Lotus Landis’ Memorial Service, 2002

Lotus Landis Eulogy

Linda Mihalic, February 16, 2002

  First let me share the ground rules that Lotus herself laid down for this Memorial Service, several years ago. We had attended a funeral together, which had been punctuated by two very emotional eulogies. On our ride home, she said, “Promise me that you’ll never eulogize me.” I answered, “Oh, no, I won’t promise you that. I won’t promise to ignore your life.” Then she said, “Well, at least promise me that you will never eulogize me with sticky sentimentality.” I laughed and said, “Why, of course not.”
  I met Lotus Landis on the morning of May 9, 1971, when she assisted Dr. Edna Lister at a Sunday Service. Both women had a powerful, nearly palpable presence. At age 24, I was more than impressed; I was awestruck. These were real women.
  Dr. Lister passed away later that summer, and Lotus took charge of the Society. Even after previous decades of service, she said that she felt inadequate to the task, yet she fulfilled it supremely well. Some in the former groups fell away, but younger ones took their places, and the work went on under her leadership. She taught classes, she appointed new teachers, ordained ministers, counseled people for endless hours, and held everyone up.
  Of our thousands of hours of conversations during 30 years, some highlights really stand out in memory. Once I asked, “How do you know you will be adequate to the task?” She said, “Oh, I never do. I just do my best and know that God will do the rest.”
  “Love always wins” was her motto, no matter how difficult the situation. Hundreds of times she said, “We’ll just stand, hold and know.” One day I asked her exactly what she meant by that, and she answered, “We stand on Faith, we hold fast to the hem of His garment and we simply know the Truth.”
  No matter how appalling the situation, she was unflappable. Thus, she taught me the definition of poise. No matter how grievous the experience for anyone, she found a way to declare it “good.” She never claimed to be an infallible fount of answers. If she didn’t know what to do, she would say, “Why, I don’t know what to do, but I’m sure God does. Why don’t we be quiet and see what solution He will provide?”
  “Silence is golden” she said, which is the foundation of tact and diplomacy. She was a fantastic listener, and her skill was such that people usually felt better just telling her about it. A friend of ours, a Rabbi, used to visit her on occasion, because he said, she was the wisest woman he had ever known, and in her presence he felt comforted and at peace. When he was a month away from retirement after 40 years of rabbinical service, he expressed his fears about the unknown ahead, and what he would do with himself in the years to come. Though he was filled with strong emotion about it, she listened calmly. She tapped him pertly on the knee and said, “Do you know what your trouble is my dear? You just haven’t lived long enough!” Experience, Lotus said, was a sure cure for the unknown.
  A while back, when her eyesight was really worsening, I spoke with her one day and asked what she had been doing before I called. It was Lent, as it is now, and she said that she was calling to mind our Lenten Vows. That finally, when the body of earth was failing, the eyes going, the hearing fading, that she found the greatest comfort in reviewing what she had learned so well. “Everything else changes. Everything else fades and falls apart,” she said, “but God remains the same. Only our perception of Him changes because our knowing of Him grows.”
  A mother is a woman who gives birth to, or raises and nurtures a child, a woman who holds a position of authority or responsibility, a woman who creates, originates, or founds something, a creative source, an origin. Lotus was a quintessential mother. She raised four sons, influenced her ten grandchildren and through them will influence many more. Lotus held the concept of marriage and family as sacred responsibilities, yet her conception was broader than blood kin. She regarded the whole human race as family, some closely related, others much younger in experience. She had children of the body, children of the heart, children of the mind and children of the soul. “Children are our trust,” she said, and “love enough will fill any needs.” We took from her those parts of a mother’s wisdom and love that we thought we needed at the time, trusting her as a bank from which we might make unlimited withdrawals. She never denied us because she always knew that we were not taking from her. She clearly understood her position and responsibilities as one of God’s Agents of Love on earth. She had the most profound impact on our thinking, development, and spirituality because she mothered us all.
  Lotus really has laid her riches up in heaven. She lived in a beautiful, richly textured holographic universe, where everything is related to everything else. She loved discussing and exploring ideas in every sphere of life, medicine, religion, politics, masculinity and femininity, human nature, the full gamut. She was a mystic, believing implicitly in the possibility of communion with the Divine, and she did so every day. She loved Lake Erie because it drew the eye out and up and ultimately toward God. She let each of us share those parts of her that we wanted, that we needed, the parts of her that were enough like ourselves for us to recognize. Yet none of those parts could express the whole of her.
  Among the Society’s documents, which she gave me, I found the following letter to God, dated September 7, 1976:

  September 7, 1976:
  Father Beloved,
  How long it has taken me to find a way of showing my gratitude and devotion to you for the blessings, miracles and o’erhadowings you have showered on me since birth—and before—even from the Beginning.
  From the first day of this Incarnation, you blessed me with exactly the most perfect parents I could have asked for. A father who loved you so much that he became an ensample of you in heaven, for me to love and to follow. And a mother who was Love and Service and Healing, an ensample of selfless giving in Love.
  So under the guardianship and loving care of these, my beloved parents, you spoke through them and as them to watch over me and teach me your ways. How is it possible to find a word that describes your amazing Love?
  Thank you Father for the strength and the Breath of Life that carried me through the heavy gravity spots today.
  Father, whom I love and adore, I ascend to kneel at thy feet, to ask forgiveness for my dilly-dallying, my lukewarmness, my failure to declare everything good which comes to me, and to allow you out of my sight for even a moment.
  I am yours—always, forever—I love you.

  This is how God knew Lotus. Each of us will have a different view of her, different memories. Yet to me, Lotus was the Gold Standard of friendship.

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