white-space:pre-wrap"></span>*****</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">I pluck the </font><font face="Times New Roman, serif">very </font><font face="Times New Roman, serif">last petal, </font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">I thank the naked daisy,</font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">I lay it down, I turn around:</font></p>
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<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Spring has arrived.</font></p>
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<p style="margin-bottom:0in; line-height:16px; background:none"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"></font></p>
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