Impermanence

Cassie Ray McVay left us in a fatal car crash on November 6, 2000. She had just taken the spirit name Cassia Beija Flor. She was young, and she looked even younger.

Over a hundred came to her memorial in the desert mountains, a weekend of prayer, circles, songs, music, sweat lodge and sacred ceremony.

I did not know her especially well, but I shared some deeply meaningful occasions with her: a sacred women's gathering on the shores of Pyramid Lake in which we shared the secrets and the pains of our first moons; some yoga lessons; another ceremony in which we all burned something we had been hanging onto and needed to let go.

And so I knew her without any lunch dates or telephone calls; I knew her at times when we all talked from the heart and experienced Spirit together.

She sang, wrote songs, and played the bass in a Reggae band. I remember a Halloween concert when we danced for hours.

Later I heard she was in Oregon, studying herbal medicine and I don't think I saw her after that.

And so the loss of her didn't seem real to me and it still seems I will run into her at the import store or the drum circle or Earth Day.

In another way, the fact that she is on another plane has brought her closer to me than she was in life and I play her CD over and over.

For you to experience Cassie McVay, here are the lyrics to one of her songs. How many of us so deftly write our own obituaries? This seems to me not sad nor frightening, but just another sign of what an advanced soul she was.

These lyrics are quoted with permission of Beija Flor Productions. I will contact them for permission to offer the CD through this column and post that information when I have it.

Chorus: Impermanence...That is all we really have.
Impermanence. That is all we really have.

Just the other day I went outside to play, to walk among the trees, just listening to the breeze
I found a special place, to sit and meditate, the tall stump of an oak, had become a home for winged folk.
And as I looked into that tree, a peace came over me, it told me not to fear
there were changes comin near, it said...
Impermanence...That is all we really have.
Impermanence...That is all we really have.

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