Conversations with Avant-garde Sages - The Wizard LLC

Conversations with Avant-garde Sages
JERRY WENNSTROM: Well, it's really interesting. In some way I
feel like the story is very unromantic in that I think we were both
at a place in a way having done our own personal work to be alone,
and comfortable with that, and perfectly happy with it. And
there's something about being in that place, and it can take a
lifetime to get there where you can do relationship because it
doesn't matter. It's like me destroying my art. I needed to let go of
the identity of the need to do it, of the belief in it, in order to get
back to it in a way that didn't matter. And I think similarly our
coming together was about that simple arrival where we just
looked up one day and here we are. I think when you've opened
your life to love other people, there are no limits to that, there's no
quantitative guide of what's more or less in terms of love. And it's
almost like I think when we can get to that place we're free to have
a personal relationship. But even in that, knowing it's no more or
less than anything else, it just is what is, and it's a beautiful thing.
And there's something about the detachment that I think makes
for a healthy relationship, although nothing in pop culture will tell
you that.
TRIP: I agree. Well I'm impressed with your marriage and your
wife, she's quite a person, and she’s got her own basket of things
going on, quite a few, ordained minister, spiritual counselor. She
does alternative funeral services, and also weddings. I'd love to
find out more about what they're like, but we'll say that.
JERRY WENNSTROM: I can tell you a little. I mean, her death
work is being reclaimed in the way home birth was reclaimed in
the '60s. Home funerals are nothing new, they do it in Europe.
But in this country, we've so lost touch with that essential leave
taking of our loved ones, and so there's a reclamation going on
where people are reclaiming that place where they keep the body
in the home, they wash the body, they can decorate the coffin,
decorate the body, and leave it for three days, if that's what you
want. And so Marilyn is one of the pioneers in this, and I think it's
something that's really sweeping the country. I mean, a woman,
Jerry Grace Lyons has really taken a dent out of the funeral
industry in California; she's the ultimate pioneer of it. But it's a
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