Loss and Grief

"The reality is that you will grieve forever.  You will not get over the loss of a loved one.  You will learn to live with it.  You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered.  You will be whole again but you will never be the same.  Nor should you be the same.  Nor would you want to.  Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

“to live in this world

you must be able
to do three things
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go”
― Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, Vol. 1

and you tried to change didn’t you?
closed your mouth more
tried to be softer
prettier
less volatile, less awake
but even when sleeping you could feel
him travelling away from you in his dreams
so what did you want to do love
split his head open?
you can’t make homes out of human beings
someone should have already told you that
and if he wants to leave
then let him leave
you are terrifying
and strange and beautiful
something not everyone knows how to love.

Warsan Shire

Trans-formation

Living long enough we all find ourselves surrounded by an old way of thinking, being or loving that is going up in flames.    In that unexpected moment, we usually find ourselves full of fear, feeling trapped by an old way of life coming in on us.  But this is the passage of rebirth that we must move through if our lives are to unfold.  It is the momentary and painful crossing from what is old into what is new.  We must trust that the greater sea we are jumping into will douse whatever catches fire as we move through.   This is what faith is all about.   Mark Nepo

Hurt

"The worm is one of the only creatures that grows from bing cut.  Mysteriously, if you cut a worm in two, each half becomes whole, and you have two worms.

What is it in how the worm lives that allows it to grow from its pain, and how might we translate that to being human  It lives in humus -the soil- inside and out. 

Perhaps the secret to growing from our wounds is to live close to the earth, to live with our hearts and minds and bellies always in touch -both inside and out - with that which is larger than we are. 

Perhaps, when cut in two, it is a life of humility, of risking to be at one with the soil of our experience, that allows us to heal into something entirely new."  Mark Nepo

Opposition

"Withstanding the tension between opposites until we know it is "enough" releases us from the swing between one extreme and the other."   Helen Luke

Attachment

The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.
~G.K. Chesterton

Death

Death comes,
and what we thought we needed loses importance.

~Rumi

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and
purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.

by Naomi Shihab Nye from “Words Under the Words”

Love After Love

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here.  Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine.  Give bread.  Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit.  Feast on your life.

Flowing

There is no controlling life.
Try corralling a lightning bolt,
containing a tornado. Dam a
...stream and it will create a new
channel. Resist, and the tide
will sweep you off your feet.
Allow, and grace will carry
you to higher ground. The only
safety lies in letting it all in –
the wild and the weak; fear,
fantasies, failures and success.
When loss rips off the doors of
the heart, or sadness veils your
vision with despair, practice
becomes simply bearing the truth.
In the choice to let go of your
known way of being, the whole
world is revealed to your new eyes.

—Danna Faulds,
"Poems from the Heart of Yoga: Go In and In"

Oneness

"If we're not planting seeds that are going to reveal that oneness to us, we're simply perpetuating our own pain, because all of our suffering comes from being lost in separateness." --Krishna Das

Attachment

"You only lose that which you cling to." Buddha

Trade-offs

“For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

Heartfulness

"Like waves on the shore, our hearts normally rush toward joy, then pull back, afraid of pain and loss.  Heartfulness is the willingness and ability not to pull back."  Elizabeth Lesser

Lost?

"In all ten directions of the universe,
there is only one truth.
When we see clearly, the great teachings are the same.
What can ever be lost?  What can be attained?
If we attain something, it was there from the beginning of time. 
If we lose something, it is hiding somewhere near us."  Ryokan

Sacrifice and Cost

"The cost of a thing is the amount of what I call life which is required in exchange for it, immediately or in the long run."  Henry David Thoreau

Honor Yourself

"Go with developments, rather than against them.   If you feel lost, be lost in ways that suit you and make you feel like a participant in your life.   If you feel empty, empty out your life where it needs it.   If you feel sad, let sadness be your dominant feeling.   Being in tune with your deep mood is a way of clarifying yourself.  Speak for it.  Honor it."  Thomas Moore

"If you see yourself
as no one worth looking at;
if you believe you are
not worth listening to,
if they told you,
"That's not what you saw,
not what you heard,
not what you think
you cannot trust yourself"
You are lost.

Don't look to others to find you,
to love and take care of you now.
You'll suck them dry.

No one out there
is responsible.
Go back and find
your soul.
Be mother and father
to yourself,
Until the divine parents
arrive.

Christina Baldwin

Autumn

AUTUMN

Urge me to drop every leaf I don't need
Every task or bad habit I repeat past its season
Every sorrow I rehearse
Each unfulfilled hope I recall
Every person or possession to which I cling-
Until my branches are bare, until I hold fast to
Nothing

Tutor me through straining night winds
In the passion of moan and pant
The gift of letting go
At the moment of most abundance
In the way of falling apples, figs, maple leaves, pecans.

Show me the way of dying in glorious boldness
Yellow,gold, orange, rust, red, burgundy.

Monza Naff