The legacy I leave behind will be enriched by the process (a movement towards personal/political/ spiritual transformation) which started a few years ago with a few buddies and myself, and has now grown to a whole community coming together to do good work and create wonderful times together. The legacy of the Gil Lopez Buddy Network is as follows:

• A model for a new hero, a powerful and vulnerable person in a strong, supportive community.
  
• Mentorship for social and personal transformation. A multi-cultural group of trainees will receive hands-on experience in facilitation, mediation, group dynamics, and communication skills. The group will study theories relevant to the skills taught: Radical Psychiatry, Co-Counseling, Liberation Theory and Dynamics of Oppression, and Community-Building.
  
• Establish an annual Institute (weekend training) for social change activists.
  
• Promote art which is political and spiritual. At this time we are promoting a film (we don't live under NORMAL CONDITIONS) on depression and the societal/ environmental causes which includes non-traditional approaches for healing. We are in the process of assisting in a film (Voices of Healing) on cancer and healing.
  
• Establish a cancer support and community- building group at San Francisco General Hospital.
  
• Fund-raising strategies for the Gil Lopez Memorial Foundation, which will honor with a cash gift an individual person of color and/or multi-cultural team for creative interventions to conflict and violence. The Gil Lopez Foundation will also make available a four-year scholarship to a person(s) of color in the field of conflict resolution.
  
• Develop a co-operative structure for delegating tasks to my Buddy Network and allies to achieve the above. We will share with activists throughout the country and the world our process for the non-violent transformation of conflict into personal and social revolution.

I now see myself primarily as an elder, a teacher, and a peacemaker. I continue the work because I see the need for an effective non-violent movement to create a paradigm of a multi-cultural world in which my heirs seven generations from now will be able to walk in peace any place on this earth.

For an audiotape of Gil reading his complete affirmations over music, contact Roy Harrison at 415-826-8935

Personal affirmations, derived from conversations with Gil, by Rebecca Rees. General affirmations by Margo Adair, from Working Inside Out, Wingbow Press, 1984

A number of people have asked me what Gil was like to work with. The answer is that Gil was a dream to work with.

We often thought of our collaboration as a jazz duet. We had our "charts"--our outlines to guide the general flow of a day of training, and then we would improvise around the main points, depending on what was happening in the moment, and the needs of the group. When we were really cooking, we would hand off seamlessly to one another and chime in with supporting stories and jokes with impeccable timing.

Gil and I prided ourselves on our differences and gloried in them. We felt that we two embodied between us many of the major differences that two people can express: man/woman, black/white, straight/gay, Depression baby/ baby boomer, working class/middle class, East Coast/Texas. The only really big difference we did not evince was political--both solid Democrats.

We often used our differences as a kind of litmus test of our clients when negotiating contracts: we would take note of whether they preferred to talk to me because I'm white or to him because he was the man , for example, and then guide the conversation intentionally to involve the one who wasn't being included. This gave us great delight, and we would high-five triumphantly when we were back in the car, whether or not we had ended up with the contract.

Mediation was another successful team activity. Gil and I started working out our relationship as co-mediators, and mediation skills remained the basis of all the other work we did over the years. After working together so much, we developed an unspoken pattern of conducting mediation sessions which emphasized each of our strengths. It also assured our clients of the best opportunity to hear one another and collaborate on both a workable solution to their dispute and a transformation of their relationship.

I think one of the things we did which assured our continued growth and improved teamwork was to debrief. After every training, mediation, facilitation, consultation, or presentation, we always spent a few minutes talking over what had gone well, what could have been improved, what we would keep, and what we would do differently the next time. Even when we were working on separate projects, we would discuss the work we were doing and would use each other as a sounding board. We always treated each other with the greatest respect and used the communication skills we taught others; it was very gratifying to see once again how well this worked.

Another thing that enhanced our working relationship is that Gil and I were such good friends and made a special effort to do things together outside of our working relationship: We went swimming, walking, riding on his Vespa (and later in one of our cars), to baseball and football games, to the movies, to concerts, plays, dancing, bird-watching, out to eat, to flower shows, fishing (both deep-sea and off piers) and just generally hanging out. I think being together in so many different activities helped us know each other so well that we had a deep, comfortable trust in one another and how we would react in some of the tense and surprising work situations we found ourselves in. This calm confidence carried the day more than a few times.

Though I miss Gil terribly, I feel so fortunate to have been his partner, to have known him so well, and to have been known so well by him. His influence in the world will continue in a very real and substantial way in my work with Lopez/Hopson and Associates as well as in the way I live my life. I am also deeply grateful that so many others had the opportunity to interact with Gil in serious and consequential ways.

