Blog 690 – 07.11.2017
(Excerpt from the book, Emily – The Little Girl Who Sang Her Song To Anyone Who Came Along)
Episode 11

In James Taylor’s song that begins, “There’s something in the way she moves…” there are some beautiful words about the power of a soothing voice. He sings, “It isn’t what she’s got to say or how she thinks or where she’s been. To me the words are nice the way they sound. I like to hear them best that way. I doesn’t much matter what they mean. She says them mostly just to calm me down. “When Emily was in her early twenties she told me she suffered a bit from panic attacks and the only thing that seemed to help was listening to a tape she had of some of Andy Rooney’s observations from his segments on CBS’s Sixty Minutes. She went on to says she had worn the tape out listening to it and asked me if I’d get her another that it really  didn’t matter which one because it wasn’t what he was saying but the sound of his voice that calmed her troubled spirit. Of course, I ordered her one right away and had it shipped directly to her.
Some might think her weak but I think her wise for finding something that helped her shut out the noise, calm the troubled waters, keep her demons at bay which every you choose to express it. Many try to find relief in a bottle, a needle, pills, a smoke, gambling or a host of other illicit or otherwise frowned upon behaviors. Sadly most only find temporary respite from their disconnect and then develop an addiction that is but another demon with which to deal. Emily like most of us felt disconnected at times. The words in the beginning of the Little Girl song she sent me express it so well: “Spinning, laughing that’s it to her favorite song… A little girl with nothing wrong and she’s all alone.”

It is a lie Ego has propagated and most of us have bought into for most of our lives if not all of them. Hear me, you are not now nor have you ever been nor will you ever be alone. You are connected to All and All is connected to you. There is a mysterious little verse in the New Testament that says, “God is all in all, world without end, Amen.” This is perhaps the fullness that is “the exceeding weight of glory” spoken of elsewhere. One more comment on the Little Girl with nothing wrong that was never ever alone. There was never ever anything wrong with Emily not even the cancer that seemed to cut short her stay. In reality it was, I think, but a plot device to make for a more dramatic ending to her adventure in time and space. God but she loved a good story ending and hers was a pip not a sad one like Pip’s in Dickens’ Great Expectations but more of a Pip like Pippi Longstockings, one of her girlhood heroines.

This life is what we make it and Emily made hers count. It is impossible to count the lives she touched in a positive way and continues to touch as those who knew her remember her and those who are coming to know her through this little book, her music, and the recounted memories of others make her story ever more widely known. Make your life count as Emily did hers, love with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. Love yourself, love your neighbor, love God. I purposely reversed the order because it doesn’t matter where you begin or whom you love first. All loves lead and come from Love Himself/Herself and we are all He/She. If you judge your neighbor you really judge yourself and if you love your neighbor you are loving yourself and God. You cannot love anything without  loving God for He/She is everything, all in all.

Love is all there truly is. Everything else is illusion. Maybe it is just my slightly skewed view again but I live in a beautiful world that my Emily helped me to see. You may say we are dreamers but with the late John Lennon we say – “I’m not the only one. We hope someday you’ll join us and the world will live as one.”

Your fellow traveler, and Emily’s Dad,
David White