given very specific instructions to everyone who staffed (she generally brought three or four
people with her). One thing she was very clear on. “Don’t try to fix it, “she said, “just listen. If
you need help, call for me, but being there to listen is almost always enough.”
She was right. I was able to “be there” for that workshop participant in a quality way. I was
able to hold the space of safety for her, to give her a place to just let it all out, to let go of
what she’d been carrying around that had been triggered in the larger room. She cried and
wailed and spat out her anger and talked quietly, and then went through the whole cycle
again. I never felt so useful in my life.
That afternoon I called the school board office back in Maryland.
“Personnel, please,” I said to the operator, and when I’d been connected to the right
department, I took a deep breath.
“Can a person,” I asked, “resign over the phone?”
My time as a member of Elisabeth’s staff was one of the greatest gifts of my life. I saw, up
close, a woman working in saintly ways, hour after hour, week after week, month after month.
I stood by her in lecture halls, in workshop rooms, and at the bedside of people who were
dying. I saw her with old folks and with little children. I watched her with the fearful and the
brave, the joyful and the sad, the open and the closed, the furious and the meek.
I watched a Master.
I watched her healing the deepest wounds that can be inflicted upon the human psyche.
I watched, I listened, and I tried very hard to learn.
And, yes, I did come to understand that what You’ve said is true.
There are a thousand ways to release the joy in the heart of another, and in the moment you
decide to do so, you will know how.
And it can be done even on someone’s deathbed.
Thank You for the teaching, and for the master teacher.
You are welcome, My friend. And do you know, now, how to live joyfully?
Elisabeth advised us all to love unconditionally, to forgive quickly, never to regret the pains of
the past. “Should you shield the canyons from the windstorms, “she would say, you would
never see the beauty of their carvings.”
She also urged us to live fully now, to stop and taste the strawberries, and to do whatever it
took to finish what she called “your unfinished business,” so that life could be lived fearlessly
and death could be embraced without regret. “When you are not afraid to die, you are not
afraid to live. “And, of course, her biggest message was: “Death does not exist.
That is much to receive from one person.
Elisabeth has much to give.