It is a rainy Friday and I am trying to clear off my desk (the dining room table.) I stop to read some words out of a sheaf of printed copies of my friend Peter’s words to me in the fall of 2004. Me, newly widowed then, and Peter, slowing dying while in a state of complete peace.

He had begun to comfort me in the first months of my husband’s illness. A brilliant writer and thinker, he was finding it hard just to get through each day. Shall I share again some words of his to me via email?

“Alexandra (one of his cats) loves to go and watch the water bubble by a little stream here. She and her brother Maple snuggle up together and watch the waters gurgle and froth.

Most days after a hectic schedule of running and jumping between the stars, God stops by to sit with them…just soaking up the quiet and peace of their presence. There by the stream, God and Alexandra and Maple. Love and nothing else.

It is either this or suffer.

The only solace I have ever found is there by the stream, or rather, said another way here, before creation starts up. Not in this moment, which seems a silly catchword amongst the non-dual crowd—but rather before this moment. Before anything. Just sitting by the stream and watching the toss and tumble or it all. Just an easy natural quiet.

In this, all the rest, seems just various flavors of hell. Ha!”

Vicki Woodyard