https://www.shorelineareanews.com/2021/10/duwamish-plaque-dedication-at-shoreline.html

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This past Sunday my congregation dedicated a plaque. Set on our grounds as a reminder that the Duwamish, Chief Seattle’s people, are still here and that the area of Shoreline and Eliot Bay were not given the land they were promised in the treaty of 1855, nor in later agreements. In my sermon I talked about their dispute with the Muckleshoots and the US Federal government. I also encouraged people to visit the Duwamish Long house on Marginal Way, get to know the Duwamish and the Muckleshoots, pay Duwamish Real Rent, and encourage our legislators to help heal old wounds.

Every year I celebrate October with pumpkins, spiders, skeletons, monsters and ghosts. The pumpkins become Jack-O-Lanterns the week before Halloween.

Written version of a sermon shared with the Shoreline UU church

JANUARY 24, 2021 – WHO IS IN CHARGE HERE? –

READINGS: Ancient and Modern

The Readings today are about Who or What is in Charge. Both of them refer to a very personal deity, but our religion asserts that reality, the ultimate truth is unified, but has no singular description, no perfect name.   If you need to, listen to how these poetic, mythic, and imaginative descriptors of truth run parallel to the existential, literal, and logical. 

The Ancient Reading is from Jewish and Christian scripture, the Biblical Book of Numbers chapter 11 verses 10-17.  The setting is that the people have escaped slavery with God’s protection and Moses’s leadership, but are now wandering the wilderness.   

“Moses heard the people of every family wailing at the entrance to their tents. The Lord (GOD) became exceedingly angry, and Moses was troubled. He asked the Lord, “Why have you brought this trouble on your servant? What have I done to displease you that you put the burden of all these people on me? Did I conceive all these people? Did I give them birth? Why do you tell me to carry them in my arms, as a nurse carries an infant, to the land you promised on oath to their ancestors? Where can I get meat for all these people? They keep wailing to me, ‘Give us meat to eat!’ I cannot carry all these people by myself; the burden is too heavy for me.  If this is how you are going to treat me, please go ahead and kill me—if I have found favor in your eyes—and do not let me face my own ruin.”

The Lord said to Moses: “Bring me seventy of Israel’s elders who are known to you as leaders and officials among the people. Have them come to the tent of meeting, that they may stand there with you.  I will come down and speak with you there, and I will take some of the power of the Spirit that is on you and put it on them. They will share the burden of the people with you so that you will not have to carry it alone.”

The modern reading comes from “Communicating Our Faith” By the Religious Educator, Liz Jones, and the Reverend, Tom Owen-Towle. It invokes the sense in our faith that everyone carries religious authority and thus everyone is in Charge. 

“As Unitarians we hold that every unit of existence is inherently valuable and to be treated as such. We also contend that the cosmos is unitary, that reality is indivisible and whole, that God or Goddess [or Truth Ultimate] is one.

As Universalists we contend that wisdom is discoverable in every era and corner of the universe. And we assert that the only salvation worth having is communal not individual, and that all creatures are held in the eternal embrace of a loving deity, rest assured.

As Unitarian Universalists we covenant together… focusing on shared vows rather than set creeds. Our lives are ultimately measured by right relations instead of right beliefs. We promise our spiritual kin that we will comfort, celebrate, challenge, and companion one another for better, for worse, -ongoingly-. Universalist forebear Hosea Ballou caught the kernel of our covenant in 1805: “If we have love, no disagreement can do us any harm; but if we have not love, no agreement can do us any good.”

Now we will respond to the readings by singing together the very UU song, Spirit of Life. 

HYMN OF REFLECTION (CS): #123, Spirit of Life

SERMON:

These past few weeks have been amazing, filled with fear and hope. Change and resistance to change.  Personally, I cannot say how great is my relief that we now have a US President who understands the difference between being a democratically elected executive and being a politically powerful demagogue. 

American culture is a constant tug-of war between “Me” and “We,” between individual needs and shared responsibilities. A couple of days ago, after listening to an article on NPR about the baseball player, Hank Aaron, and his life of excellence, dignity and inclusion, I heard a conservative Trump supporter say, “We just want to be left alone.” At its worst, the struggle is not simply between me and we but over exactly who is included in “We the people.”  

