sʃʃıɥ ǝɥʇ ɹoɟ pǝpɐǝɥ

The man who has stood by me, right beside me, and listened with love and friendship to my deepest flaws, secrets, and innermost spiritual questions died last night in San Francisco. He passed away in his sleep, at home with his wife and son beside him.

I met Silas in 1983, I was only beginning my journey on the path ahead of me and was full of anger and frustration with the word, but especially for anyone who was proselytizing. In those days if you spoke openly about any religion to me I was likely to pick up a folding chair and throw it at you. I know that sounds funny, but it’s true. People often ducked whenever I stood up in those days. Silas was talking to a group of us about how spirituality was an essential piece of life, and that it’s not the same thing as choosing a religion. I didn’t have the ears to hear what he was saying, all I heard was something like “You must believe in Jesus!” And so I stood up and began to grab the folding chair I had been sitting on when a huge arms slammed against me and forced me back down in my seat. “Don’t you throw that chair at that nice man…” Said Raffiki seriously, and softly. I looked into his huge brown eyes and decided not to throw anything at anyone.

About seven years later I had been asked by my mentor at the time, Mr. Jeffrey Thomas, to go out into the world and ask people about what they thought “god” was. I did, and I heard a lot of pretty crack-pot ideas about a supreme dude in the clouds, and some really filthy new-age crap about energy too. It was when I approached Silas that I got an interesting answer to my question of “What is god?”

He turned to me in his seersucker suit and knitted his eyebrows together kindly. He peered into my face and said “Who asked you to ask me this?” I told him that Jeffrey had. His serious face broke into a peaceful expression and he stepped a little closer to me and said “I’m afraid that Jeffrey has lead you astray.” Confused I asked him how and why? Silas smiled a broad, generous smile and said “I can’t tell you anything at all about god. That’s for you.”

This was the best advice or direction anyone had ever given me with regards to a spiritual life. People are so consumed with convincing themselves of whatever it is they are trying to undertake that when you ask them about their path, more often than not they are happy to undertake your schooling, and tell you what to believe and how to believe it. Silas was the first person I ever met who told me that while he had profound beliefs of his own, they were personal and private. That if I wanted to know more, I needed to seek that path myself. It was because of this exchange that I stopped working with Jeffrey, and began to seek openly anything I could find out about spiritual practice and growth.

A few years later I asked Silas to mentor me. He laughed and happily agreed. We worked together as a team, friends, peers, and colleagues for many years. I love his family as if they were my own. While they probably don’t feel anything like the kinship I feel for them toward me, it is by proxy and through the candid intimacy of my friendship with Si that I have come to know them deeply and love them dearly.

As his life came to a close I reminded Silas of the funny things he’d said over the years about how he wanted to go out of this life. He once said he wanted to have a bag of tobacco and a pipe on his death bed, to which Silas laughed and said that was silly and no, of course he didn’t want that. He also said that he wanted to die in the arms of a beautiful woman. I always loved that story, and I feel quite sure that wish came true. But upon reminding Si of these whims of how he’d like to step out of this life in style, he said to me that he has had a wonderful life, that he has the love of a beautiful wife, three beautiful sons, a beautiful daughter, and feels the presence of god in his heart, and in his life. Not one moment goes by when he doesn’t feel blessed and grateful for everything he had been given.

I knew when we had this conversation that he was ready, and fearlessly present, prepared for the end of his life. Gratefully it came quickly, and while he was sleeping at home. He simply stopped breathing.

Of all the friends, teachers, family, and comrades I’ve had in my life (and let me tell you there have been a lot) Silas has been the man who brought the message of love into my innermost private thoughts, meditations and activities. He has always told me that the secret to the universe is love. All you gotta do is love, and everything is going to be just fine.

I’ve undertaken this as my root belief. I am always, however strange or difficult I may appear to be, coming from a place of deep and unconditional love. This is a gift I could never have lived without.

Thank you my friend. Safe journey, and may God, as you understand God, bless your heart, and ferry your soul into the next world with dignity, grace, ease, and all the love and kindness you have shown so many thousands of people in this world. I love you, and remain forever your student, your peer, your sponsee, and your friend.