We burn sage to please the gods.

Under the New Moon, we make our offering.

Praise.

With every breath, we rise above.

Creeping out of the concrete. Our love grows resilient.

Though muzzled and weak are the best of us. Though misguided and seeking refuge are countless others, this love cannot be stopped. This love cannot be silenced.

I have a brother who was lost at sea. The stories of his death are conflicting. Some say he leapt beyond to save a friend, others say his life was stolen by whimsy and the recklessness of youth.

I say my brother will live forever. For in the short moments I knew him, he was both quiet and loud in his thinking. He said money is the root of all evil, but that soon all wickedness too shall pass.

I felt guilt when I heard that he had died. For we had shared Kava. A cup had passed from his lips to mine and from mine to his. Could I have given him one more warm embrace that would have spared his heart whatever troubled it accrued? Could I have looked more intently into his eyes, soon to look far beyond what any mortal can see, and offered solace for whatever his heart had ailed? Or was his time destined to pass, and our brief supper simply a passing rite, a swift ceremony for brothers meeting over and over through the vast recesses of time?

Why is it that the searching die so young and the lost live to be so rich and old?

I believe sometimes it is because the wicked do not really live. They live but half-lives. As shadows sucking light from those who live brightly. My brother has passed on, but his words linger on:

No one can steal your energy. it can only be given.

So, said my brother: give freely, but be careful what you give.

In an alternate universe. In a time far ahead of ours, far beyond the revealing of the galactic council, beyond nuclear meltdown and human involution, there is a sea of quantum entanglement.

There lies a woman. Somni.

“Our lives our not our own. By every crime and every kindness we birth our future.”

Death is but a door.

So my brother, you have walked through, and in many ways I walk with you. Discovering through the lesson you’re teaching us all, that life can be long, life can be hard, life can stretch on hapless or intentional, life can seem but an endless stream,

but it too can be abrupt, it can be sharp, loving fruitful and passionate, and when we decide through our process of grief that life is cut short- in that fragmented sentence, your life lingers beyond our knowledge of being, singing with the angels, composed delicately on a whole note, a beautiful and resonate OHM.

In that peaceful ocean of sound you gave your spirit a new home.

The legend of your Mana, your kindness, your leadership, your grace- those are the lessons that in my heart will stand.

Tonight, with this new moon, may you be blessed in your place among the stars, and sleep gently for awhile, before you return once again from the tides, into a world washed anew.

If I could ask one thing though, my dear friend, in your passing through the cosmos, and through your great wonderings through the void, tonight when we pray, lend your ear. And if you could, translate for us this message to those angels on whose wings you fly:

Look down upon us with love. Bless this age with a great transformation, and deliver us into a time of praise and peace.

Fly true brave Eros. Into the great beyond, and the wild ever.

Bless your name. Bless your house. Bless the arms of the almighty.

In loving memory of E.D.