In memory of Tom Marshall, S.J

 Monday, March 22, 2010

This morning, after his funeral mass at the Jesuit Sacred Heart Center in Los Gatos, we chanted The Heart Sutra as well as the Kanon Gyo at the graveside of Tom Marshall, S.J., lay brother of the Society of Jesus, an ordained Zen priest in both the Soto and Rinzai lineages, and a wonderful friend. This is the dedication I wrote for the occasion:

God that hews mountain and continent,

Earth, all, out; who, with trickling increment,

Veins violets and tall trees makes more and more,

Listen: We humbly place our feet on the Path of liberation.

May your path continue, dear Tom.

We, the many people whose lives you touched,

Send you on your way with our gratitude.

We remember your many gifts to us,

The books you gave us to train our minds,

Your ready compassion and your sweet smile.

Denis Genpo, Les Keye and your meditation companions salute you.

Your Jesuit brothers honor and bless you.

May your teachers, Shakyamuni, Maha-Kasyapa, Hakuin Ekaku, and Taizan

Maezumi welcome you.

May the Jesuit blessed and saints, Alphonsus, Peter Faber, Xavier, and Father

Ignatius open their wide embrace.

We dedicate any merit from your meditation and chanting

To relieve suffering in all of life and to clear your way, dear Tom.

You are among the bodhisattvas and other great beings,

Wide-eyed in the Cosmos, totally alive, right now.

Earth hears no hurdle,

The door to deep meditation opens yet again.

The teaching goes on without end.

Yes. Just look at It All!

All Buddhas throughout space and time, all bodhisattvas, saints and great beings,

the Mahaprajnaparamita.

Many thanks to GM Hopkins, S.J. for allowing me, by his silence, to use portions of his poem, “In Honour of Saint Alphonsus Rodriguez.” The last line is from Tom.

In Honour Of St. Alphonsus Rodriguez

Laybrother of the Society of Jesus

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Honour is flashed off exploit, so we say;

And those strokes once that gashed flesh or galled shield

Should tongue that time now, trumpet now that field,

And, on the fighter, forge his glorious day.

On Christ they do and on the martyr may;

But be the war within, the brand we wield

Unseen, the heroic breast not outward-steeled,

Earth hears no hurtle then from fiercest fray.

Yet God (that hews mountain and continent,

Earth, all, out; who, with trickling increment,

Veins violets and tall trees makes more and more)

Could crowd career with conquest while there went

Those years and years by of world without event

That in Majorca Alfonso watched the door.


I dedicate this to my friend Tom Marshall, S.J., who died on March 11, 2010.
A lay brother of the Society of Jesus,
a Zen priest in both the Soto and Rinzai lineages,
and my hero.

May he rest in peace.

We will miss you. We love you.