Welcome to The Wit and Wisdom of Greg Liber

The following is the text from Greg Liber's Celebration of Life Service on March 22, 2010. The service was conducted by Rev. Dana Cummings.

On behalf of Greg Liber's family, I thank you for coming and welcome you all to this Celebration of his extraordinary life!  Your presence here is deeply meaningful to Jan and every member of the family.  Today we honor a life joyously lived, and we support and love Greg into a new expression of life, a life after life, in closer union with God.

Would you please join me in prayer.  We come together today as family, as a community, bonded in love, to celebrate the life that is Greg Liber, knowing that in God nothing is ever lost.  We dedicate this time to a joyful remembrance of Greg as a loving and devoted husband, step-father, grandfather, brother, brother-in-law, uncle and friend.  A man who committed his every breath to Love, to Respect and to Forgiveness.  

We take this moment to hear the resonating truth in the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson:

There is truly no beginning or end, for each end is a beginning and each beginning a harbinger of the end. The circle is strong. The circle of life is unbroken, each event flowing seamlessly into the other, beginning again . . . and again and again.

Greg is now One in the heart and the arms of God...his life and ours eternally joined and forever blessed.  And so it is... Amen.

It is a sacred privilege to officiate this afternoon's service for a man each of us loves.  In a short time, family members and friends will be sharing some of their memories of Greg, though before they do, I'd like to set the stage by sharing some of the context of his life.

I think it safe to say that if there was one book Greg turned to for guidance, it was this, A Course In Miracles.  And of the many things written here, these are the words which came to define Greg's life, "Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it."  Greg understood that the only true reality is love.  The love that resides within us, as us.  

He dedicated his life to creating safe spaces, surrounded by unconditional acceptance, within which you and I were empowered to remove barriers we'd built against our true identity--love.  He did this in every aspect of his life, whether it was in counseling sessions, Loving Course weekends, entertaining with original songs, being a husband or being a friend.   He allowed us to live life more fully, to have more fun, by seeing us for who we really are.

At the beginning of my work in pastoral counseling, Greg gave me the single best advice I've yet received.  He said, "When you're working with people, remember they're not broken, there is nothing to fix."  

Gregory Xavier Liber cruised into this lifetime on August 17, 1948, in Morristown, New Jersey, the son of his beloved parents Harry and Julianna Liber.  Greg grew up in Morristown from 1948 to 1966.  He graduated from Delbarton High School, where he placed 2nd in the state for freestyle swimming his junior year.  Greg then attended Miami University, in Oxford, Ohio, where he earned a Masters Degree in Philosophy in 1971.  The next 7 years found him on a cross country quest of personal spiritual discovery.  It was during this period that he became well practiced in the art of meditation.

At one point in this journey Greg was living in Santa Fe, New Mexico and later in Montgomery, Alabama.  It was in Mobile, Alabama that Greg had an epiphany.  He saw Bruce Springsteen for the first time, and heard this lyric: "...let me in I wanna be your friend, I want to guard your dreams and visions.  Just wrap your legs round these velvet rims, and strap your hands cross my engines... I want to know if love is wild, girl I want to know if love is real."  He found himself in Springsteen's music and knew this was the way to live life.  Passionate, authentic, free and fun...all the things we know Greg to be.  

In 1978, Greg moved to Cleveland to be closer to his parents, who had relocated here; and he found the answer to that lyrical question, "I want to know if love is real," when he met Jan, his soon to be best friend, lover, and future wife.  At the time, Jan was working at Halles at Westgate, together with Greg's sister Chris, and the two were close friends.  One day Greg came into the store to pick Chris up, and she introduced him to Jan.  Jan thought he was kinda cute, and Greg thought she was kinda pretty.  That next weekend, Jan was hosting a girls night with Chris and a few other friends at her home.  Chris called to ask if her brother could come--because he had nothing else to do.  Jan said it was going to be all girls, but yes, he could come.

Shortly after Chris and Greg arrived, Jan asked him how to meditate.  Greg promptly sat down in the middle of the room, legs crossed in full lotus, eyes closed, calm, still and quiet.  Of this occasion Jan shared, "I thought he looked like a Holy man," paused, then added, "Little did I know about his other side...the adrenaline junky."  This other side we saw in Greg's windsurfing, rollerblading through the the "Emerald Necklace", cross-country skiing, motorcycling or on his recumbent bike.  Greg always found a way to live at the core of life.  

They went on to date for 9 years, and during that time the subject of marriage came up periodically. Early on in their dating years, Greg rented a room in Jan's house, and during the week acted just like a renter.  He would keep to himself, buy his own food, eat breakfast in his room and watch his own television.  Then on the weekends, they would date.

It was in 1987 Jan came to the realization that if anything happened to the man she loved, were he in the hospital or needed other assistance, she had no legal right to help him.  It was that insight that resulted in what she calls her "____ or get off the pot speech."  Greg suggested couples counseling.  Two weeks later he told Jan, "You've gotta come out to the garage!"  It was there he proposed to her, and we know Jan's response.  Then he said, "I have surprise for you, an engagement gift!"  And with his customary dramatic flourish he opened the garage door to reveal his old wind-surfing board.  He said,"I want you to have this--I just bought a new one.  Now we can go wind-surfing together!"  Jan understood this was Greg's way of acknowledging he could get married without giving up everything.  

