Remembering Travis in this beautiful place 

This is a Traditional Hymn that was sung at Travis's Memorial Celebration.

Here in the Vineyard

Here in the Vineyard of our Lord
I hope to live and labor,
And be obedient to my God
Until my dying hour.
I love to see the lilies grow,
And view them all a-standing
In their right place while here below,
Just as the Lord commanded. 

We ofttimes meet both night and day,
A faithful band of pilgrims;
We read, we sing and preach and pray,
And find the Lord most precious.
But as we sing our song of love
Our hearts are deeply wounded,
Perhaps we all may meet no more
Here in a congregation. 

But if on earth we meet no more,
We hope to meet in heaven,
Where congregations ne're break up,
But dwell in sweet communion.
Where all the ransomed church of God
Shall meet no more to sever,
With ne'er a sorrow, pain or tear,
Singing one sweet chord forever.

This song by Peter Mayer was played at Travis's Memorial Celebration.
 
Holy Now

When I was a boy, each week
On Sunday we would go to church
And pay attention to the priest
And he would read the holy word
And consecrate the holy bread
Any everyone would kneel and bow
Today the only difference is
Everything is holy now
Everything, everything
Everything is holy now

When I was in Sunday school
We would learn about the time
Moses split the sea in two 
And Jesus made the water wine
And I remember feeling sad
That miracles don't happen still
But now I can't keep track
'Cause everything's a miracle
Everything, everything
Everything's a miracle

Wine from water is not so small
But an even better magic trick
Is that anything is here at all
So the challenging thing becomes
Not to look for miracles
But finding where there isn't one

When holy water was rare at best
I barely wet my fingertips
Now I have to hold my breath
Like I'm swimming in a sea of it
It used to be a world half there
Heaven's second-rate hand-me-down
But I walk it with a reverent air
'Cause everything is holy now

Read a questioning child's face
And say it's not a testament
That'd be very hard to say
See another new morning come
And say it's not a sacrament
I tell you that it can't be done

This morning outside I stood
I saw a little red-winged bird
Shining like a burning bush
Singing like a scripture verse
It made me want to bow my head
I remember when church let out
How things have changed since then
Everything is holy now
It used to be a world half there
Heaven's second-rate hand-me-down
But I walk it with a reverent air
'Cause everything is holy now                  
                                      

Today was Travis's birthday. We had a date to go to the Self Realization Fellowship Center, otherwise known as Lake Shrine here in California, on either my birthday or Travis's birthday. It was a blessing to spend my most recent birthday with him, but we didn't make it to Lake Shrine. I kept our date today and went to the lake. It was a beautiful perfect sunny day and I felt Travis's presence with me walking by meditation chapels, lush green mossy waterfalls, tall gold and white pillars (memorial for the founding Yogi), beautiful vibrant rose gardens, swans and all of the perfectly carved out niches to sit and be peaceful. Toby, as always you have all my love and support, I hope today was not too difficult.  

-Aunt Diane 

Pictures are in the Gallery.

This story was written by Travis's cousin William Smith:

The Oak Flat group picnic grounds near Albuquerque where Travis Corwin’s memorial service was held were beautiful and rustic on a mid-September day in 2014. The weather was wonderful and Travis’s son Tobias and his friends had set up chairs under the fragrant pine trees near, but not under, a covered picnic area. 

Those attending the memorial included his family, who knew him when he was young, his ex-wife and son, who knew him after he graduated from college, and more than a dozen friends whom he met after college when he joined an enduring New Age community in Kentucky, known to many as the Cornucopia Community. He met Tobias’s mother and first and only wife Beth Towner while leading a workshop in Denver for the community’s Cornucopia Institute. The guiding document for the Cornucopia community was the Handbook to Higher Consciousness by Ken Keyes. After the Kentucky camp closed, many of the community moved with Travis and his wife Beth back to Albuquerque, New Mexico. 

Beth gave a very moving tribute to the eternal searcher, Travis, who was always looking for more meaning in life. She concluded by playing Holy Now by Peter Mayer, a moving song that captured the essence of Travis's wanderlust [audio posted in the Gallery on this website, on the Audio tab]. His mother, Donna Smallwood, sent a long letter which his son Tobias read. The letter described how Travis had been an outstanding student in high school, excelled in a private school, and often asked his teachers difficult questions. 

At lunch after the memorial service, Beth told an amusing story of how they first met. She attended a week long Higher Consciousness session in Denver at which Travis was an instructor. She described Travis “as cute.” She had enrolled in the Denver workshop because previously, while in a private school, the Athenian, in Danville, California, she had read and reread Ken Keye's work.   

After the Denver workshop, Beth moved to Kentucky and joined the Cornucopia community. There she let it be known that she was fond of Travis, but for a few months she could never speak to him as those who joined the community, even married couples, could not speak to those they were close to. On her graduation day from a specialized study after the common introductory course, she returned to her room to find her personal goods missing. Her roommate told her that her goods had been moved to Travis's quarters!  The rest is now part of Smith,Corwin,Towner and Cornucopia history! 

At the memorial, Travis's cousin Bill described his memories of hippie Travis's visits with his aristocratic dad Art to his hick country cousins in Iowa corn fields - and to an old house on an Iowa Great Lake built by his great grandfather. That musty, once elegant house, inherited by Art, was the first on Lake Okoboji to have indoor plumbing. Travis was forever helping his dad paint and maintain that creaky old house. Later, after moving to New Mexico from Kentucky, Travis started his own short-lived painting business. 

