… watching for the brushstrokes of God
Do not hurry. as you walk with grief; it does not help the journey.
Walk slowly. pausing often: do not hurry as you walk with grief. …
Take time, be gentle as you walk with grief. From Northumbria Prayerbook
In these months of covid the big and small losses add up. What are you grieving?
Sometimes you need the ocean light and colors you’ve never seen before painted through the evening sky.
Sometimes you need your God to be a simple invitation… David Whyte
What invitation do you need?
“Wood hath hope.
When it’s cut, it grows green again,
and its boughs sprout clean again.
Wood hath hope.
Root and stock, although old and withered up,
and all sunk in earth corrupt, will revive. … Wood hath hope.”
Caryll Houselander
Where is hope sprouting for you?
On May 27, 1992 a mortar killed 22 people waiting in front of a bakery in Sarajevo. Vedran Smailovic, the cellist of Sarajevo responded to the trauma by playing cello in public spaces for two years. When a reporter asked him, “Aren’t you crazy to be playing cello during the shelling?” Smailovic replied, “You ask me am I crazy for playing cello, why don’t you ask them if they are crazy to be shelling?”
What questions need to be turned around?
“Each one of us has lived through some devastation, some loneliness, some weather superstorm or spiritual superstorm, when we look at each other we must say, I understand. I understand how you feel because I have been there myself. We must support each other and empathize with each other because each of us is more alike than we are unalike” Maya Angelou
What are you facing into?
“Grief work is soul work. It requires courage to face the world as it is and not turn away, to not burrow into a hole of comfort and anesthetization. Grief deepens our connection with soul, taking us into territories of vulnerability, exposing the truth of our need for others in times of loss and suffering.” Francis Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow
With the Eyes of the Heart 