Lambs of God In Cemeteries

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People often think my life just starts and ends with Bonaventure Cemetery or that I’m just another tour guide or tour company owner. This is hardly the case and a perception that is unfortunate at times. If you ever meet me in person you’ll see I have broad shoulders. Some of that comes from digging graves as a teenager. I’ve done the hard labor and the mental labor equally. All of which lives in my company spirit and how we do things. In the 1980s, while working in a Victorian Cemetery in high school, on a hot summer’s day, I was weedeating at the very edge of the cemetery overlooking a farmer’s field from a higher point where it dropped off a few feet down. Suddenly, the wire blade began kicking up tiny bones, some of them in medical bags, some of them far older. It turns out I’d uncovered a forgotten section where stillborn infants had been reposited. Over time, the erosion had washed that edge more into the farmer’s field bringing the bones closer to the surface. In the end I suppose I saved it by bringing it to the attention of those in charge, but it to this day, remains unmarked and cannot say whether its any more protected than it once was. The world is full of such cemetery sections. Its like a dark secret. Most are only known to certain elders of towns or authorities. And when they die, that knowledge tends to go with them I’ve found. Today its unusual to find a family with 4 children let alone 10, 12 or 16. Having such stock was once seen as the ultimate statement of a family’s richness vs what they simply “owned.” It certainly meant longevity but was also a practical matter. Mothers and fathers knew the deal and at times wondered about the loving faces smiling up at them, “Will we all be together by Christmas? or “Will we all know each other next Spring?” It was not a question of “if,” but rather “WHO” — would end up dying young. This theme has stayed with me as in many ways, children were the number one customers and drivers of the funeral industry in America’s 19th century. Its a bittersweet subject of course but inescapable in my work so I wanted to make this video as a devotion of a kind. It will be one of many. Hope you enjoy it.

A Love Note

Sometimes the universe will let me divine a little something on the human condition and I’m compelled to share it. Hope it touches someone out there…

A lesson on love. Even as soft as the human heart is, it has bones to protect it, yet even so, it remains vulnerable and exposed. Proof of your own love’s strength is knowing that even as much as we love someone, you cannot sacrifice yourself upon their ramparts. Which does not mean you do not love honestly, intensely, openly or whole. It just means you do not love tragically. This is the rub of life. We love so much at times we want to burn for someone, but to do so means the end of you. There is no honor in that. Only self sacrifice and no one is worth that, even if we love them beyond words. Love does not want pain in the end. It wants peace and joy and not eternal suffering and death. This is the real test of a strong person and where real honor lies. Those that love foolishly are really only that in the end, fools. So don’t be one. Grow and go live instead. ‪#‎CSLewis‬ ‪#‎TheFourLoves‬

 

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