Sabbath Messages > Sabbath Message: October 8, 2005
Good Sabbath
October 8, 2005
Back from an extraordinarily dry hot day, in LA, taking the first train there. Thanks for your patience!
We have an expression, "talking around the water cooler", which describes subjects that people discuss. I wondered about this, like a "water-cooler discussion", in Heaven. After all angels have discussions about the arriving guests as well as good humans who are ill.
"This world is the land of the dying; the rest is the land of the living." (Tryon Edwards)
"Is death the last sleep? No, it is the last and final awakening." (Walter Scott)
Fran and I have an angelic friend, who is a retired Episcopalian Minister. He has been struck with cancer. His wonderful life partner takes care that his burden is lightened by her love, which is the best that love can bring-to accompany pain and sorrow with the enlightenment of devotion.
I ask you to pray for Tally no matter how in a hurry the angels want to be with one of their own.
The same for Tom Carter, who is another of God's noble creatures, who worries about peoples' unaffordable dream of home ownership; he is busy trying to solve the problems of the deprived while going through higher dosage of chemo than his previous battles against big "C". What a mighty scourge this affliction is. I would hope that you pray for a cure, through leadership that will pay for it, and businesses that care for more than high profits, to lesson this terrible affliction.
But death is our silent partner in life. My friend and client, Ben Deane, passed away at 92. This was a happy man, who is now singing in Heaven; how he loved to sing. After his sensational wife, Sally, passed away-on a golf course--at far too young an age, he formed a warm friendship with that delightful Mary Martin, of singing and acting fame. More recently he married--as he exclaimed to me, "my God, Sandy, I married a Democrat". But more than that, she was an artist and sculpture, and he designed and built a great home in Northern California's wine country
Ben was a blessed builder of fine homes, who strove for originality and demonstration. His "Deane Brothers", along with his younger brother Jim, won many awards for breaking the boredom of tract homes. His most famous idea changed kitchens forever, for it converted the daily interior dreary of the kitchen, to a garden place-blessed with brightness and color. Deane Bros was formed in 1958, which I shortly afterwards, joined as learner and advisor. I never had a finer teacher nor enjoyed a relationship more. By 1967 it had become one of the five largest homebuilding companies in the USA.
They also built an experimental model in each subdivision, pioneered lease-land marketing which reduced the down payments on homes. The experimental homes served two purposes: subcontractors could actually work out design and material flaws to get costs down, as well as allowing customers the chance to see what would become possible to buy later, along with the excitement this brought their award-winning marketing program. But Ben's true loves were art, sculpture and music. Funny, he was a rock-ribbed Republican, but his mind always analyzed what was right or wrong for his country. His humor was excellent, his stature earned him the affection, "the grey fox", due to his premature beautiful grey mane of hair.
Now there is more music in Heaven as we celebrate what he was and now has time to become even happier. I have been blessed in my career, as well, with the friends and relatives I have and had (my dear, only brother, Lewis, was featured on 20/20 last week); my memories are filled with vignettes from the experiences and lessons I have shared with those who have passed on to immortality. My sadness is not for those who have lived full lives, but the young who are victimized by exploitation, by those who should know better. As we have approaching 2000 young American lives lost in our latest war I am especially sad waiting for the next crop who will die. As someone wrote, "if the public could see the carnage close up, the way it saw the horror of New Orleans, the outrage would be beyond belief."
Let us pray for the living, as well as for enlightened leadership and parentage, on this Sabbath.
Let us all appreciate what we have and those we have who have made us better humans.
sandy
