Robin Rose Bennett's Tribute

Jeannine

My dear friend and world teacher, Jeannine Parvati Baker left her body on New Moon, December 1st, at 11:11 AM. Her timing was exquisite, which wasn’t surprising. She was in the midst of her 2nd Saturn return (boundaries/structures/limits), Mercury was retrograde (time for re-viewing), she was exactly mid-way between her last birthday and the next one, and the new moon was in Sagittarius, a phase ideal for beginning to explore an expansive new territory.

Jeannine was a lover of all babies and their mothers, proponent of free birth, ardent anti-circumcision activist, brilliant writer and speaker, and a shining light for Love and sanity on planet Earth. Jeannine’s curiosity about life was endless, as was her wisdom and passion for Healing the Earth through Healing Birth. Jeannine’s enthusiasm for life and its sexual/spiritual/spiraling mysteries was (and is) contagious and inspiring. Nor did Jeannine ever shy away from controversy. She was outspoken, for example, in her opposition to abortion, a courageous stance for a woman working in the heart of the women’s community. For Jeannine, good relations didn’t depend on everyone needing to agree on everything. That’s a powerful teaching right there. It reveals Jeannine’s great, big heart, which was often filled to overflowing with gratitude, even in the worst of times.

Glowing wildly with Joy! That’s what I think of when I think of you, Jeannine, when I “remember” you. (I still can’t quite grasp that that is what I have to do now. Since you left your body, you are as, if not more, vivid than ever, though when I go to pick up the phone to call you, it hits home, hard.) Like anyone who had an enormous capacity for joy, you also had an enormous capacity to feel grief and sorrow. I was with you for many up and down moments during the part of your life that was taken over by your illness, your visiting no-nonsense teacher who just wouldn’t take the hint and go, who overstayed her welcome, and then finally talked you into getting out of your “house” to travel for new, expansive vistas. What stands out for me is how truly and wholly you loved life, believed in life, served life, and trusted life, ultimately including death, too. You awakened and celebrated the life force in everyone around you.

Before you got ill I remember writing to you after an event, and explaining that I hadn’t spoken up at a workshop you gave because I wasn’t sure that my words would be welcome. (I felt I had to explain that because we’d had numerous discussions leading up to that time, and I saw you were understandably expecting me to speak during the circle.) I owned that this was my issue, my “old tapes”, and had nothing to do with you. You wrote back and told me that you had noticed and wondered about it. You then added that not only were my words always welcome in any workshop you ever gave anywhere, (which I’m certain you would have said to any one of us) but that you also felt that way before you opened your mouth, every time you spoke up. What a surprising revelation that was! You taught about having the personal courage to speak even in the presence of fear of being shamed (or worse) for speaking, and you did it through sharing your own vulnerability. What an affirming gift to pass on for all of us.

I remember another moment, on the phone with you. You told me how you handled book borrowing. It was fierce. You had the borrower leave you a big check, always much higher than the cost of the book, which you would cash if your book wasn’t returned or return when the book came back. Lamenting all the special books I’d loaned and lost, I heartfully exclaimed, “Jeannine, where have you been all my life?” This turned out to be a very apt question, because though our paths crossed many times over the past 15 years, our friendship really blossomed only in the last couple of years of your life. I will always be grateful for it and you.

I remember some years ago when you, as a young, beautiful crone (baby cronnette?), were belly dancing at the women’s herbal conference with a young woman/maiden and a pregnant woman/mother. You looked outrageous, so sexy and glorious, your expression wild. How you glowed! In my darker moments, I wail for the light that has left the earth with you, and in my wiser moments, I feel your light bathing the earth anew from your Spirit perspective.

A year before you crossed into Spirit, I felt sure you were going to leave the planet any minute. I remember on Christmas Eve I lay down in my bed, spinning with grief and trepidation. I had done so much ritual and energetic healing work with you over the past year. Holding Sacred Space in a particularly ongoing way, outside and in dreams, had attuned me to you acutely and deeply.

I saw you lying on your back in the dark, asleep in your bed in Joseph, Utah. There was also a golden light version of you/not you/your Spirit essence sitting in lotus position atop your belly. This enlightened yogi appeared weightless and yet was filled with absolute presence and joy. The golden yogi/Jeannine was gently, lightly, bouncing up and down, up and down, (as if on an etheric trampoline) lifting up out of your sleeping body, as in “Ready for Take-Off.” Your Spirit was all set, but not impatient, for the next adventure. The smile emanating from your face and whole light body was gently, powerfully, dazzling. Perhaps this golden light fed you while you stayed Earthside for almost another year, (which to Spirit must be less than the blink of an eye) completing the work of this lifetime.

I know so many will continue to write of your life and your love and your keen brilliance and I’ve tried to find my words to honor you, been trying for these 7 weeks or so since you took your spirit flight, trying and failing until now. How ironic when it is your word medicine that inspired me most of all! Your word medicine that inspired me to trust my voice and speak out more, to risk telling the truth, my truth, as you have inspired thousands of women and men around the world. Your illness felt cruel and random, as if it was taking you off your path, but it wasn’t. Hard as it is to see it in this light, it was your path, had become your path, and as frustrating and searing as that truth was, you knew it, too, and faced it with your whole being. But, as medicinal as a tincture of words can be, sometimes we need something more.

So here then is a photograph, a simple thing, a candle dripping from one of the altar candles lit for you. It is, obviously, a message from you. It is a symbol of the gift of your Magic. Of what you cared about most passionately. Mothers and Babies. Healing the Earth through Healing Birth. Like the Goddess, Artemis, you will always be there for the birthing mothers, for the birthing families. You gifted the earth with your birth magic throughout your life and so it continues.

I miss you so, but I don’t begrudge you the unique timing of your journey, except when I do. How can I help it? How could I not wish you were still here? It’s part of being human. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned in 48 years, it’s to trust people’s timing.

The morning you were leaving the physical world behind, leaving your body as you completed your marvelous and unique Earthwalk, here is what I was writing in my journal: “I feel Jeannine slipping away, letting go, resisting, releasing, reaching out…it’s time…”

Oh, Jeannine, so much love travels with you. Thank you for the generosity of the many words and images and teachings you left behind. You did indeed pick up stones in the path and move them out of the way for the next generations, and girlfriend, you did it with great humor, high style, and above all, with mother love.

Love always from your Bird Spirit Friend.