About Sharon McBride Murfin
A Life
The time-line is long, distinctly shaped by a marriage of over sixty years, and the birth of three children, then hands-on care of five grandchildren – even now a beautiful new grandchild. There have been travels, conversions, revolutions and transformations too numerous to mention that continue to unfold. There has been work, the "wish-dream" of community, always music, ordination (by the community), teaching, conducting a schola cantorum (singing school) for over twenty-five years with the Chalice of Repose Project, and thousands of music-thanatology vigils, a Masters degree, care-giving, Covid, retirement, and relocations.
I aim to swim through the middle, held in the tension of the opposites. I have worked to reconcile within myself the dichotomy of the secular and the sacred, to call for peace. Mundane originally had connotations less weighted with judgement - simply the physical universe, or the cosmos. Later it came to firmly mean what is boring, uninteresting, dunning through repetition, even meaningless, without spirit. Striving to keep to the middle, I discover what has been described as the "soul of the world" or the "anima mundi” freely inhabiting all worlds, animating the same values everywhere it flew, teaching, supporting, suggesting, and companioning. My poems show my on-going work to integrate and to celebrate the wisdom figures that hold and value the whole of our being, and to elevate especially the struggle and strength of women as middle-way walkers.
Music and Poetry
I have been a musician all my life, often in service to a community and in service to my spiritual practice. I was also called over twenty-five years ago to the clinical practice of music-thanatology in service to the dying and their families. I maintained thousands of clinical records for every vigil in detailed charting notes.
The links below will take you to a research project undertaken in 2007/2008 by myself and Mel Haberman, published in the journal Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing, titled "Building the Ship of Death: Part I and Part II." In the article you can read excerpts from these narratives that document our vigil work. See the Chalice of Repose Project® site for history, resources, and the exquisite writing of Therese Schroeder-Sheker.
Building the Ship of Death: Part I
Building the Ship of Death: Part II
I also wrote vigil poems at times, as below.
Lydia
Twenty-six years on the earth,
excellent artist of small drawings
with pencil and pen full of
odd animals and young people
with scarves and patterns
covering two tall walls on
white paper.
Alone in her high bed,
under a wide-open window
under a cool wind blowing
stirring away heat
under a white camisole pale
dark hair stirring.
Music is a wedding or coverlet
shown this way and that
exposing all its bright threads
and you say it is weaving something together
and carrying you.
The respected buyer sits under a tent
on low cushions of magenta and gold
to be shown all the best carpets
most finely woven by women’s hands
to be felt and run over with fingers
while drinking mint and ginger
as the music adds a pleasurable
movement of weightless sway
you say – you say you have traveled
far and wide.
PS: Additional vigil poems included in the journal Jesus the Imagination, Volume Three, 2019, "Three Poems" and other poems in Volume 7, 2023. Thank you Michael Martin!