grief

The Five Gates of Grief

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“The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and be stretched large by them. ~ Francis Weller

Francis Weller’s book, The Wild Edge of Sorrow, is a stunning descent into the pain and beauty of grief. How we experience it currently in our modern, Western culture, how we could better experience it, and rituals of renewal.  

I am a fan of Francis Weller’s work for good reason. He is a true elder, a wise man with a deep well of compassion which he shares with the world. I have written a blog post about his work, which you can find here.  

One of the most potent chapters in The Wild Edge of Sorrow is “The Five Gates of Grief.” One of those five gates is familiar. The others most of us have never even named.  

The First Gate: Everything We Love, We Will Lose.

The chapter starts with a quote from Oscar Wilde. Where there is sorrow, there is holy ground.

This is the most familiar, and the only gate many of us acknowledge. It is the gate we walk through when we have lost someone or something we love. Everything in life is a gift. Nothing lasts. Not our relationships, health, jobs, pets, or even our lives.  

Acknowledging and accepting this truth will bring much more joy and gratitude to one’s life. To suppress it leads our heart into living a flatline existence. The deeper the grief, the higher the joy.  

Francis Weller shares a 12th Century poem about this gate, which you can read and listen to here. 

When we allow ourselves to grieve, we tell ourselves and the world that we have loved. 

And this is a holy thing indeed.  

We live in a culture that denies grief, grieves only in privacy, and tells ourselves to “get over it.” We’ve grieved enough. Time to move on. In reality, we should allow ourselves to drop deep into this fertile darkness where love is in pain.  In this place of stillness, we are given time for our hearts to heal and learn, and to open again. Only then can we better experience even more of this incredible world of impermanence.  

I intend not to give away too much of the book. My hope is that sharing a bit about the different gates of grief will whet one’s appetite to read the book.

Over the next couple of weeks, I will share the gates that we deny or don’t even know exist. 

In the next post, I will introduce the second gate, “The Places That Have Not Known Love.”  

Epitaph

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What is left of us after we are gone but those left behind whom we have loved and lived our lives with and for? The thing that matters, the thing that can change a heart or a world, is this: Love.

I narrate a poem by Merrit Malloy called Epitaph in memory of my uncle, who passed out of the physical world yesterday.

EPITAPH

by Merrit Malloy

When I die

Give what’s left of me away

To children

And old men that wait to die.

And if you need to cry,

Cry for your brother

Walking the street beside you.

And when you need me,

Put your arms

Around anyone

And give them

What you need to give to me.

I want to leave you something,

Something better

Than words

Or sounds.

Look for me

In the people I’ve known

Or loved,

And if you cannot give me away,

At least let me live on in your eyes

And not your mind.

You can love me most

By letting

Hands touch hands,

And by letting go

Of children

That need to be free.

Love doesn’t die,

People do.

So, when all that’s left of me

Is love,

Give me away.

Last Breath

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You ask me if I am afraid.

But I am not afraid.

I swore you were the breath in my life.

But you were the wind.

And like the wind

you are gone. 

I walk out of the dark. 

And see the light for the first time,

in a long time.

I know now that you were not the darkness.

You were the moon.

We were the breath.

We are the wind.

What Are You Waiting For?

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Life is born out of the divine shrapnel of the big bang. We are energy that simply changes form. Perhaps in our time of grieving, when darkness seems to envelop us, we can remember this one thing:

The physical world is mortal and immortal;

In time, everyone and everything passes through the lower energies of matter and then leaves;

Changing into a different vibration of energy, without form and without a physical avatar.

That darkness we feel sometimes is also part of divinity.

It reminds us to hold this precious and temporary time when we embody physical matter tenderly;

and be thankful for those we have loved and lost;

and appreciate those we have now;

because too soon, this life will change form.

What Are You Waiting For?

by Jan Phillips

Intelligence permeates the universe

It makes our hearts pump, our fingernails grow.

Every cell knows what to do

because it is intelligence materialized.

In the circle of life,

the wave of knowing becomes the particle of being.

Energy slows down and becomes matter.

Like Einstein said: energy is simply matter

times the speed of light squared.

Energy never dies. It just keeps changing form.

