14/01/2023
"We begin with the simple gesture of picking up the shards of grief that lie littered on the floor of our house. Nothing special. Nothing heroic."
Sometime ago a dear storyteller friend sent me this link, and as it happens it took time before I got to reading it. I was deeply moved by this idea of being apprentices with sorrow and our roles as elders. So I am sharing it today. In times of grief and sorrow, and gratitude.
"Not unlike the young novices entering their apprenticeship with the master teacher, we begin humbly, sweeping the shavings, mixing the pigments, cleaning the brushes, and tending the fires. We begin the process by building our capacity to hold sorrow in the womb of the heart. Through this practice, we can welcome the pervasive and encompassing presence of grief."
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"After years of holding steady with sorrow, a distillation of wisdom occurs. We develop a capacity to see in the darkness and find there, in the depths of it all, something holy, something eternal. We touch the indwelling sacredness of the life we inhabit, digesting bitterness and returning with a determination to feed the community. We become a hive of imagination, dispensing what we have gathered over this extended education of the heart. What was learned was not meant for us alone but was meant to be tossed like seed into a fertile mind, a waiting community, a hungry culture."
What makes an elder? Grief worker and teacher Francis Weller describes how an apprenticeship with grief can ripen the soul.
