Thoughts of life and death

I received a call, "Diane are you OK? you didn't respond to my messages...it's just that it's the first time since my Dad's death that anyone close to me has left the country even if you are just next door in Amsterdam...it's good to hear that you are OK..." On January 11th, my boyfriend Michaël's father died on the way to the airport to come back to Belgium after a vacation in South Africa. Life and death happen so quickly without any advance notice.

Here I am in Amsterdam writing this during my two week class on "How to Communicate Cross-Culturally" and I'm thinking about the life that an adequately communicated message can bring compared to the misery of receiving a phone call about a loved one. Words can be so powerful, giving life and taking life. There is a Proverb that says that "the tongue has the power of life and death..."

Each of us are messengers, what message do we want to deliver? I want to be one who communicates the message of life to those who are dead and are needing it in cross-cultural contexts. One phone call to break you, one phone call to make you. Michaël called again saying that in his father's belongings he found a CD that talked bout the life one can have, the healing one can receive, and the promice one can proclaim. This phone call brought hope that even though his father was physically dead, elsewhere he was alive and at peace.