Freedom and connection, risk and protection, continuously vie for our minds and hearts.  Attitudes of “my way or the highway,” or “victory at all costs,” surely undermine the healthy process of democracy.  So, as religious people one of our core values and promises is to “promote the rights of conscience and the use of the democratic process” in this world and I hope this recent US election makes it more likely that we can fulfill that part of our mission.

But the challenge goes deeper.  You should know, that a liberal UU congregation as well as an entire nation can be divided by questions of control and power.  All of human history and individual experience includes repeated struggles about who is in Charge.  In a cartoon I read this past week, a little boy is playing with little cars spread over the living room floor. His mom is reading in the next room.  Then, older sister comes home and trips on a vehicle. “Clean up this mess!” she demands. 

Little brother stands in response, “You’re not the boss of me.”

She tenses at this, glaring at him, so he steps back and tries to shore up his position, “I don’t have to do what you say.”

She continues to glare and balls both fists, so he looks to the next room and adds, “especially when mom is around.”

It is good to know who is in Charge, and to whom you are accountable for your actions. Although, the comic actress, Tina Fey, was interviewed a few years back and was asked, who is your boss?  She responded, “My six-year-old daughter. “Kids are definitely the boss of you. Anyone who will barge into the room while you are on the commode is the boss of you.”

IN a UU congregation the ultimate boss must be not a person, but that quality of being that is both loving and reasonable. The boss is called by many names, Spirit of Life, Compassionate Reason, buddha dharma, the gestalt of the good, true and beautiful. 

Our basic theology was summarized in the reading by Jones and Owen Towle.  It is this: the power of the good and true is found most clearly in individual lives. But the one best way for individuals to bring the true and good into their lives is through an encouraging community of people. We come closer to our goal by seeking the true and good together, and weighing the impact of their insights and choices in one another’s lives.

Thus, Unitarian Universalists trust in congregations. We have faith in congregational life.  Our polity, the way we govern and organize congregations, is called congregational polity. That means that each congregation is in control of itself, not a bishop, nor episcopate, nor district council, nor national body, or global authority. No one is the boss of us. No one can tell a congregation what it can and cannot do.  To be sure, we are bound to other UU congregations by the power of covenants, open-ended agreements about shared goals, and shared works. This church is in community with other UU congregations, and we make decisions with them about many things. But they cannot tell us what to do for and among ourselves, ever. 

So, at an elementary and practical level, the congregation is in Charge here. But notice that the community forms to invoke and serve the truth tempered by compassion, an open and transparent heart, and mind.  So, the question of how to reach that must temper all our choices. 

For example, when I was in seminary, I worshipped for half a year with a Quaker meeting in Colorado, the kind with no minister or governing board. They lived the classic ideal of Quakerism that required unanimity in group decision making. They owned a small building with a border of grass, flower-beds, and a few trees.  The climate there is arid; 16 inches of rain a year compared to our 37.  So, they needed a watering system that would keep all their plants alive instead of dying and being replaced every two years or so.  They also had a problem with individuals leaving the water on too long, both an ecological and financial issue.  So, they decided to install an automatic sprinkler system.  It only took them one meeting to discuss this idea and agree. Then they had to decide which system to buy and how much it would cost. Then they had to decide who would install it and for how much. Then they had to choose when it would be installed.  I met them, five years after they decided to get an automatic system, beaming with pride at their brand new, economical, water-smart, and healthy landscape.  But I wondered if five years was way too much time for such a decision. 

When I asked, they told me that “this was how God works.” I thought to myself, if God only took six days to create the world, why did he take five years to install a sprinkler system? Truthfully, I understood. That community valued participation in group decisions and peaceful management of conflict over being quick and efficient.

This was a small congregation, perhaps a hundred people.  In America, the average size of a congregation, in any religious tradition, is about 150 members because it is still possible for the leaders to know and talk with everyone.  When congregations that grow much beyond that size must delegate power and decisions to smaller groups within the congregation.  This takes some centralized control.  As the reading about Moses illustrates, if everyone is in Charge then no one is and one person cannot be in Charge of everything. So, we distribute power and delegate control to various responsible persons in the congregation, including the minister. 

