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Celebrating Bill Torbert’s life

I’m just back from a memorial for Bill Torbert in Boston. It was soul-nourishing to be among developmental friends. 

It was a friendship themed ceremony at the garden campus of the Boston College Law School. Revs. Cara Miller and David Mc Callum led us ‘Quaker style.’ Each of the 100+ gathered were asked to listen into the silence and to speak when inspired. Bill had shaped the ceremony’s design and the guest list in his final weeks of life. As one of Bill’s sons quipped: ‘Dad would surely have delighted in having us sit around celebrating him.’ Yes, and the open bar afterwards too!

Bill was & is my mentor since our meeting at MIT in 1993. During the ceremony I felt moved to acknowledge Bill’s courage in bringing, undauntedly, re-directive moves and life giving words to our many stultifying institutional norms & systems. This had been an everyday, every moment, practice of the timely action he taught.

I am happy to take up Bill’s baton as we wade more deeply into the large scale societal composting underway world wide…

The photo (thanks Aliki!) is taken just before I shared “quaker style.”