Life, death, and being in community

On Sunday longtime friend and co-worker Catherine White-Holman died in a plane crash off Saturna Island. Five other people died in that crash, with two people surviving. So many lives changed in that moment.

Over the last 15 years, and in a rather concentrated way in the last 24 hours, I've had many moments of feeling grateful for having had the opportunity to know and learn from Catherine. She was brilliant in many ways including building and being part of community.

In the Zen Centre we talk a lot about the community of practice, the sangha. But as Catherine so beautifully demonstrated throughout her life there is a difference between talking about community as if it were something separate or outside of us, and being in community together, being community.

Last night I called Seishin as the co-coordinator of the peer support team within the VZC to ask for help. Seishin and I recently did a home visit together to sit with two members of the VZC who had a recent death in the family, and in the midst of the shock and grief all I wanted was to have people come and sit with me, to experience grief within the container and structure of zazen.

This morning three people from the VZC brought a mobile zendo to our home and sat in the middle of our living room, admist all the critters, complete with zabutons and bells and clappers. We set up a butsudan on our rolling coffee table, with a picture of Catherine and also of a friend Dean whose death anniversary it is today, with incense filling our house with that familiar smell from the zendo and flowers and ferns from Soshin's garden.

I was afraid to sleep last night, afraid of dreams of the plane sinking into the water and my beloved friend drowning, imagining the terror and panic of her last moments of life, imagining her long hair floating in the water trapped in that plane. Sitting this morning with three dharma friends across from and beside me I was so thankful for the solidity of their presence and the quality of their aliveness, breathing in and out, watching the tiny movements of Eshu's hands and the fabric of his robes move ever so slightly with each breath in, breath out. With each breath memories of Catherine, so many memories of her laughing (she was wicked and irreverent), and the quiet of our breaths in and out.

This is community -- sharing our lives together, the difficult parts as well as the joys; asking for and being there to help each other. Just breathing together, whether that breath is peaceful, struggling, calm, terrified, grief-stricken, with tears or without. Just being together, sharing our lives together.

Thank you everyone for your kindness and care, for demonstrating community, demonstrating sangha.

Gassho,

Joshua