April 14, 2021
We send out our warmest wishes to all.
It has been quite a year. We feel very grateful that we have been able to stay safe and healthy at home. Like so many others, we have been separated from most of our family since early 2020, seeing them only on video calls. We are so grateful for those precious virtual visits!
Although we had to cancel travel plans for several speaking engagements in Europe, we were very fortunate to be able to continue our consulting work from home via Zoom. These virtual meetings with family, colleagues, various groups and individuals, have sustained us through these challenging times. Our hearts go out to everyone who has suffered loss, illness, loss of work as well as the stress of having to put themselves in harms way as they go about their work in public settings.
Thirteen years ago, we left a busy practice in Tampa, Florida to return to Salt Spring to be with Syd during his last ten months. Those ten months were so precious as a time of going deeper into our understanding of the Principles, while at the same time spending time with Syd as our dear friend. We will be forever grateful for that opportunity and we recognize more and more each day how it was a preparation for what was to come.
After Syd passed in 2009, our lives were very quiet at first, while we were in the transition from a busy life in Florida for 24 years, meeting in person with corporate leaders and teams, community groups, staff and residents in prisons, jails and drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers. When we look back over that period of our lives, we are amazed at how many people we met up with and whose lives were changed forever by Syd’s words, just as ours were when we met him in 1975. Being able to witness so many people move from unhappiness to hope, relief and mental health, was a privilege and an honor.
In the beginning of the new, quieter stage of our lives, we had to become accustomed to our new reality; a reality in which Syd was no longer physically present in our world to mentor us. This is when so much of the true meaning of what we had been learning through the years came home to us in a whole new way. It became even more apparent how living in a beautiful feeling, with a quieter mind, is how we really learn about life. We had to “shrink our world” as Syd used to say. It took faith to move into this new life, not knowing how everything would work out and trusting that we would be provided for.
Looking back, we can see how turning inward and trusting in the spiritual nature of life, led to us finding ways to continue serving the various entities we had so enjoyed working with in person over the years. Although we still travelled occasionally to present at conferences and retreats based on the Three Principles, we were working increasingly from our home base through video calls.
When the world began to change in early 2021, our lives changed along with it. However, underneath it all, it is the same life; a life which we are so grateful for. That is why we continue to serve in the best way we can, from our home base on Salt Spring Island, reaching out to make the world a better place through sharing our understanding of the Three Principles as taught by Sydney Banks.