No, My Heart Will Not Yet Despair

Remembering Gordon White

It was just over a year ago that I was lucky enough to see Gordon White in person at a little brewery in High Springs, Florida. I never thought I’d get to see someone whom I had read, listened to, and learned from for more than a decade in the flesh, especially since he lived on the other side of the world from me most of the time. It was like getting close to a unicorn.

My husband and I sat with other weird kids at a picnic table at the only brewery in town on a grey and drizzly day, waiting like fangirls for Gordon to arrive on the tour bus from Tampa. When he finally arrived, I was struck by how normal he was, how kind he seemed. He came off as vulnerable and energetically open, despite his bold takes and biting wit. At one point in the evening, someone in the audience said something really quite dumb, and he and I shared a knowing look, a psychic eyeroll, and a silent laugh with a totally straight face. Though his takes were often spicy, they were always thought-provoking in the best way. Even when you disagreed with him, it really made you inspect what you did believe and why. He made you defend your beliefs rather than take whatever the archons were handing out at face value.

It is with a sad heart that a year and a few months later, he would pass from this world into the arms of the ancestors. The loss weighs heavily on the rest of us back here amongst the living.

Anyone who has followed him in recent years may have picked up on little hints that he was struggling with something. One got the sense he knew his time in this world might be short, but it didn’t seem like he succumbed to anguish. Quite the opposite, it seems like he doubled down and did as much as was superhumanly possible to prepare all of us magical folk with the tools we would need to go forward into the apocalypse — whatever form it might take — and thrive there, together.

I think about what I would do if I were in his place. I don’t know if I could be so brave. To sit with that knowledge takes a certain kind of reckoning with one’s shadow that is no easy thing. Ayahuasca teaches that, but outside of ceremony one still has to chop wood and carry water.

Even those who don’t know the day and hour of their end fall into despair in these times. It feels like a herculean task just to exist in this world without all that to worry about, on top of trying to bring the fire down to the rest of us, too.

It inspires me to do more, to reach out and find the others and to resist the disenchantment of the world with all I have.

As Gandalf says, “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

And, he’s not really gone. No one is ever gone who touched the world in such a profound way. All of us carry on that spark, the spirit of the Work that is so important, now more than ever. I don’t think he’d want us to stop now.

“No, my heart will not yet despair. Gandalf fell and has returned and is with us. We may stand, if only on one leg, or at least be left still upon our knees.”

Rest in power, Gordon.