MerSarah
February 22, 1945 - March 10, 2002

On Sunday March 10, 2002 our dear friend MerSarah (Mary) Connelly made her transition from this world.

MerSarah is a faithful and devoted supporter of Light Haven. She exemplified what it means to serve Spirit. We all hope that we can serve with the grace and love MerSarah always carried. In her spiritual quest Mary Connelly was initiated into her spiritual name of MerSarah September 14, 2001.

"I have known Mary for many years. She was my friend, and she was my spiritual sister and we have walked many wonderful paths together. I met her through Billie's School of Spiritual Science in Spartanburg, SC shortly after Mary and her family moved to South Carolina sometime in the '80's.

Mary had an abiding yearning for knowledge of God, and when she was new to the Carolinas she put an advertisement in the local paper looking for anyone interested in joining her in a "Search for God" group, which she subsequently ran out of her home. She was a member of the Carolina School of Spiritual Science and was ordained as a minister after completing the 4 year program. She went on to teach at the school, and continued studying under Billie's guidance for as many as 15 years. She also facilitated a monthly meditation in her home for her friends in the Greenville area. She supported and attended Light Haven when they first opened in Charlotte, and when they moved to Tryon, she became a member of this group. She went on two Spiritual quests with Light Haven and the SEED group from Philadelphia, to Egypt and to Ireland.

These were the externals of her Spiritual life. Her internal Spiritual life was deep and true. No matter what else was happening, her day started with her morning prayers and meditation, and her day ended the same way. When we roomed together on one of our trips, and turned the light out at night, I would speak to her, and there would be that moment's pause before she answered that let me realize that she had been in prayer.

She was a light for all of us at Light Haven - joyful, upbeat, excited about some new piece of information she wanted to share, genuinely interested in everyone around her, happy to be a member of the group, and totally generous with her time, her love, and her resources. She had a beautiful smile, a great laugh, a pure heart, and deep compassion and understanding. She saw you clearly, with all your faults, but focussed only on the highest. I never heard her say a mean thing about anybody in all the years I knew her. She was always ready and able to point to others' strengths and power, but slow to see her own. She was a strong and courageous woman, and these strengths she has passed on to her children.

She was so proud of you (speaking to her children) and all your accomplishments. She prayed so deeply, profoundly, during your times of stress. Mary Anne, during your last semester in college, when you were searching for a graduate school, she held you all the time in the light, that your greatest good would manifest for you. You were always her Princess. Ginger and John, I wish you could have some understanding of the blessings she brought to you during your recent surgeries. During her meditation and prayer work she gathered you, Ginger, in her arms and held you after your surgeries. May you know what a blessing and healing you received by this focus of hers in the love of the Great Mother. Little Matthew was such a light in her life. She kept his picture at the office and when her day was tough, she said she would look at his lovely smile and it would lift her right up.

We are going to miss her physical presence at Light Haven, and in our lives, in ways that right now are unimaginable. Who else will climb the stairs, a glass of tea in one hand and a glass of water in the other, and trip on one of the steps? She would always say, "I'm such a klutz!". But she never gave up. The next time she would offer to carry the tea and the water again.

Mary showed us all how to live. If we want to know how to conduct ourselves, we need to remember the pattern, the example, she set for us. It is really simple: Love God, love your human companions, deeply, profoundly. It's OK for your heart to break again and again, for each time that happens you can contain within your beingness more light and love, more compassion and beauty, for Mary was beautiful, and joyful, and sincere. She was tireless in her service to others. In life, Mary was able to hide her light under a bushel, but in dying, she can no longer hide, and she has become, for us, a blazing beacon of Light.

I want to read the "Affirmation of a Disciple" - for this is the way Mary lived, and died:

I am a point of light within a greater Light
I am a strand of loving energy within the stream of Love divine.
I am a point of sacrificial fire, focussed within the fiery Will of God.
And thus I stand.

I am a way by which men may achieve.
I am a source of strength, enabling them to stand.
I am a beam of light, shining upon their way.
And thus I stand.

And standing thus revolve
And tread this way the ways of men,
And know the ways of God.
And thus I stand."