10/30/2024
Many of us, and many more, are experiencing states and feelings
that are expressions of anticipatory grief.
Anticipatory Grief arises when seeing what appears to be approaching includes the ending of what we love and care about.
Or who we love and care about….
Sometimes it hurts.
This is not because we’re not spiritual enough, it’s because we are sensitive, deep feeling people
who cannot help but feel and respond in some way to what is dying and broken in the world, to the dying of a loved one.
We know that no matter how the US election turns out, there will be massive change, our democracy is faltering.
We know that climate change is a real thing that will bring changes to every neighborhood, to the world’s food supply
to how billions of people will or won’t survive,
We know that bombs and guns never bring peace,
Anticipatory Grief can show up as depression, lack of energy, anxiety, maybe fear and dread, feelings of overwhelm, anger
and more.
There is so much we can do so little about,
There is plenty of evidence that we may have gone past the point of no return.
We don’t want to hear this.
There are the children and grandchildren…..
Our spiritual practices, the love that is one of God’s names, these are the essential ground, standing between hope and hopeless, pointing us to and supporting us to stay sane and healthy in the midst of it all.
Love and Grief, twin sisters.
We always knew, one day we’d need to say goodbye to everyone and everything we love.
It just makes it all the more precious, don’t it?
Here’s a poem by Laura Weaver
Bearing Witness
Sometimes we are asked to stop and bear witness:
this, the elephants say to me in dreams
as they thunder through the passageways
of my heart, disappearing
into a blaze of stars. On the edge
of the 6th mass extinction, with species
vanishing before our eyes, we’d be a people
gone mad, if we did not grieve.
This unmet grief,
an elder tells me, is the root
of the root of the collective illness
that got us here. His people
stay current with their grief—
they see their tears as medicine—
and grief a kind of generous willingness
to simply see, to look loss in the eye,
to hold tenderly what is precious,
to let the rains of the heart fall.
In this way, they do not pass this weight on
in invisible mailbags for the next generation
to carry. In this way, the grief doesn’t build
and build like sets of waves, until,
at some point down the line—
it simply becomes an unbearable ocean.
We are so hungry when we are fleeing
our grief, when we are doing all
we can to distract ourselves
from the crushing heft of the unread
letters of our ancestors.
Hear us, they call. Hear us.
In my dreams, the elephants stampede
in herds, trumpeting, shaking the earth.
It is a kind of grand finale, a last parade
of their exquisite beauty. See us, they say.
We may not pass this way again.
What if our grief, given as a sacred offering,
is a blessing not a curse?
What if our grief, not hidden away in corners,
becomes a kind of communion where we shine?
What if our grief becomes a liberation song
that returns us to our innocence?
What if our fierce hearts
could simply bear witness?
