A tribute to Bev

by Dominique T. Chlup

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  Bev Down possessed the innate qualities of a woman whom you just wanted to be around. One of her most fantastic qualities was she knew how to prompt the guiding of inner growth quietly and with no attachment to outcome. Even when she had the answers, she beautifully let the wisdom of her students serve as the authority in the room. She came to teach me how to do the same with my coaching clients.
I was one of Bev’s last students she certified in the CCA program, which means I had the distinct privilege of being in frequent contact with her during the fall of 2016 as I finished up the reading course and supervised coaching under her wise tutelage.
  She taught me one of my biggest life lessons. During a supervised coaching call, she was sharing a deeply personal story from her childhood. And in her wise words she summarized, “If we come here to grow our souls and if forgiveness is a lesson to learn, then someone has to do something really bad to you. Bad things will keep happening again and again until you truly learn how to forgive.”
  Wow! Like a window that had been opened so the light could flood in, I suddenly saw so many of my life’s experiences in a new, richer, more insightful way. As a part of my creativity coach training, I had been reading the exquisite words of poet Mark Nepo who wrote, “It hurts to be carved by experience.” Bev was giving me a place to ground those hurtful experiences. She was teaching me the lesson of “Breathe it all in. Love it all out.”
And so I did. I learned to “still myself rather than ‘steel’ myself” as Julia Cameron describes it. I learned to be still with myself and most importantly with my clients. I no longer worried I had to rush to provide all the answers (not an easy feat for a Harvard trained professor). 
  I applied the same method to my creative work. A breath, a pause, a thirty-second delay to welcome it all in and then filter it through the lens of love has changed how I approach life and my creativity. It has given me the space not just to have a focus but also to have a heart focus—a focused intention that is filtered through the lens of love for my creative work. It awakens the inner muse while hushing my inner critic. It is a way to be gentle with myself and to honor as Karen Drucker sings, “…I will only go as fast as the slowest part of me feels safe to go.”
  Bev’s passing on January 14, 2017 was the first of five devastating losses I experienced last year, four of them occurring within the space of eight weeks as the year slipped into fall and approached its own end. The losses included the death of my father, a man who dreamed me into existence and who I simply adored beyond measure. I could not wait to turn the page on the calendar and enter a new year. And here we are at the start of a new year and my heart is slowly healing. I have a sense that those of us who knew and loved Bev are growing around the absence caused by her loss. I wish for us peace in time honoring our process. And I can hear Bev’s voice reminding me that the Course in Miracles teaches us we have to find the joy in joyless places. She had me write about that very topic in the last CCA newsletter she ever published. And so Bev, I end this tribute by thanking you for all you were and all you continue to be for your life is a ripple affecting eternity. And for that reason alone, we will always be able to celebrate you with all the words for joy.