I am honored to be here today with all of you—dear friends of our dear friend, Michael Doyle.
“When two or more are gathered in his name, he is present.”
In this spirit, I’d like to invoke in all of you the appreciation you have for Michael’s presence in your life. We are here by intention to remember and praise the singularly rare and unique gifts that Michael bestowed on us either directly or by challenging us to find this blessing within ourselves.
A Sufi aphorism tells us that
“When the heart weeps for what it has lost, the spirit laughs for what it has found.”
Let us have our tears and let us have our laughter.
Upon hearing of Michael’s passing, after the shock diminished, I felt as though some mythic foundation stone in my very being had become dislodged. Shortly thereafter I was flooded with many memories—the most recent being a beautiful toast he gave last summer for my son and daughter-in-law at their wedding. And then, a tsunami of kaleidoscopic impressions erupted from my heart and I felt the kinship with him that began at our first meeting.
I met Michael in 1982 on my massage table at an I.A. company
retreat in Timber Cove. It was love at first touch. And he appreciated
that I saw in him a world-class competitor, seductor and general know
it all.
Thereafter I came regularly to his home in San Francisco and we both
ate and drank together and found merriment in philosophy, dark humor
and a kind of brotherhood that – at the time – was a tonic to both of
our souls.
I had the strange and auspicious experience of being a massage
therapist both to Michael and many of his friends. I was privy to
confidences about Michael – his rare genius, his quixotic ways, and the
mythic effect he had upon them. And our relationship became a rare
place he could let down, and relax from the rigors of being the
archetypal magician.
For two weeks, in 1987, he studied with Cheryl and me at our massage
school. We had to continuously bring him back after breaks because he
found in our son, Seth, a worthy negotiator and thus, a special friend.
When I think of him now, I see a gentle giant with blood on his head
from running through the woods while playing capture the flag. And then
there was the famous Thanksgiving … Michael, and his future wife, Juli,
covered in whip cream from a bawdy, totally hilarious and chaotic whip
cream fight… (my mother-in-law has still not recovered from the mayhem
of Michael).
To me, Michael was a rascal of the first order; a worldly man who was a
mystic; and a wounded warrior who mirrored back the mystery to all who
dared to look deeply into his beautiful blue eyes.
Many of Michael’s friends and colleagues knew him as a special mentor
and business colleague. I saw him as a gifted and temperamental
artist—his medium, humanity…his tools an amazing cross between a
psychic weather front and a poetic muse, who would use whatever was at
his disposal at the time to: shake you up, lift you to the sky or bring
you down to earth.
Our friend Michael made imagination stronger than knowledge--myth more
potent than history. He believed that dreams were more powerful than
facts--that hope would always triumph over experience and that love is
stronger than death.
He would say to us, in the words of Dr. Seuss: “Don’t cry because its over; smile because it happened!”
I believe that the spirit of Michael Doyle is grafted onto all of our individual hearts; and that we are graced for having known him.
I close my reflections with you today, with a bow to the highest
form of love that Michael’s life has stirred in each of us and to the
profound union with the divine that his passing reminds us of---
And these last words from William Shakespeare to our dear friend, Michael:
“Now cracks a noble heart.
Good night, sweet prince,
And, flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!
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