A dewdrop becomes a cloud, becomes rain,

becomes the sea, becomes a cloud, becomes sleet

becomes the icy road.

The hydrogen atoms forged in the Big Bang

are in your eyelash, your cat’s fur,

your piano bench.

You are more than a child of the heavens and earth.

You are mortal and immortal,

finite and infinite,

human and divine.

Own up to it.

Inside you burns the flame of Creation Itself.

If you heard it once, you heard it a hundred times:

You are the light of the world.

You are the miracle you are waiting for.

Your body is a chalice holding Mind-at-Large.



What in the world are you waiting for?

Is It Possible?

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  1. Is it possible, I wonder, to be whole in our spiritual lives without being intimate with death?  Is it possible to truly be at one with Spirit and with our own sacredness without healing this fear of physical death?  Isn’t death part of the divine Möbius strip of creation and dissolution and creation? 
  2. How can I set on fire my passion for Spirit and the divine without this healing?  Otherwise, won’t my ability to live my true purpose be subverted by this fear of death?  Death of loss.  Loss of those I love. Loss of a job, a home, a future.  Death comes in many forms and our fear may just be derailing our true expression.
  3. Perhaps the only way to heal this fear is to become intimate with it and to truly let ourselves feel the feelings that arise when we see it in our own lives or the lives of others.  Too often we numb ourselves by staring at our screens or indulging in food or substances that dull our feelings.
  4. What if instead, we allowed ourselves to sink down into the darkness of our grief?  What if we gave ourselves that gift? Or what if we held someone else’s hand as they sat in their own darkness?  What would emerge from the darkness? 
  5. Perhaps an open heart would flower.  Or compassion for ourselves.  A conversation with Spirit.  What might come from the ashes of this burning? 

THE HOLY LONGING

I praise what is truly alive,

What longs to be burned to death.

A strange feeling comes over you

when you see the silent candle burning.

Now you are no longer caught

in the obsession with darkness,

and a desire for higher love-making

sweeps you upward.

Distance does not make you falter,

now, arriving in magic, flying,

and finally insane for the light,

you are the butterfly and you are gone.

And so long as you haven’t experienced

this: to die and so to grow,

you are only a troubled guest

on the dark earth.

~ Goethe, trans. Robert Bly

Stay

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“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known …suffering…. and have found their way out of the depths.  (They) have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern.”   ~ Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

Today I am sharing a poem from a wonderful book I have recently come across that has brought me hope and comfort. It is by Jan Richardson titled, “The Cure for Sorrow: A Book of Blessings for Times of Grief.”

Though the author wrote this book of blessings during her husband’s illness and subsequent passing, grief can come to us in many forms. Grief over lost dreams, over parts of ourselves that are not loved, the loss of so much of the natural world, the loss of our or a loved one’s physical abilities. Aging. Loss of memory. Loss of a pet.

But if we can stay with our grief until we come through to the other side, what blessings may await?

Construction Site

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When we begin to emerge back into the world after grief has struck, we become aware that we cannot emerge alone. A lifeline comes to us from a friend, family member, mother nature, poetry, community.

The time will come when we will tether ourselves to this lifeline and throw the other end out to someone else. So perhaps it is more than a lifeline. It is a web. One we share with all life and offer back to another someday. Weaving together ourselves with all that we love.

This is my reading of the poem, “Construction Site” from a poet found on Twitter @the_librarian1.

Construction Site by CL @the_librarian1 on Twitter

Please have a listen to the poet’s reading. It is absolutely beautiful.

Blessing for Coming Home to an Empty House

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I realized that I had not posted much lately. I am in the homerun stretch of graduating from the apprenticeship program at The Guild for Spiritual Guidance, which has carried me through the last two years in community and love. After this Sunday, I will be a graduate and will dive deep into my writing and sharing with you here in this space. I very much look forward to posting more.

In the meantime, I came across this poem by Jan Richardson. I hope it brings you comfort.

Blessing for Coming Home to an Empty House

I know
how every time you return,
you call out
in greeting
to the one
who is not there;
how you lift your voice
not in habit
but in honor
of the absence
so fierce
it has become
its own force.

I know
how the hollow
of the house
echoes in your chest,
how the emptiness
you enter
matches the ache
you carry with you
always.