When I was a teenager and young man, my most favorite movie of all time was Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  King Arthur is out looking for lords to join with him at the round-table to rule all of Briton. Approaching a castle, he sees a peasant on the road and calls out “Old woman!” The peasant responds, “Man.” 

“Oh, man, sorry.  Can you tell me what knight lives in that castle over there?”

The peasant responds, “I’m 37.” 

King Arthur, quite confused, asks “What?” 

“I’m 37,” The man indignantly responds “I’m not old.” 

“I did say sorry about the “old woman,” Arthur explains, “but from behind you looked…”

The peasant cuts in, “What I object to is you immediately treat me like an inferior.” 

“Well, I am king.” Arthur responds.

” Oh, King eh… and how’d you get that? By hanging on to outdated imperialist dogma and by exploiting the workers…”

He later explains that the peasants have formed an anarcho-syndicalist commune where all take turns to act as an executive for the week, but their choices have to be ratified at a special meeting. My point is that a congregation does not need a king, but it is not a commune either.  In UU congregations large enough to call a minister, people must make choices about how to share ministry with that minister while also dividing responsibilities.

On common point of tension between ministers and leaders is that both have “the Congregation” as their boss.  This is problematic because a congregation is not really a person, or thing.  It exists, perhaps, in congregational meetings and gatherings, but even there it still is nothing more than the overlapping ideas of many individuals about what it is and isn’t.  The larger a congregation the more it is made up of overlapping circles, but not all of these are perfectly in communication.  Sometimes these circles have no common person between them, except the minister. 

Because of my role, I am near the center of many things.  I speak personally and work in many groups. My very job is to speak to common values, the roots of our tradition the truth that inspires us and the vision of the future that bind us. Thus, I invoke the center. But to be certain, I am not The Center. The center is the ever moving and changing overlap of many minds, and thus moves like the wind and can not be pinned down. That is why love and thoughtfulness must be our boss, to anchor our community and relationships.  

What also greatly helps such relationships is to state clearly for what each is responsible and how not to step on the work of the other.   Also, it helps to state what choices we share and exactly how we will decide together.  For example, in our congregation as in most, there is a clear difference in most people’s minds between the minister and the board of trustees.  But if you read our bylaws you will see that I am automatically a member of the board, not as a trustee but as the minister.  So, what would it mean for me to hold me accountable for my ministry?  Am I on the board or not? Similar questions arise bout the relationship between the board and committees, especially when the same people serve on both.  Does the board control committees or are committees ruled by leaders, or by the congregation? Furthermore, if I am on a committee, can I be the boss of that committee? In the end, the question is if no one is in control of everything, then who is in control of specific things and who will back that person up or hold that person to account for their work? 

When I was in my second year of ministry, the small congregation I was serving had conflict. This caused a shortfall between the proposed budget and the results of the pledge drive.  A small group of people came to the board meeting where we were to decide what to do.  I am not going into all the reasons for it, but those people came with a written proposal that I be given a six-month contract, and if the money did not come in that time, I would be let go.  My response was to tell them that a ministerial call is not a job. They had called me because they wanted what a full-time minister could do for them.  Either they should commit to having a long-term, full-time minister, or admit that they did not want a minister and call a congregational meeting to dismiss me.  Half measures would not work.  Because I was clear, a middle-aged couple spoke up. I did not know these people very well. They came to worship but did little else because they had done it all for decades before I arrived. One said that the two of them knew the congregation well enough to know they had the resources to pay me. They also said that they would lead a second round of the pledge drive.  Then they got a few others to help and the net result was that I stayed and continued to serve them for a total of eight years. 

In the end it was not me alone, nor what I said that won the day. Nor was it that couple and their leadership alone. In the end it was the whole of the congregation, working together to make shared decisions that ended up growing the congregation by 10% and helping me be a successful minister. 

So, as we put one step in front of the other and go together in the light of a new day let love be our guide and let the clear light of reason illuminate our steps.  May we be clear about who does what, realizing that in the end we must all work together in harmony. Let us be told what to do only by the clear mind and the caring heart.  Our worship Companion, Cal Spengler, will now call for our offering and we will listen to a song written in November of 2016.  As the song says, “I know you’re scared / And I’m scared too / But here I am, / Right next to you. You gotta put one foot in front of the other / and Lead with love.”