Gil Lopez was an extraordinary human being, as all those who were touched by him know. I was drawn to him from the moment I met him. I couldn't tell you why then, but I know now: Gil had a deep inner soul. Gil was a man of spirit without being religious about it. He practiced love and compassion. He radiated warmth and caring. He knew these were the things that really mattered in life.

Gil had a vision of what was possible and lived to make his vision a reality. His life's work was to deepen understanding between people and build loving community. Gil walked his talk. He modeled in himself the communication skills that he taught to others, treating people with respect even when he differed with them. Gil was an inspiring example of the power in telling the truth. He bared his soul; he shared his own inner depths. He was solid and dependable in his integrity, and he courageously acknowledged his mistakes. For me, Gil was always an inspiration, but never more extraordinarily so than during the last months of his life when he broke through previous self-limiting restraints and gave his all to his vision of making a better world. Gil Lopez was an inspiring visionary.

Gil inspired me because at heart I too have always been a visionary. Before meeting Gil I already knew that there was nothing more meaningful on earth nor more important than for people to live in harmony. I yearned for love and understanding, but I certainly didn't know how to make these values a reality. When I talked to people about my vision of what was possible, I was often rebuked for not being realistic, for having my head in the clouds.

My first exposure to mediation inspired me. I appreciated its potential for creating understanding between people. That's the work I wanted to do. In 1989, listening to the stirrings of my soul, I quit my job, and returned to school at UC Berkeley in the Peace and Conflict Studies Program. I had taken my first steps towards making my vision a reality.

Meeting Gil at a professional meeting of mediators, I was drawn to him like a magnet. I sensed his specialness. He cared about people. When I talked, he listened attentively. When he told me about the work he was doing, it was obvious that he was making a difference in the world. Being in Gil's presence was exhilarating. He was upbeat, encouraging, and inspiring. I wanted to know him better, so I set up an interview with him.

Interviewing Gil was a real treat. His warmth and openness made me forget the butterflies in my stomach. He talked openly about his recent bout with carcinoid tumors, which required the removal of one lung. But he did not focus on the pain and suffering that he had been through. Instead he talked about what he had learned from the experience. He was amazed by how many friends he really had, and how deeply he was loved by them. He had had to learn to ask for and accept help. Out of all this he realized that he was part of a community.

I was touched by his openness and the depth with which he shared himself. As a mediator, he asked people to lay their souls open; he was baring his soul in his interview. In his work Gil was a community builder; in his personal life he had also created community. He was walking his talk. What an inspiration! I was so moved by my experience of Gil that before I left the building I went to the bathroom and let the tears flow. Gil had touched me at my core.

In 1993 I came to intern with Nancy and Gil. My best learning came from witnessing their relationship with each other. Their teamwork was extraordinary. They treated each other with great respect and caring and modeled the practical communication skills that they taught in their work....

I experienced Gil's strength of character personally when working with him. After leaving Lopez/ Hopson and Associates, I began my own mediation business. My new business partner, Gretchen, and I collaborated on several business projects with Gil. Working with him was a delight. I looked forward to our planning/ brainstorming sessions. I loved the teamwork. We all worked from a shared vision; building relationships and creating community. With Gil as a catalyst, our creative juices flowed. My visionary self had license to soar freely. There was a quiet strength about Gil. When he disagreed with ideas or proposals, he voiced his own opinions, all the while respectful of others. He was an inspiring example of the loving power in telling the truth.

To me, Gil's inspiration was the most powerful and poignant through the last bout of his illness, from the fall of 1997 to the end of his life on July 3, 1998, the day before his 64th birthday. Tumors had spread throughout his body. Rather than becoming self-absorbed with his condition, Gil went beyond his previous self-limitations and gave his all to a vision of a better world. During this ordeal, he led a mediation training for the Berkeley Dispute Resolution Service. Honestly acknowledging his physical condition, he asked to go ahead as lead trainer despite the uncertainty of his future physical condition.

It was an extraordinary training; the theme was "transformation." Given his physical condition, the very way he was living his life modeled the workshop theme. Throughout the training Gil led the way, openly and honestly sharing his own life experiences, which set the tone for the deep work that followed.

He encouraged people to be leaderful. When he slipped into making an authoritarian response to one of the co-trainers, he quickly realized that he was not modeling his vision, and made a public apology. Gil saw to it that a welcoming environment was created for the trainees. He conveyed his vision with both humor and passion. He taught us all to acknowledge the talents and contributions of the people we were working with. Gil inspired people to be even more of what they could be by himself demonstrating what was possible. Within the training itself, he created a community.

