Tonight I'd like to begin by sharing a story, talk to a friend recently, and she was

describing her experience of her mom's death and described how her mom had a congestive

heart failure and was rushed to the hospital and put on life support, which is kind of drowning

in a sense.

And after a while her eyes were open, but the person that was there wasn't there, there

before wasn't there.

The way it happens is the doctors would ask her to squeeze their hand a letter, just

a sense, if there was any consciousness, and at first she could squeeze back some, but

after a while the doctors would ask her and she, there was no response, but when my friend

was holding her mother's hand and said, mom, if you're hearing me, please squeeze, because

the hearing's the last to go, there was still a squeeze, her mother could respond to

her and she said it got to the point, the way she described it, as it was, there was

nothing else left, but this kind of brainstem to brainstem connection, some primal connection

of knowing, and the way she described it, that she said that feeling that primal connection

was her refuge.

She could be with this whole process of dying by really sensing the power and depth of

that connection, so that even after her mom was gone, that was what gave her a sense of

being able to have space in her life for what was going on.

I share that story because I've been reflecting a lot on our longing in a very deep way to

sense belonging, how absolutely essential it is to each of us for the health of our body

and mind and spirit to sense belonging, that that's the very heart of what we long for,

and to feel in some way connected with something greater than the way we sense this separate

...