Yesterday a friend died. 

It felt, literally, as though a huge cosmos breath had been cycled through and with it the light and zap of Loren was released into all that is.

I know in soul-marrow territory that he is embraced and freed and for that I celebrate.  After three years of struggle to stop the growth of over-zealous cells, Loren allowed himself to be led into new life.

Here’s the thing.  His witness was of the life-changing variety.  He had passion for life and earth and love and an abiding impatience with archaic and stuck ways of thinking.  He was nettlesome and brilliant.  And, later on in life, he apprenticed himself to the finest teacher he could have prayed for his good Creator to send:  his wife, Candace.  Through her good, her love, and her partnership, Loren learned breath and gratitude.

His last breath left his body yesterday but the breath of his witness continues to be breathed:  Through the organic farmers with whom he labored, by body and heart children and grandchildren, by fledglings in ministry taken up by his imagination and placed into pulpits and voice, by friends and by colleagues and by an earth heard and honored.

So Loren, we breathe thanks for your being and we acknowledge the wide and open space that holds your hum.

God speed.