For Greg, Halloween was a high holy day of fun--he loved decorating the house, putting on a costume and handing out candy.  It was approaching this time of year that Jan was working with Stouffers on the Square to schedule their wedding.  The wedding planner said every Saturday was already booked-- except for October 31st , though she was sure they wouldn't want to get married on Halloween.  Well Greg and Jan thought Halloween was just perfect!  They were married at Stouffers Oct. 31st, 1987, then following the ceremony went home, Jan in her wedding gown and Greg in tux and fangs, to hand out candy, returning to Stouffers afterward.  

Greg became much more than a step-father to Jan's children, Jay and Laurie. Jay said in 32 years Greg never raised his voice or argued with him.  Jay also shared that he brought a new philosophy to their home.  He said it was, "Pure Zen...very calming."  Shortly after meeting Greg, Jay saw that he was reading a book titled Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and wondered, "Who is mom dating?!" 

To their grandchildren Mike and Joe, Jan and Greg are known as Meemaw and Peepaw. And Jan said, "he was the most hands on Peepaw ever!"  Greg felt he might have missed out on being a father.  So when his grandsons were born, he embraced the full experience:  the diaper changing, the feeding, the nurturing, and the teaching--all of it, and he loved every moment.  Whenever possible, you'd find Greg with his grandsons playing football, baseball, skiing, snowboarding or kayaking. 

During one family gathering, Laurie (Mike and Joe's Mom) went downstairs to the basement where she found Greg skate boarding around the cement floor with three-year-old Mike riding on his shoulders.  It was then that Laurie said to Greg, "Remember Pee-Paw, You're the adult here." 

I know a number of us have been getting messages from Greg, and I received one early on--no scripture in this celebration.  I got the message Greg.  But there is something from scripture that he knew and lived.  That to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, we must be as little children.  Greg lived, and lives still, with a child's open heart and open mind.  And being with him was to feel heaven.  

Now family members and friends will share more of Greg, and how his life touched theirs.

You may recall the book Tuesdays With Morrie, which tells the true story of sociologist Morrie Schwartz and his relationship with his students. The book chronicles lessons about life the author learns as he interviews his former professor, who is dying.  One year ago this week, Greg's grandson Mike was completing his Tuesdays With Morrie project for his English class.  The students' assignment was to select an older person they respected and interview them to glean what life lessons they could.  Mike chose Greg as his subject, and he gave me permission to share some of what he wrote with you.

Throughout this whole experience, I have learned so much; my questions of life were answered and my outlook on living has changed.  My grandfather, Greg Liber, is one of the friendliest men that I have ever met and, because of this project, I now understand why.  My grandfather, or "Peepaw", knows that the true meaning of life is to learn to love and respect every person you would come to meet.

He tells me that your true values should be focused on love and the people around you and not the money and things that you want. Without this project, I think I would still be lost and driving myself crazy by always asking, "Why are we here?"  Another question that went surprisingly very well was the question on death.  I asked Peepaw if he was scared of death and why other people are scared.  Peepaw explained that everybody is scared of what we don't know.  Nobody knows, for sure, what does happen after death and this is why so many people fear it all their lives.  Peepaw's viewpoint on death is that death is like graduating high school or college.  He believes that when we die, we leave our body and go on to our next life.  He explained this life as a classroom.  He explained that we learn things that prepare us for what is coming next.  Obviously, he doesn't know where that next life is and nobody does either, but him telling me that helped me a great deal because I too was very scared of death.

From this project, I've learned a great deal about myself and about life in general.  I learned that I need to never take anything for granted and to also never let my material values supersede my nonmaterial values.   I learned that death is not something to be scared of because, in all honesty, it cannot be stopped.  I learned that asking, "Why?" is okay, but the only answer that you will get will be your own.  This project has helped me a GREAT deal and I owe that help to my teacher and especially Greg Liber, Peepaw.

Mike, thank you for allowing me to share this.  And I want you to know, that how you've learned to see the world, I believe, is the greatest gift you can give your Peepaw.

When we lose a loved one our bodies provide us a natural defense, a comforting safety-net, to catch us from falling too far into our loss.  We become partially numbed-and this action allows us to cope.  In a sense, we temporarily leave the body.  Not to avoid or deny the reality of our feelings, but simply to cope.

In four to six weeks we slowly begin to re-enter our bodies and at that time we experience our grief in a different form.  So I ask all of you here, friends of Greg's family, to mark your calendars for this time.  Make a special effort to reach out to the family. They will need you then, as they do now.

I invite you to close your eyes if you wish and take this moment to be with Greg.  See his beaming face, his smile, that mustache, hear his voice, feel his presence.  The inner warmth you are feeling is Greg.  It is his eternal presence with and within us, and it is very, very real.  If there is anything you wish to say to him, say it now.  If there is any unfinished conversation, complete it now.  If you want nothing more than to express your love for him, tell him now.

(minute of silence)

You may now gently deepen your breath and bring your awareness back to this time and place.  

The evening of the day I learned of Greg's passing, I reached for this book and read this blessing for the first time.  It spoke to me of Greg, and I share it as a prayer from us to him.  <i>On The Death Of The Beloved</i> by John O'Donohue, He wrote in the section "To Bless the Space Between Us," on page 170,171: 

Though we need to weep your loss, you dwell in that safe place in our hearts, where no storm or night or pain can reach you... Amen.

Let's make this the kind of day Greg made every day--one of joy, fun, and friendship.

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