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Human Rights Day
July 2009 
Rememberance X
jikishin
In three days,
come the New Moon,
Michael "Maxie" Sheppard
will be 40 days gone.
Maxie, beloved, and I mean beloved, friend to several of us in the Zaadz/GAIA online community, gave himself to us, to me, as precious few can.
His obituary: as appeared in the Alaskan paper, Homer News.
His blog: here on GAIA.
We are all richer for his having been among us, indebted to the wild visionary generousity of spirit he brought to our meeting here.
The following is an example of one of our more public exchanges, comments on an entry in this blog.
...about 1 hour later maxie said
Amazing, Kerry. This piece of son-as-father-to-the-man. How old were you then? 19 - 20? What a course to set so young! I could see myself, having followed such trail that led you to this writing, having written it just so and then as me, proceeded to defy it, to not chop the wood and carry the water of art with such conviction in mind. This doesn't seem to have been the case with you. I ignored that part, until now, but didn't miss much of the rest. You have perhaps missed some of what I have seen, or perhaps not seen it yet. I can tell you that it does not matter, this part that might have been missed by you, as it, for me, though not regrettable, was still traffic away from the bridge.
Through this writing, I have come to remember my own youthfully "serious" musings and how many of them were subjugated to the immediacy of pleasure and quick reward. Now, through such painful wanderings, I feel returned to the morning shore where the muse is still the same but somehow the voice is no longer stilted.
love,
Michael
print | permalink | delete about 1 hour later jikishin said So it is , Michael,
I put this up and stepped away from the screen, walked across the house thinking of you.
I'm feeling a 'late on-set' of the implications of that early reckoning, re-warding the author with an attention suspended in a long and defuse exile from those convictions.
How happy I am that we are at this, respectively, poised at the habit of begining, following through, picking up where we were left off at our own further entering the world as it further entered us.
love indeed, K
print | permalink | delete about 2 hours later maxie said Amen, dear brother, amen.
Access: Public
Kerry, this breaks my heart and moves tears within me. I loved Michael, too. Godspeed to him. And I thank you for bringing this to our attention, with such a moving gesture of respect and fond remembrance.
He had been in my thoughts lately; missing his words and spirit in this space enormously. A beautiful tribute Kerry. Thank you.
Namaste,
Chris
Thank you Kerry for this post. It was truly touching. I haven't talked to Michael for some time but there was a time when we were emailing back and forth about various topics. I will remember him in my prayers.
Beautiful, Kerry; thank you! I'm reminded through your sharing of one of Michael's comments here just how generous and giving he was with so many of us, taking the time to walk with us, delve into the depths with us, embracing vulnerability and sharing strength. Amen and alleluia.
Talk to me, Michael.
Thanks for this, Kerry. Maxie was indeed a precious force in the Gaiasphere. He will most definitely be missed.
Thank you, Kerry. Thank you, Michael.
Thank you Kerry. Such a lovely tribute
Thanks dear one. Yes, truly he was, is, beloved.
Dear Kerry, so it took me a few days to click on the link to your blog. I didn't want to feel what I knew was waiting here for me. But now I'm strong enough; the shock has worn off somewhat and there's the beautiful sadness that doesn't crush my heart. Feeling close to you who have loved Michael helps a lot.
I almost want to rest in the solice that this is all the familiar recurrent occasion of someone dying, and others grieving.
But I am swept up, borne aloft in this wake-up-call of an actually unprecedented event. The momentums of each of these lives of ours converging as we have here, in these moments, at this point in this era… I feel like we're acting a mutation of the processes of response to death.
Where else in cyberspace, or in history, have a such a sundry far flung gang given such careful persistant attentions to subtle communing, practicing relational integrities with zeals and honesties so rare anywhere, let alone through correspondence.
Something's new here. No lone one of us knows quite what. But WE is getting to articulate it.
Wow. Those words gave me a revelation.
I hope you post that on the I-Pod as well, Kerry, so that more of us can see what you said.
Amazing… my mind just went to mush and all is still.
Hey Kerry,
Thanks for moving this forward another notch.
I agree with Mascha about what you just said. There is something new and wonderful rippling through the noosphere/heartspace of the world…indeed, a more integrated WE with transformational qualities beyound the bounds of these online pages.
I feel so blessed to be in the presence of you all…this magnificent WE where each individual is a gem in the necklace of the Divine.
“…each individual is a gem in the necklace of the Divine.”
I've been reading pieces of the late-in-life letters of siblings William, Alice and Henry James. For Henry, the “pearls of momentary experience” were to be strung in embodiment, seen woven in the intersubjective. There they were, 'apart', with mostly only the post and telegraph to give notice of their respective reflections. Yet for each their naratives, their experience, were transformed by/in those intermitant communiques.
This qualifies my earlier question, “Where else in cyberspace, or in history…”.
Santayana, William's student, saying that “Existance is perpetual re-birth..”, and the “curious exhilaration” found by those siblings in their correspondance around oneanother's dying and deaths, now seems to point to record of precedence for the resonance felt with Michael's passage.
Henry James' later writing, with it's intransitive verbs and abstract nouns, producing vivid sensory experience in his readers, reminds me of Michael's more 'fictional' offerings here in GAIA, as in the Song.
A strand of gems all the way up, in all directions.