Today I was reminded again by the UU World of the great loss to all UUs everywhere by the death of Elandria Williams. May we all carry on and fulfil the best of her legacy.

https://www.uuworld.org/articles/elandria-williams-obituary

I was reading about a professor at Bryn-Mawr, Julien Suaudeau, who wrote a piece about the current tension between French ideals and the reality of racism and division. He asks,

“How can French universalism reinvent itself as an anti-racist and postcolonial co-production? Asking these questions is not to reject universalism, but rather to question the forms in which it manifests itself and how they relate to reality and material conditions. They push us to understand what these values mean for someone living in the countryside, or in the suburbs of a big city (banlieue), or for a French person whose background is that of an erased and obscured colonial history. In line with the thinking of Jean Jaurès, the universalism emerging from these questions would start from the real and move towards the ideal.”

The same question can be asked of Unitarian Universalism. How can our (small ‘u’ universalism) be reinvented as anti-racist and postcolonial? How will diverse people co-create something that has been dominated by white Americans? How can we question the forms in which we manifest our faith without blindly rejecting their inspiration in both Christian Universalism and humanistic universalism? How can we understand what our current forms of UU life mean to those people who’s background includes the erased and obscured history of American colonialism, slavery, jingoism and Jim Crow?

My experience tells me that it depends on relationship. Who do we know and work with and how does that shape the words we use, the stories we tell, the rituals we perform and above all the people who find a home in our congregations and stay to become leaders?

October 22, 1935 – August 29, 2020
Sylvia Perchlik died in Bellevue, Wash., on August 29, 2020, from complications of a stroke and dementia; she was 84 years old.

Sylvia was born Sylvia Marston on Oct. 22, 1935 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, to Frank and Rose (Wilberham)
Marston. Her sister, Rosalie, was born two years later. Sylvia graduated high school in Vancouver and took two years of classes at the University of British Columbia.
In 1952, while on a Mazatlán vacation, Sylvia met Richard Perchlik. After a
whirlwind romance, they married in Denver, Colorado, traveled for a few months, and moved to Boulder. In 1962, the couple settled in Greeley, Colorado, in a big historic home on 13th Avenue that was always a swirl of
activity. She lived there for 55 years, raising four children. Richard introduced Sylvia to the joys of camping, and the family pitched many tents together, interspersing these trips with visits to see family in Cleveland and Vancouver, BC. Sylvia hosted countless bridge parties and the big old house was the unofficial community center of the neighborhood. Richard passed away in 1988 from cancer.

Sylvia was an activist involved in many social and civic organizations. She co-founded the Greeley chapter of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and always supported the Democratic party. She was an active member of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Greeley. Sylvia got her real estate license in 1976 and sold houses for the Greeley Century 21 office for many years.

When she was in her 50s, Sylvia attended a dance where she met her partner of many years, Stan Wilkes. They circled the globe together, dancing and hiking–from Alaska to New Zealand, Africa to China, and many points in between. Sylvia was an inspirational force in the Wilkes extended family. In 2015 after suffering a series of strokes, Sylvia moved to the Seattle area to be closer to family, who helped her navigate her last years.

Sylvia was known for making people feel welcome and for supporting their dreams. She is remembered as effervescent with a great smile, a bright sense of humor and had the ability to make friends everywhere she went. Colorado suited her well as she was always up for sharing an adventure to explore nearby mountains on skis or in hiking boots or watching a summer thunderstorm. Sylvia was an energetic, positive person who loved to travel and called any day good if it involved dancing–from disco and contra to jitterbug and ballroom.

Sylvia is survived by four children, Thomas, David, Laura Wheeler, Andrew, as well as her long-time companion and favorite dancing partner, Stan Wilkes, and his daughters, Sarah and Leah. She also leaves behind 11 grandchildren, three great grandchildren, three nephews, a brother-in-law and countless friends.

Family and friends plan an online celebration of Sylvia’s life on Saturday, September 26. For information about memorial plans email Thomas Perchlik or Laura Wheeler.