There was a special air about Gil Lopez. My description of him may sound like I'm making him out to be a saint. He did, indeed, have a special air about him. I believe we all have a spark of the divine within us. But we have to pay attention to that inner voice when it speaks to us for there to be a divine connection. It is my sense that by living and breathing his vision, Gil was listening to and expressing his own higher self. Animated by a vision of what was possible, he made it a reality in his life.

Gil has demonstrated the powerful contribution we can make when we courageously follow our vision with truth and integrity. He inspires me to go forth into the world and put my own vision into action. I am blessed to have known this very dear, unique man, who, by faithfully acting on his own vision of what was possible, made a palpable difference in my life and the lives of many others.

Many beautiful and true words have been spoken about Gil Lopez during his life and especially during the days after his death. He was a great leader and teacher, a special being with a planetary consciousness who was at once a fearless defender of the oppressed and a wise peacemaker among all peoples. As a woman, a feminist, and a soulmate of Gil's, I want to talk here about another side of this Big-Soul man: Gil Lopez, a man who respected and supported women, a man who truly loved us.

This love began early and extended through all the generations of the women in Gil's family, from his role as protective big brother and artistic collaborator with his sister, to his careful teaching of his daughters to master the use of guns in self-defense, to his support of his nieces as they broke free of painful patterns, to his pride in a granddaughter making the football team. His lifelong love of us was powerfully reflected back to him by the wonderful circle of women who gathered to support him during his last year.

It wasn't that there was a lack of good men in Gil's life, it was just that there was an amazing abundance of good women. And to employ a combination of feminist analysis and radical psychiatry in a way that I think Gil would love, I think it was my own internalized sexist oppression that made me focus sometimes on the shortage of men instead of the abundance of women, as if the real (male) people hadn't arrived on the scene yet, and we women were just extras in the movie, waiting for the heroes to appear. No way. We are the heroes.

In his last year, I remember so many women sharing with Gil in so many ways.( As I wrote this paragraph, I thought of Gil and the Tuneweavers humming in harmony in the background, and Margo doing a voice-over introduction: I remember, I remember....) I remember Gil's pleasure at the big family Thanksgiving at his daughter Carol's house. I remember Gil talking contentedly of hanging out at Sandi's house for Christmas, joyfully waltzing with Phyllis at her fiftieth birthday party, going to ballgames with Bonnie. I remember the morning Sandi and Gil and I went to hear Althea preach. I remember him going Day of the Dead shopping with Judith and exploring healing groups with Elma. I remember Pat leading us all in soulful singing at Gil Lopez Buddy Support Meetings. I remember Gil greeting Nancy from his hospital bed, "I'm so glad you're back!" and his face lighting up as if he remembered her from another incarnation. I remember Gil's deep satisfaction when his nieces Janean and Nichole came to his Day of the Dead ritual to honor their mother, his sister Margo.

Old lovers reappeared and old rivalries were dissolved as we all worked together to support Gil. As Sally said, only the love of Gil could have made us resolve our differences. Sally gave Gil the best of alternative healing treatments, and Gena was a gift from the Goddess with her professional knowledge of how to work the medical system and organize home care for Gil.

Gil was proud to count many Lesbian women among his friends, and proud when some of them told him he was one of the few straight men they trusted. Sometimes he was the only straight man straight women trusted too! He supported and was supported by women's power in countless ways. Gil was especially proud to have Carol beside him, both of them dressed in beautiful African robes, during the filming of a Buddy Support Group made for the film Voices of Healing. The film was shot two weeks before his death, and it was Gil's last act to leave his legacy. Gil was weak, but very clear and articulate. As always, he seemed both to inspire and to be nourished by the community. That day, he surfed the waves of group energy, and was especially carried by Carol's strength and heart-deep charisma. Obviously, it runs in the blood.

The clearest indication of Gil's respect for women's capabilities is the great number of women collaborators with whom he worked. I began to list by name all the women Gil counted as mentors and students, co-facilitators and comrades in his work, starting with his business partner Nancy, and it is one third of our massive mailing list. This is a big part of the Gil Lopez Buddy Story, one I want to hear more about.

Gena told me that after Gil died she had a sense of him sending energy for her work, and I too am gladdened by a feeling of ongoing creative collaboration with Gil. He once made a tape for me of Virginia Woolf's feminist essay, "A Room Of One's Own," a demonstration of his support for me as a feminist and a writer, and I continue to feel his influence as I write. Gil's love of women was not sentimental and paternalistic. He recognized women's situation as one of the oppressed peoples of the earth, and was our supporter in a way that was deeply heartfelt and rare even among men with a political consciousness. For these qualities alone, he will always be my hero.

