i love you, i am listening
When Rabbi Rami Shapiro was asked how he experienced God, he responded that God is the experience.
"How are you?," asked a neighbor of mine the other day during a wave of abrasive heat on a walk with my dog. He asked in such a way that it brought me to tears. Right away. No time to think or process or adjust. Bam! Waterworks. I don't know, it took me off guard somehow. I wasn't expecting it. His asking was so earnest and innocent. So sweet. God is in the details some say.
The thing is, I am grieving. I am mourning. But the weird thing is that sometimes we do this before a loss. It is referred to as anticipatory grief. There are so many incremental losses along the way that can and often do paralyze us. Or when we feel triggered by the pain associated with our losses, we may feel more forgetful, angry, irritable, tired, heartbroken, distant, distracted. You name it.
And then sometimes grief does the opposite. You grieve. You cry. But then you feel like part of the world. Part of this seamless mystery that makes flowers bloom. Sometimes grief motivates us to be more human, more kind, more selfless, more apt to just get out there put our grievances aside and show up as much as we can, knowing that this is our one shot at doing so. No need to worry about saying the right thing, looking perfect, or sounding wise. That shit doesn't matter. What is in your heart, that matters.
What a gift. What an opportunity. What a blessing.
Grief is internal but mourning is the outward expression of our grief. We need both. Sometimes solitude is the healing salve our soul yearns for and other times we need to share our laughter and tears with others. We don't need to say things are o.k. or well because they may not be in that moment. They will be again...someday. But crying right in the middle of a heat wave on the sidewalk happens sometimes.
There is no right or wrong way to do this. When we are grieving, our resilience is down and all of our emotions are so close to the surface. Seaweed floating on top of the salty sea. Seaweed, green, tough, and seemingly everywhere. And you have the choice to get entangled in it or swim through the clumps, revealing the clear water everywhere else. The clear water waiting to hold you, to support you, and wipe your beautiful tears away with an incoming wave, dispelling it and joining it with the rest of the sea.
We stop resisting. We surrender. We float.
And when we grieve, we don't squander or squelch our feelings as much as we normally do, they just come out and recede like moving water, like passing weather.
And this too, as hard and awkward as it is, is also a gift.
Just swim through it like the seaweed.
After being embarrassed for much of my life about my readily available tears, I don't apologize for them anymore. I don't wave them away. I tell them I love them. I thank them. They are doing their job.
Which reminds me of a circle of lovely women I sat with recently on a nearby dock. On the steamy summer solstice evening, we listened to the lapping water and mind numbing planes overhead while discussing how we love ourselves in the midst of heavy, hard stuff.
Forgiveness. Self Care. Compassion. And sometimes if we are challenged to access this kind of compassion and forgiveness towards ourselves, we may think of how we would approach a dearly beloved friend and then turn that kind of attention to our own thirsty souls.
Life is here too in this grief. Laughter, smiles, rainbows, big colorful ones that keep appearing over the Bay, and then there is my littlest girl naked with a fuzzy halo on her head playing with flowers.
It is all Spirit. Truth. Source. God. You choose the name you are comfortable with, maybe there isn't a name. The soul in me and the soul in you.
It is the experience.
How do you love yourself? How do you thank your tears and your anger as well as your waves of joy?
They are all here to help us heal and to encourage our growth, to encourage our union with Spirit. Loneliness and Separation are an illusion. Or as my friend Erica said the other day, "a thinking error".
It may be as simple as putting our hands over our hearts and saying, "I love you. I am listening." - ( From the beautiful and soul enriching podcast, Live Awake by Sarah Blondin).
This is the experience.