Molly's Astrology

One of the homework assignments from a workshop that I attended this weekend is to make a list of our heroes. Today I realized Tom Ringrose is on that list. As I all too often fail to appreciate what I have until it’s gone, I wonder if that would have occurred to me, had he not passed away Sunday morning.

Tom was one of the kindest, gentlest, sweetest people I have ever known. In the two years or so that I knew him, I never saw him cranky. He was always helping or giving support to someone.

Tom was a very gifted psychic in the vein of Edgar Cayce. He was a visionary artist and art teacher. He also worked as a Health Unit Coordinator for the University of Virginia’s Heart Center.

In the early 70’s, Tom and his wife Isis started the Gathering, a group of souls who share a home (a hospital which they renovated themselves and decked out in painstaking, loving detail) and a spiritual life. The first Friday of every month, they cook a whole lot of food and open their home to anyone who wants to come. Our friend Cameron must have invited us the first time. This is how I met Tom and Isis, and David, Ninai, and Esther of the Gathering as well as other friends and kindred spirits.

Even though I didn’t feel immediately comfortable with some of the topics of discussion, at the end of the night, I always had a lot to think about. And I felt completely welcomed. At First Fridays, everyone got a chance to speak about their lives or their thoughts on the important issues. Tom led the meetings and always made people feel as if their input was valuable. I liked the evenings that we shared personal stories the best. Sometimes Tom would tell someone of a departed loved one standing beside them or behind them, and convey a message from them. He and Isis would often team up to reveal some truth or other.

Tom was one of those mystics that acknowledges the presence of terrible darkness in the world. Something I think most of us are aware of. He never sugar coated it or tried to paint a smiley face on it. But he didn’t despair in it either. It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. Tom was a candle lighter.

For several months, Tom has been predicting the possiblility that dire events will transpire this year and next in this world of wars. I think he must have been called to help us move through these challenging times to come in a way he could not have done in a physical body.

I didn’t yet know that Tom had passed when I walked in on a conversation Sunday afternoon. A woman in my class lost a dear friend recently. She shared that she honors her friend’s life by keeping part of her alive, some aspect of her, something she loved about her, by taking that characteristic on as a part of her being, of her personality.

Was it by coincidence that I overheard that? I think not. It makes me happy to think that I might keep alive in myself Tom’s generosity of spirit, his abundant and radiant joy. That my soul’s light might shine through my human existence like his did, and that I might be a candle lighter too.

I’ll miss you so much, Tom. Thank you for being my hero. I love you.