Gil was a man with a rich and complex character, a man who honored his own feminine side. He tenderly nurtured his African violets and was delighted to learn that in some African cultures men hold hands as they walk down the street. As many can testify, he had a strong domestic nature, although he never did clean up his room. He loved to cook, and once carefully ironed for me a long dress I pulled out of the back of my closet for an art opening. (He knew I would do a sloppy job.) When he was big and cuddly, I called him my Bear. As he became sicker and lost weight, he said, "Your Bear is becoming a Butterfly," and bought himself a new wardrobe of colorful African hats and Guatemalan shirts. On his altar he placed a card with a picture of a butterfly and the one word: TRANSFORMATION.

Gil had many glimpses of another world before he died. He saw his sister Margo. He saw a burning bush. He said he had been utterly changed, that his eyesight was transformed, and that he was seeing everything in symbols. Once he closed his eyes for fifteen minutes, and when he opened them he said, "That was the best movie I saw all year!" One of Gil's last psychic experiences was a vision of the feminine spirit. He closed his eyes in the middle of a conversation and then said, "I saw the Lady of the Lake." I asked him what she looked like and he replied, "She was all white," which I took to mean she was shining with light. Sue V says she had been talking with him that day about her trip to Ireland (which she gave up to be with Gil) and about Celtic mythology. She is not sure if she told him that the Lady of the Lake is considered to be a symbol of the Goddess. Because Gil had such a kingly nature and a passion since boyhood for stories of noble heroes and great deeds, I also like the association of Gil's angelic vision with the Arthurian legends: After the great king dies, the Lady of the Lake rises from the waters to reclaim the magical sword Excalibur.

Our last Buddy Support Meeting was all women--- and the stalwart Roy, who stayed to co-ordinate Gil's birthday planning, but skipped out on the meditation. One of my best memories is of the night after the meeting when Carol and eight of Gil's women-buddies visited Gil in the hospital, closed the door and took over his room. Fran and Althea gave him energy treatments, and we all raised our voices in song, covering the bases from spirituals to show tunes, from Sam Cook to "You make me feel like a natural woman." Gil smiled contentedly, his consciousness seeming to move back and forth between the worlds.

"I've been doing a lot of flying lately," he told us, and with tears in our eyes we sang to him, "Up, up and away, my beautiful balloon!"

As he wished, Gil went home to die, surrounded by friends and family. Two days before he died, Gil was in bed with three women--Hilda, Bonnie, and I crawled into his bed with him to work as a team to move him into a comfortable position. What had been a difficult and unnerving procedure when Gil and I attempted it alone was easy with teamwork.

"Hey, that worked pretty good!" Gil said, resting in the arms of three women. And the words of the song were true. He wasn't heavy, he was our brother.

This New Year, after Gil and I had one of our many fights and made up, he said, "Listen , Becky, ours is not one of those cheap fly-by-night one hundred year relationships. This is a forever friendship!"

And so, as one of the many women who love you, I say, hail and farewell to you, Gil Lopez, our Beloved Brother. May your Big Soul be an inspiration always, and may we be Forever Friends.

Dear Gil Lopez,

I apologize because no one ever told me you would be in another place helping wounded souls, and it was a must you go. As I witnessed you getting sicker, I felt your pain, I did not want you to go....

If I did not want to rescue you, what kind of friend would I be, because you asked this of me I will, and I must always looked up to you and will never stop.

When I seen him at the Community Advisory Board meeting....it made me feel good at his laugh, it meant to myself that in his mind Maria was still a rookie. "Oh boy, we have some work to do," (he thought), then he smiled and rubbed his hands, meaning he was ready at any minute to begin his teaching.

I learned more than anyone would ever imagine from him because I sat with him, must always we laugh and laugh….I picked up on many of his gestures, no one could ever go wrong having a father like him.

Hi Gil, did you know you became my mentor, adopted me when you told me to my face and looked into my eyes because you knew I had fear. You said, "I want you here in the meetings, and you need to be here."

I became your responsibility. You gave me many gifts of wisdom…. Gil Lopez, you are a charm, and your choice of words had so much meaning.

I always needed to find a chair in the Community Advisory Board meetings when Gil Lopez was near so I could see him, his face told me if he liked the opinions given, I have no idea if he knew that if someone blocked my view from seeing his expressions it was upsetting.

When you asked me to be the Secretary it was so difficult to refuse you, because you asked me and smiled at the same time. I was the Secretary for two years, thank you.

Ask me how I could not love Gil Lopez, when he would always have a sweet voice, and talked to you like a human being: "Surprise, Maria, I know you are alive in there, you are just having a rough time."

I always feel proud when Gil Lopez is around. I fear no evil. And I am not scared anymore.

Love,
Maria