I know
there are days
when the only thing
more brave than leaving
this house
is coming back to it.

So on those days,
may there be a door
in the emptiness
through which a welcome
waits for you.

On those days,
may you be surprised
by the grace
that gathers itself
within this space.

On those days,
may the delight
that made a home here
find its way to you again,
not merely in memory
but in hope,

so that every word
ever spoken in kindness
circles back to meet you;

so that you may hear
what still sings to you
within these walls;

so that you may know
the love
that dreams with you here
when finally
you give yourself
to rest—

the love
that rises with you,
stubborn like the dawn
that never fails
to come.

—Jan Richardson

The Thing Is

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When the darkness of despair

finally gives way

to that small sliver of light,

I pull my eyes upward

toward the source of the light

And inward

to my heart,

knowing the two are connected.

I grab the edge of the light

and I hold tight

And let it bring me back to this indelible world.

Click for the Video of The Thing Is by Ellen Bass

Video of the poem The Thing Is

The Thing Is

BY ELLEN BASS

to love life, to love it even

when you have no stomach for it

and everything you’ve held dear

crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,

your throat filled with the silt of it.

When grief sits with you, its tropical heat

thickening the air, heavy as water

more fit for gills than lungs;

when grief weights you down like your own flesh

only more of it, an obesity of grief,

you think, How can a body withstand this?

Then you hold life like a face

between your palms, a plain face,

no charming smile, no violet eyes,

and you say, yes, I will take you

I will love you, again.

Haiku Poetry of Grief and Gratitude

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I have rediscovered Haiku poetry, a Japanese form of short poetry.  In the English language, Haiku is written according to the number of syllables: Three lines with 17 syllables.  5-7-5.  Japanese does not have syllables.  So, Haiku is written in what are durational sound units, sounds of equal duration.  In English, syllables can be of differing duration.  

I think I love Haiku so much for a couple of reasons.  First, because of my analytical side.  The counting of syllables and the effort it takes to fit a moment of life into 17 syllables is very satisfying to this woman whose favorite class in school (way back when) was math.  Many poets of Haiku in English think of this 17-syllable rule as a suggestion, and my older self is just fine with coloring outside the lines.

Second, Haiku helps me to reel in my errant thoughts and focus them like a light beam onto one moment, one object, a simple thing.  This is a type of meditation for me.  It has helped me, especially during these uncertain times. 

Noticing the smallest of things and being grateful for them, however fleeting, is what I attempt to hold in my hands as I walk through life now.

Here are a few Haiku poems focusing on grief and gratitude. I hope you find comfort in them.

Grief

A Japanese Poem Translated by Takashi Kodaira and Alfred H. Marks

At the deepest point

of grief, somebody nearby

breaks a withered branch

by Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828)

In a world

Of grief and pain,

Flowers bloom –

      Even then.

By Rev. Deb Vaughn

Just a single leaf…

One of many in autumn

A tree remembers

By Emily Thiroux Threatt

Remembering joy

Gazing into his brown eyes

We laughed together

by Hannah Spencer

“Not Fair”

How cruel my heart

is!… To persist in beating

although you’re gone…

by Dina Televitskaya

“Smile”

It has flown to me.

And it has given me grief.

It was your sad smile.

by P.S. AWTRY

“Not As Strong As She Seems”

formidable dam

     a breach in the night

          dread torrent of tears

by Paula Goldsmith

“Squirrel Time”

My cute furry friend

Eating nuts until the end

Chasing all your friends

Unknown

Morning fog rolls in

Not as dark as yesterday

         Or the day before

Gratitude

By Diane Yoza

My white coffee cup

So full of aroma

Sips to warm my heart

by David Byrne

“Beauty”

Ah, beauty must die

Impermanent flower

Showing gratitude

by Romeo Naces

“Grateful Sigh”

    …soil, sky and sea sigh

       gratitude from low and high

       we, us, you and I…

by Line Gauthier

“Summer Whispers”

summer whispers

in the garden of my life

  ~ chants of gratitude

by Dietra Reid

“Appreciation of Colors”

shades enlightened light

gratitude to primary

secondary thanks

by Suzy @ suzysomedaysomewhere.blogspot.com

Changing seasons drift

A twisting kaleidoscope;

   Life, a Thankful gift