Bill used covers from MAD magazine - a magazine that Travis always brought with him to Iowa - to review his other memories of Travis’s life in Iowa. Bill still thinks of Travis when he watches Saturday Night Live as MAD magazine humor has been an inspiration for many of the satirical skits featured on that show. Bill also noted that Travis may have inherited his wanderlust from his dad, who was always questioning institutions, especially religious institutions.   

At dinner in a fine Mexican restaurant the night before, Travis's stepmother, Sara, told of the first time she met Travis. When visiting Monterey, Mexico, with his dad, Art, the unruly young Travis impaled himself on a steel window guard spike! Sara told of frantically searching for a doctor who would treat him!  When Travis was older, his younger half-sister Alex told of how her female friends would gather outside the Aguilar family house in Monterrey, Mexico, (hometown of Sara’s family) to catch a glimpse of this dashingly sophisticated California young man!  

Those with whom he lived in Kentucky told of how Travis had helped them - both in Kentucky and to establish themselves in Albuquerque. A logo drawn by Travis for one of his Kentucky friends, in return for free yoga lessons, has been the symbol of a successful Albuquerque yoga business for several decades. Several of those he met in Kentucky also told how Travis was respected as a very capable programmer, and had clients like HP.  

Our cousin Travis is missed by the Smiths, the Corwins, the Aguilars and the Towners. May he find in the after- life the meaning he sought throughout his life on earth. 

This photo was taken at Travis's Memorial Celebration on Sunday, September 14, 2014 at the Oak Flat Picnic Ground in Tijeras, New Mexico.  Some of the guests had left by the time the photo was taken.  Pictured are (from left to right):  1st row, seated on the ground: David Puccini, Sage Hopkins, Daniel Puccini.  2nd row, seated on bench:  Barbara Herrington (pink shirt), Tobias Corwin (holding photo of Travis), Jim Smith.  3rd row, both standing and seated, staggered: Michael Haley-Gritzbaugh, Carol Smith, Milton Wilson, Amba Caldwell, Marj Mullany (in front of Amba), Alexandra Corwin Aguilar, Beth Corwin, Bill Smith, Sara Corwin, Herb McDonald, Jenny McDonald, Ben Bauer, Jim Mullany.  Far back row:  Chittak Caldwell, Rob Pine, Millard Smith, Fred Lamont.  If I have gotten your name wrong, please email me and I will fix it.  Thank you to Carol Smith for sharing this photo.

Travis showed a lasting interest in growth and change, often against great obstacles. He shared many of the variety of teachings that were helpful to him.  The following is the one essay from my own Heart Master that Travis asked to have.

The Secret of  How to Change by Avatar Adi Da Samraj

True change and higher human adaptation are not made on the basis of any self-conscious resistance to old, degenerative, and subhuman habits. Change is not a matter of not doing something. It is a matter of doing something else--- something that is inherently right, free and pleasurable. Therefore, the key is insight and the freedom to feel and participate in ways of functioning that are right and new.

The tendencies and patterns of our earlier adaptations are not wrong. They were appropriate enough in their own moment of creation, and there is no need to feel guilt and despair about them. Likewise, efforts to oppose and change them are basically fruitless. Such efforts are forms of conflict, and they only reinforce the modes of self-possession.

What is not used becomes obsolete, whereas what is opposed is kept before us. Therefore, the creative principle of change is the one of relaxed inspection and awareness of existing tendencies and persistent, full feeling orientation to right, new, regenerative functional patterns. If this is done consistently and in ecstatic resort to the Living Divine, free growth is assured.

Have no regrets. Resort to the Divine in Truth and in the present. All that has been done by anyone had its logic in its time. Only God Avails. Whatever is your habit in this moment is not wrong. It is simply a beginning. No habit is necessary, it it is only tending to persist, because it has not yet been replaced by further growth. Hear the Teaching of Truth, and understand what is the right, ultimate, and regenerative pattern of each function of Man. Feel free of all negative judgements about what you have done and what you tend to do. Turn with full feeling-attention to the creative affair of new adaptation in most positive Communion with the God who is Life, and who is Alive as all beings.

This photo of Travis (age 24) came inside a card written by Travis describing what was going on the moment the picture was taken:

" This card shows how I am opening up my heart and tuning into all the love around me. I have been made a resident. The picture shows your son looking peaceful and grateful after receiving his initiation".


  

He was trying to wrestle a guitar out from under a bed, and the bed was winning.  Instead of swearing, as I'd have done, he addressed himself to the guitar: "Stop.  Change.  Be different."

I am wearing the t-shirt I got while on our Maui trip.  This picture was taken outside of Donna's home in Los Angeles (Travis' mother)

In Maui mid 90's.  Since I was a little boy Travis had allways promised me a trip to Hawaii.  We finally made it happen while I was in high school.

I am pretty sure this is a picture I took in the JFK airport as my dad and I were getting ready to fly to Spain for a trip with my grandparents Donna and Gerry.

Travis with Toby's pet ferret, Zooky.  He's feeding her vitamins from a squeeze tube.  This was in my house on Armin Road in Tijeras, New Mexico at Christmas, probably around the year 2000.

This photo was taken the day after Travis's and my wedding in February 1981 in Kentucky.  Pictured, from left to right, are my mother Lorna Towner, my sisters Chia and Darcy, myself, my brother Bob Towner, and Travis. Thanks to my brother Dave for submitting this photo.