The Gift of Grief

I have been off my game lately, a little more absent-minded and a little less with the joys of the day. At first I thought it was simply the changes brought about by the side effects of winter hibernation-too many carbs and not enough exercise-that was making me sluggish in getting together with the energy of spring. Or, I would blame the energetics of living in a world distressed by it's economy serving as a wake-up call to grow up. However, as I sit here in my parents home and all that being here calls upon my emotions, I must honor the wisdom of what my tears are telling me...that loss is less about the words we use to talk of it and more of how it challenges us, even those who believe themselves ok with impermanence.

I am being brought back to the powerful workshop of grief and how important the work of grief is to growing compassion, first for ourselves and then the other. To our minds, feeling our sorrow is the antithesis of what it believes in and so we choose to avoid, gloss over, or go into psuedo-spiritual mode when feeling sorrow's presence. Grief is a powerful teacher on the truth of impermanence and simply wants us to worship each moment we are in, for this moment must die to birth the next moment. We are taught to disconnect our energy from that which is painful and call it maturity. And while this may keep us feeling safe and gain us the illusion of control, the truth is our withdrawal from what is painful simply removes the presence of our compassion
for ourself and the other.

And so, instead of stopping my tears, I allow them to flow down my face, their presence honoring the loss of my parent's place in what keeps me feeling safe and always loved as well as for their grief and fear of their destination. My child sees my tears and simply gives me a hug, innocent still of the price of the awareness of losing those always in your life. The tears help me to be more with the short and sweet of time-less important becomes what is past and more important what remains when the day is gone.... love, simply love.

our humanity is our divinity

This week, I took a day off from a life overbooked in responsibilities to pick up a lamp I had ordered from an artisan whose work I had fallen in love with almost 20 years ago when I lived in Santa Fe. Janna has decided to move on to a different expression of herself after 21 years of making beautiful ways to light up a room and I wanted to make sure to get another lamp of hers before I no longer could. Turns out that her studio was but 2 hours away -who knew!-from where I live in Massachusetts and so my spiritself whispered sweet nothings in my ear, asking for some time in my life as well. I had all the reasons that the pressures of too-much-todo-in-too-little-time can argue for, and, I have learned over the years that taking time for what calls out within me, softly yet earnestly, never becomes a regret of mine.

So, I packed up our puppy from Chicago-another story of how what was true for my spirit and soul won out over the protests of Logical and Sensible-and played hooky from my shoulds of the day. I brought along my ipod so as to be able to play my music while driving (those of you who have/had teenagers know how rarely you get to play your own music uncontested). It felt good to be long-distance driving as it is one of my ways to meditate, perhaps because while my chatty-cathy mind is busy driving, my softer-voiced mind becomes more easily heard and felt by me.

The town of Easthampton is reached by driving over Mt. Tom, a mini-mountain by standards other than coastal new england, and beautiful to drive over with it's steep road up and down the edge of the mountain and the town so very small below. I picked up the lamp, met an artist who I have appreciated for years, and as we compared notes on the music our daughters loved to listen to, I felt at home and at ease, even though I had just met this women/artist and had driven to this town for the first time. I felt at home through the choice to honor and now enjoy, in a way small and still large, what I needed in the midst of my very busy and responsible life....an adventure that touched my heart and soul.

So what does this tale of playing hookey from my to-do list have to do with divinity? Simple... that divinity is found not only in the cathedrals and temples ancient, it is also found in the mountains and meetings local, in the spontaneous choice to create an adventure out of an errand vs simply checking it off my to-do list. Divinity is honoring our spirit and soul's need for breathing room and expression in our daily lives, even if the taskmasters of logic and duty tsk-tsk us for doing so. Divinity is not a place we go to; she is found in the "how" of our daily routines, in our choice to not become so unconscious in our to-do list that we forget that what we do/get done is not who we truly are or what the gift of a life human is about.

All beings who live on this earth these days have chosen the courageous act of living divinity through the duties, trials, and ecstacy of our daily humanity. Our times are asking that we are all live our divinity even more through living our humanity. No longer is the sacred split off from the secular...we are being asked to honor the sacred in the daily and in the daily, the sacred. To do so is to become even more clear that there are no small acts, simply those that we bring our awareness to and those we do not. And so, in this time of changing norms and direction, perhaps in playing hooky from your logic and to-do list in order to honor the whisper of the voice of an adventure and the mysterious, you are simply honoring the divine in your humanity...and that is go(0)d.