The Rev Dorothy Saucedo

Dorothy Saucedo is a friend, mentor, and colleague. Though she walked through the veil from this life to what awaits her on the other side, I cannot use passed tense. She was, is, and will always be friend, mentor, and colleague. Though I may not see her with my earthly eyes, I will see and hear her with other eyes and ears.

The Reverend Dorothy Saucedo’s and my life became woven together at Saint Augustine’s Episcopal Parish, Tempe, Arizona. Her mystical life intertwined the convergence of the Presence and the human. She was authentically her Self. She did not suffer the pretentious. She spoke truth to power; that Word often frightened the shit out of those who had the power. Marginalized by White culture as a woman of the Dine, she would not be silenced. Though some tried—her Strength made the episcopate cringe and she would not be ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church. Jesus wept. The church’s loss. The people suffered. Same old tired story. Nothing within the institution truly changes.

But Dorothy didn’t need to be ordained to be her Self. She is Priest. Her life exudes the Presence and the Real. Dorothy’s experience of the Presence, the divine, the Spirit, was her own; a beautiful mystical marriage of her ancient People’s religious practice and the christian (that is not a typo). She didn’t force either into the structure of the other; they simply co-existed as oneness in the eternal Flow; she is the conduit. Had you not experienced the divine, she would introduce you to the Presence of the Real with a warm smile, gentle laugh, a gracious embrace, a story, her mystical prayers, and sage; lots of smoke, feathers, and a dance with Spirit. To know Dorothy, was to become intimate with divinity.

With such a mystical relationship, though, comes the Reality of Lightness and Darkness; one cannot exist without the other. And Dorothy experienced them both—she knew the Light, she knew suffering; thus, she became the Light her Self. She cared for the marginalized, the disabled, the outcast. She had experienced that grief in her own life and could teach others how to carry such loss with grace—ever the mystical teacher.

Those who know Dorothy will grieve her earthly death in their own way. Tears will be shed. Stories will be told. An exchange of forever transmuted lives will be passed from hand to hand like the bread and wine Deacon Dorothy served with her Holy soul to our hungry hearts. We love you Dorothy and we will miss your power hugs; keep teaching—those who have eyes will see and ears will hear.