Donations in her memory can be made to the ACLU [aclu.org], the UU Church of Greeley [greeleyuuc.org] and Greeley Family House [greeleyfamilyhouse.org]

I often find the postings of Sightings to be at least useful and often enlightening. It is essential to blend history, scholarship, and modern media approaches to religion in America.

Especially insightful is this recent article about Mr. Tom Cotton and the history of opinions of slavery in America:

https://mailchi.mp/uchicago/sightings-217209?e=3fe374ddf7

In ministry, I nurture harmony, wholeness and integrity. In one word, Peace.

For example, when our nation was gearing up for war with Iraq in 2001 and early 2002, I was unequivocally opposed. At least one member in my congregation was supportive of military action in general and that war in specific. Many more were uncertain. I listened to all people carefully. This openness I later came to learn was key to creating a culture of trust, starting Creative Interchange and engaging in Appreciative Inquiry.

On Veterans Day, we honored those in the congregation who were veterans. In the sermon that day, I explained the position of those who valued our armed forces, as well my vision of just limits on war. In that context, I told why I believed the United States should go no further than Afghanistan, where we would be entangled for decades. I checked in with my pro-military church-member afterward. He disagreed with me on my assessment of the situation but said that it was “a very good sermon.” Part of all good ministry is the ability to disagree in love.

At Christmastime, our worship services invoked a theme of Deep Peace, using the justice-based understandings of ‘shalom.’ We encouraged daily practices of peacemaking and peacebuilding. In February of 2002, I marched with many congregants and friends in a snow-storm to protest the war. I spoke about the ethical and the spiritual reasons to oppose war and build peace. Part of Appreciative Inquiry is to build a positive vision of the future and then develop practices for getting there. In a congregation of 150 or 450 the principles are the same.

Through all this, that conservative member of my church remained active and respected in our UU congregation. He told me he liked my sense of humor and my kindness. A few years later, when he was in the hospital, the caring visits by me and many others in the church moved him deeply. He said that the acceptance of the church helped his healing. I have found that in a large congregation the challenge is to create integration between the many layers so that such persons are not lost.

In 1964, the pacifist, Vera Brittain, said, “Our task today is to find a method of helping and healing which provides a revolutionary constructive substitute for war.” As a Unitarian Universalist minister, I balance the integrity of the individual and the wholeness of the congregation to build Beloved Community and Deep Peace.

Last night my mind was so full of wonders and joys I almost missed another. After a week of immersion in the lives and writings of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Junior., the weekend was full of joy. A wonderful ordination on Saturday, great worship on Sunday, all three granddaughters on Sunday afternoon.

Around 9 PM I took my dog up for a walk atop my daughter’s apartment building. The air was crisp and clear. I looked up, and there above and toward the east was a crescent moon. It seemed that it had been full just a day or so before. But I had been busy. Then I realized that it was in the wrong part of the sky for a crescent. At that time of night, if it was a waning, crescent it would not be in the sky. A waxing crescent would be low in the west.

Finally, I struggled with why it was at such an odd angle. Long ago, I learned a little cross-language and theological mnomic. A waxing crescent looks like a “D” for Dios because God is first. A waning crescent should look like a “C” since Christo comes second. But, this crescent looked more like a bowl. And the dark part glowed strangely.

It seemed utterly mysterious. I was going to ask Google when I got back to the apartment. However, I stopped wondering when I got back to the grand-babies.

It was not until this afternoon that I remembered all those notifications about a lunar eclipse!

Often wonders unfold unnoticed all around. Yet there they remain forever wondrous.

Oh, the Trump train is boarding, and all the powerful schemers are climbing abord. They are going to a land called America Great Again and they think we all will go with them.  But they are confused, most of America is confused, about where they are actually going.  They believe that America is Great is where each generation has more money, more financial opportunity, than the generation before.  

For example, The New York Times just published an article (“The American Dream, Quantified at Last,” by David Leonhardt) which begins with the fact that historian James Truslow Adams coined the term “American Dream” in his 1931 book The Epic of America.  They quote his definition of the American Dream as “that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.”  

