Monday, December 24, 2007
The Ancestors - My Continued Experience

I am a Quaker, and I know that wonderful things happen when Quakers get together. Each year, we Southwest Quakers gather for Intermountain Yearly Meeting (IMYM). About 6 years ago, they moved IMYM to Ghost Ranch in northern New Mexico.

My mother loved Ghost Ranch - not because of the Quaker connection (she wasn't a Quaker), but because that is one of the places Georgia O'Keefe loved to go and paint. My mother never liked Georgia O'Keefe's paintings untill the day she first laid eyes on the cliffs at Ghost Ranch. She had always assumed Georgia was making up the colors, but when she saw the landscape in person, my mother was transformed.

Bluffs near Ghost Ranch, as painted by Georgia O'Keefe

And so fifteen years ago, it was one of my mother's requests that her ashes be scattered near Ghost Ranch. When I return to Ghost Ranch each year, I play the old Hugh Tracey Alto kalimba that she had bought for me, now almost 20 years ago. I play for nature. I play for Quakers. I play for God. And I play for my mother. I feel such power when I am playing kalimba in Ghost Ranch. Where does that power come from? Many places, but I do always remember my mother there.

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