A profoundly tender morning spent honoring the life of a remarkable woman, Anne Kahane, who transitioned earlier this week and left a legacy of great love and gratitude in her wake. Called “A Woman of Valor” by her friends and family, she dearly loved the Agape community and it was at her request that Rev Julie Moret , Jami Lula and I might represent the spiritual teaching and music that had come to define her. She had loved the Gayatri Mantra and it was such an honor to offer it into the atmosphere of her familys Temple, one ancient culture meeting another ancient culture, and for a brief time becoming one. We were welcomed so warmly by her mother and father, the matriarch and patriarch of the family, now charged with looking over Annes three daughters, young women who are in their own way following their mother’s footsteps into lives of unique and blessed gifts. It was so very important to Anne that her Jewish community know and understand her spiritual path and the principles she had come to embrace and live her life by, and it was not for one moment lost on me that our Beloved Community and what we each get to bring is so often the source of comfort and solace for people we may never even meet. Her mother and father who also attend Agape had a profound grace and peace about them, and when they came over and expressed their gratitude for us being there and bringing Agape with us I stumbled through words of gratitude amidst the awe at who THEY were showing up as. They had lost their daughter and the mother of their grandchildren, yet an anchoring in the Truth that passes human understanding shone through them with profound light and grace, and you knew they knew that she was there, and that she was forever. I’ve seldom experienced a more powerful memorial service, probably for the fact that the typical morbidity and solemnity were constantly struck through with a light, love, and laughter that only a woman of valor’s life can speak to. She was a fierce mother, and one of her many dear friends shared a sweet story that when you left your kids with Anne, one of two scenarios would await you on your return. You would either have to dig for your child through costumes, makeup and fortes, inside of which your kid, her kids, AND Anne could be found playing, or you came back to your bathed, fed and pajama’d kid, with the clothes you left them in packed in a ziploc baggie by the door. She was also a woman of great courage, and through her 9 year struggle with cancer she was remembered as that person that never ever complained about it. Her days were filled with random acts of kindness towards strangers, profound gratitude for each moment, and humor and style the likes of which everyone wanted to emulate. Her heartbroken friends, some of whom were supported by their own daughters, said the same thing: “I studied her”, “I wanted to BE her”, “I wanted to be just like her”, “I HAD to be her friend. At the end of the day Anne Kahane left an amazing legacy in her children, and an equally powerful legacy in the way she brought a consciousness of Love to the Planet, and left it here. When David Neal and I were walking to our cars we bumped into a couple, the kind of older, New York Jewish folk I have come to know and love ;-) The husband, eyes brimming with tears yet grinning ear to ear thanked us and remarked on how he’d NEVER seen a Jewish service like that and how much it had uplifted him, while his wife said “I feel like I just came from therapy!” I guess I share all this to remind myself, and all of us, that the giving of ourselves and our gifts matter in ways we cannot ever fully know. That life is fleeting, it is over before we know it, and that Love is truly the only thing that remains, long after the gloss fades away. To Love fully is our charge. To love our children, to love others children, to love our parents, to love others parents. To love this life and this existence, for the fleeting moment to moment wonder that it is. “Life is Eternal and Love never dies”. That was Anne’s final message to all. And so she is.
Posted on: Sat, 08 Mar 2014 06:30:14 +0000
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