The problem is that they use this definition to only focus on income, as revealed in income tax data.   But Adams went on, immediatly after the words quoted, to say that the dream was not just about income and because of that people msunderstand the dream.   Adams said, “It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”

That sounds like the UU dream, the one that causes to wake up to the social order of the day.  We see the social order does not recognize people as they are, or empower them to attain their fullest stature.  Instead, the social order uses the sugar of income to ensure the oppressing, alienating, degrading and marginalizing of so many of us.  We wake each tme we mark the Transgender Day of Rememberance, or stand with those who say “Black Lives Don’t Matter Enough Yet.”  If we are moved by the True American Dream, and relize it is still only a dream, it moves us to leave the Trump Train and seek instead the most holy and beautiful, Peace Train. The dream causes us to wake up and “stay woke” as my allies put it.  

Please, join with me in making America “woke” again, seeking not the dream of money and cars only, but also the dream of peace, love justce and compassion.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211108072749/https://thomasperchlik.files.wordpress.com/2016/12/img_0945.jpg

In the coming years, we know that the fight for environmental justice, and the struggle to unwind American racism, and even the work to end homelessness, will be more difficult and complicated. How do we appoah these struggles peaceully?

Recently I was given the privilege of talking with Brian Hovis on Panorama TV about how to deal with divisiveness after the recent national elections. I hope you get a chance to see it and talk to others about my ideas of peacemaking. However, to underscore a part of my thought I want to share what a great Texas writer and sharp wit, Molly Ivins, once wrote:

“It is not the symphony of voices in sweet concert I enjoy, but the cacophony of democracy, the brouhahas, and the donny-brooks, the full-throated roar of a free people busy using their right to freedom of speech. Democracy requires rather a large tolerance for confusion and a secret relish for dissent. This is not a good country for those who are fond of unanimity and uniformity.”

This is also true of our UU religious communities which value democratic processes highly. For example, though a minority, there are many UUs who are very conservative on some issues and who back politically conservative candidates. Sometimes they feel they must hide their thoughts in UU congregations for fear of alienating others, or of being ostracized. Part of “opening minds, filling hearts and transforming lives,” is seeking mutual understanding. We must have a willingness to not only disagree on some things but to be open and honest about understanding why we sometimes disagree.  

Further complicating the situation is the fact that it is against US law for any religious organization to support a particular candidate for election, or to affiliate with any particular political party. However, we religious communities are supposed to take moral stands, even on politically charged issues, legislation, and laws. Thus, despite minority opinions to the contrary in UU congregations, we fought for marriage equality and celebrated the US Supreme Court’s decision as a moral victory for us as well as for all people.  

In the coming years, we know that the fight for environmental justice, and the struggle to unwind American racism, and even the work to end homelessness, will be more difficult and complicated. Let us open our minds and hearts to one another, and may we hear within the cacophony of democracy the deeper harmonies of Peace.  

With Wishes for Wellness,

Thomas

I served First Unitarian of Saint Louis for five very good years.  Sadly, as I was getting ready to leave one member of my congregation was going through her last days.  It grieved me not only to hear that Mimi Hubert hd died, but also to know i would not be unable to lead the service in celebration of her life.  I was very glad that Mimi’s friend, the Rev. Margaret O’Neal could lead the service.  I was glad to write a short rememberance that Margaret could read to my fellow mourners.  I want to share those words here also, because they speak to the nature of our religion:
“When I Think of Mimi, I Smile”

Rev. Thomas Perchlik, July 2016

I every time that I saw Mimi Hubert, even when she was very ill, she smiled. Sometimes her smile was a simple gesture like the half-smile of the Buddha: compassionate and kind. She knew the pain and difficulty of relationships gone awry. Still, she smiled sweetly. Sometimes it was that big goofy grin, full of her humor and good will. She was willing to look for the good in any situation. 

When Mimi was the center of planning and organization for the huge RainbowCon, when a couple of hundred youth gathered in this church, she worked for months to put everything in order. It was serious work. As we arrived at that weekend the stress of the work was obvious in her face. And yet, often I saw her smiling, opening her arms wide to give anyone a hug, and enjoying the happy energy of all those fine young people growing in the garden she had prepared for them.  

Even in the hospital, recovering from difficult treatments and struggling with depression, she smiled, laughed, and showed immense kindness to others who were more ill than she was. When ever I think of Mimi, I smile