Good afternoon, everyone.

It is a true gift to gather here at GreenSprings—a place of quiet repose, where the land opens generously to miles of rolling hills, where the hush allows us to hear the grasses murmur with the wind and the birds that trace wide arcs across the sky. This is not just a place of farewell, but a place that calls us back to the essence of belonging—with our natural world and our departed loved ones.

In a world that often turns away from the natural rhythms of living and dying, GreenSprings offers a different path—one that is rooted, both literally and spiritually, in the earth. Here, we are not removed from the land. We are in conversation with it.

Threaded just below the surface are the delicate strands of mycelium, those fungal filaments that form an invisible, intricate web. They are the great communicators of the forest, the quiet messengers of the underground. Tree to tree, root to root, they send nourishment and information—a silent chorus of exchange. And when we return our bodies to the earth here—often wrapped in linen, un-embalmed, unsealed—we do so with a sacred generosity. We become part of that web. 

Here, the boundary between grief and gratitude begins to blur. And perhaps that is part of the healing. We do not come here simply to bury. We come to remember—not just the person we’ve lost, but the larger pattern that cradles us all.

I want to be honest with you: the first time I came to Green Springs to help bury someone in a simple shroud, I was afraid. I had foolish, childlike images—cartoonish even—of mummies. Something eerie or bare or bleak. I worried it would feel too exposed, too stark, too unprotected. I worried it would make grief feel heavier. But what I found instead astonished me.

There was nothing frightening about it. In contrast, the experience felt profoundly intimate and tender. To see a body, simply wrapped, resting in a shroud with care and dignity, there was such beauty in it. I remember how flowers had been gently tucked into the folds of the shroud—wild flowers, herbs, grasses gathered from the nearby field. The shroud was then laid with care upon a bed of evergreen boughs lining the grave—an offering of support, a quiet gesture of tenderness. And when the moment came, it was hands—not machines—that lowered the body into the earth. There was a kind of stillness that invited reverence. And in that honesty, there was room—not only for grief, but for gratitude. Gratitude for the life that had been lived. And gratitude for the land that would now cradle that life in rest.

That experience changed something in me. It quieted a fear I didn’t know I had been carrying. And it reminded me that we don’t need to turn away from death. We can find a gentle peace when we turn toward it—truthfully, and with open hearts.

Green burial is not only a gentle farewell. It is an act of love. A final gesture of care for those we cherish. A gift to the planet we have shared. And a quiet promise to future generations—that we will not take more than we can give, that we will leave behind not harm, but nourishment.

Having stood here several times beside families saying goodbye, I’ve seen the way family and friends linger—not to avoid the farewell, but to deepen it. To let it sink in. To let the land hold them while they hold one another. And I’ve seen how, even in their sorrow, there is a soft kind of peace. A peace that comes from knowing this: that love and death do not cancel each other out. They live side by side, like sun and shadow, like root and bloom.

And so I want to leave you with a kind of invitation as we gather to reflect on the work of this place, may we carry what we’ve experienced here into the wider world—becoming quiet ambassadors of this healing way. Sharing, in our own words and lives, how burial here can be not only a farewell, but a return to peace, to beauty, and to belonging.

And let us commit—each in our own way—to tending this sacred ground. Let us care for it not as a resting place, but as a living one—a place where mourning and meaning grow together.

GreenSprings is not just where we come to say goodbye. It is where we come to be reminded that we are all—each of us—woven into something larger. Something patient. Something kind. Something wise. So may we return, again and again—not just in death, but in life—to this vision, to this earth, to this quiet and powerful way of belonging.

And may we find, in the simple act of returning to the earth, not just peace—but a sense of coming home.

Thank you.