GRATITUDE and GRIEF

Take a moment to remember the original inhabitants of the land we’re currently on … opening our hearts to the elders and tradition-keepers, mothers and fathers, children and babies … many who are still living in our communities and whose land was never ceded…and as you recall the original inhabitants in your own inward way … i invite you to ask their permission to be a guest on the land where you are…and to express any gratitude that might be in your heart  …
Earth Meditation, Katy Dion

"Grief is praise, because it is the natural way love honors what it misses."
Martin Prechtel

"... grief is essential in order to integrate on a deep level the reality of the situation we face. Otherwise it remains ... theoretical."
Michael Mielke

Jan Rudestam

Jan Rudestam

Jan Rudestam

SANGHA
 
Thank you for this space,
to be ourselves,
together.
Thank you for the silence
to hear our individual hearts
beat, together.
Thank you for the listening
that arises from Here.
 
Thank you for this space
to allow tears
of grief to gather 
with tears of joy and
flow together
in this ocean of our being.
 
Thank us for holding this
Space together.
Thank us for letting go of judgment,
dissolving barriers, opening up,
so, there is a safe place
for all, Here.
 
Here together
there is even space
for the mountains, the rivers,
and the sunrise too.
Here is a place for all
to let worry, and doubt, swirl
with courage and faith, in the wind’s
breath of change.
 
Thanks to the earth
who has provided this place,
this space to be held,
and to hold
Thanks to those who walked
here before us
May they embrace us too
as we learn what it means to be
Here Together.

Suzy Loeffler

Decomposition
 
When we consume forests for profit and giant ice shelves crumble
When we consume people for profit and police forces assault those who protest
When we distract ourselves with a multitude of fascinations and plan to tend our spiritual needs and the needs of others
Tomorrow
When we pretend the sun is going to rise next month just like it rose today
And refuse to notice blood-red circle barely penetrating dirty yellow smoke, three days, a week without a sunrise; dim twilight days bleeding into dark smokey nights
When we pretend to be humans, when actually we are puddles
Messy piles of viscera, lymph, lumpy yellow fat, blood, and stringy connective tissue oozing through our lives
 
When we leave pieces of ourselves behind with every movement
When we incorporate dirt, waste, broken bones and sadness as we travel
When we wonder if this incorporation is good or bad
When we can’t imagine anything new, or any other way this could possibly be
 
When we finally begin sensing the world in puddle ways and realize knowing, uncertainty and loss are not at all what we thought they were
But not in those words, in embodied puddle ways – permeable and messy
           
When we fall into every crack and get stuck in each hole,
When we let go of bone and skin and logical thought
When we slide lower and darker and more completely into the places we have avoided since time began
Dissolving into this huge silence where everything touches everything else and light shines undimmed
Where rain falls and fires go out and puddle bodies exhale into soil,
This too, beloved one.

Sarah Mussulman

Jan Rudestam

Jan Rudestam

Kirsten Rudestam

Charlie Turner

Charlie Turner

Jan Rudestam

Katy Dion

Two Types of Grief
 
One: Ugly pus-filled old dirty wound grief
Grief is not eating, not singing
Grief is a dull stifled ache  
Grief is failure to notice purple dawn sky scattered with quilt clouds
Grief is manipulation, begging for attention, a type of showing-off And not-grief is failure – healthy people grieve
 
Two: Clean incision grief
Grief is stomach-hurting breathless snotty tears
Grief is a wall and occasionally I chink out a brick and peek through
Grief is a cave,  
deep
private
infinite
Where a sub-terrestrial river nourishes the roots of my tree

Sarah Mussulman

Jan Rudestam