Abbie's Story
Go to Abbie's DREAM VISION 

Through Grief to Gratitude

One of my earliest memories was singing this song in our local Community Church, "Praise Him, Praise Him, all he little children; God is Love; God is Love."

All my life I've studied and worked to decipher the Truth of this. What does Love mean? Words, words! What do they mean? So now, right at the start, I feel the need to define, as best as I can, what I mean by Love within the context of our OASISFriends Community. 

Recently I saw written on the V.A. Hospital patients' bulletin board, 

"The Power of Love transcends all other forms of human love. To be 
powerless and still so filled with power - this is the Divine contradiction. Yet the total surrender of ourselves,-body, mind, emotions, spirit - create the space into which the Power of Love may flow. Armed with this power, each of us may walk into the tragedy of another person's life and prepare space for a moment in time - a moment in which God may enter." 

To Prepare such a Space for a Moment in Time, where together we can come, where together we unite, where together we invite, and within our Heart we ask The Divine One to enter. Between my breath and heartbeat, this is my story; this is my song.

Many years ago, in 1972, I came into just such a space - a Sacred Space where Healing Waters flowed. It was a group of Friends who joined to study the Bible. I came because I had come to the end of myself. My sister had taken her life and I didn't know what to do, what to think, or where to go from there. No "words" were helpful. 

This was my first experience of group friendship and the Power of God/Love to express and heal within Community. Later I came to know Compassionate Friends, Heartbeat, and 12 Step programs - but for me, I survived, because of this little group we came to call "Circle." Now my desire is simply to "pass it on, like circles of water rippling out to form larger circles, keeping Love's motion continuing on.