The following is taken from a Quiet Day that I facilitated several weeks ago. In conversation and reflection, we shared our abundance.... our prayers, our loss, our hope and our faith.
With all the joy, excitement, and happiness that Christmas brings, many of us are also aware of the loved ones we've lost this past year, and years past. It doesn't seem to matter how much time has passed, we just want them with us for Christmas. Christmas is a time of abundance in all forms....love, hope, faith, family, fun, traditions, songs, food, children, scripture, lights, and, of course, presents. And there is also abundance, even in our grieving. Grief is simply a form of abundant love. Grief, like it, or hate it, has its own abundance to share with the world. If we hadn't truly loved, there would be nothing to grieve. Love is the umbilical cord connected to every stage of grief, just as the umbilical cord is connected to every stage of a growing baby. When you take time to stop and reflect upon grief, the womb this feeling of loss grows in, feeds, sustains, and nourishes every aspect of love and life. Our tendency is to fight grief, push it away, believing that all that grief could possibly offer us is pain and sorrow. But grief, like love, requires our attention, and our sharing it. Tears are really just another form of laughter- both cleansing what ails us....the essence of both being freedom...both heal, both transcend our worldly circumstance, and carry us higher, and experiencing either tears or laughter, often leads to the other. We've all laughed so hard we've cried, and we've all cried so hard, that we end up laughing.
Embracing abundant grief, we also embrace change. Grief is the great passageway to change...the bridge we all must cross to a new way of being in the world. Change has its own abundance to offer, if we can remain open, available and teachable. And with change, often feelings of anger show up. Anger, in its true abundance, says to the world.... I cared, I loved, I believed, I invested, and I trusted in abundant life! Don't be afraid of abundant anger. It too, when given the chance to express itself in a healthy manner, cleanses, heals, and can free us, so that we might have life and live it abundantly! It is our nature to change, and when we get angry, change has begun to touch us. Change hands us an invitation to care, love, believe, invest, and trust in life yet again.
Grief, sadness, loss, and anger, are often all believed to be negative feelings. But we can learn to love even crying as much as we love laughing. We can learn to love, and embrace, the abundance of the "closed door", the "empty nest", and the "short life". Part of the negativity of grief, is that we believe something has been taken from us, stolen from our ownership...that we had a right to someone or something for a guaranteed certain amount of time. True grief, in all its abundance, gently, and very bravely, hands back to God, what was only God's in the first place. There isn't anyone or anything that is truly ours. Everyone, and everything, is loaned to us as a gift, so that we might learn how to love more abundantly, forgive more freely, and grow our spirits, more effortlessly. Grief, the tears, the anger, the loss, shows us what an abundant gift we had while we had it. Grief never diminishes or lessens abundance. It emphasizes it, makes it pronounced, and intensifies its loveliness.
The eternal sleep that we are witness to so often, causes us to "awaken" to the abundance within our own inner self. We are like Sleeping Beauty, slumbering our lives away, until something happens, and often it is a loss of some type. That "something", that "event" leans over us, loves us, and "kisses" us, and suddenly we remember who we are, who God is, and what we are meant to do while on this earth. Grief is the "kiss" of abundance that searched for us, and found us. Grief unlocks a treasure chest within us, where all abundance is stored, overflowing with jewels// waiting for us to pick them up and place them around our necks- each piece of precious gold, each strand of shimmering silver, and every last carat of sparkling diamonds... the jewels that adorn us as everything invisible...love, happiness, peace, joy, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness,patience, and freedom. Grief is the passionate "kiss" that awakens us to healing, loving, and forgiving. Grief awakens us to the only abundance that we truly possess, and that is everything that we cannot see. Grief reminds us that there isn't anything or anyone that can "make" us happy. We must learn to feel and live abundantly without the abundance of things and people. Real abundance does not depend upon the attainment of perfect circumstances... the perfect spouse, the perfect job, the perfect children, the perfect church, the perfect house, the perfect car, the perfect health, or the perfect length of life. Abundant grief always points to abundant life. Everyone of us lives forever because we are Love, and Love can never die because God is Love. Death is simply a change in the form our spirit has taken. People come to us as Love, which has taken on the form of a body, in order to communicate that love to us. Our abundance lies in the truth that we are not our bodies. We are Love. Bodies do not live. Love always lives.
We can both grieve and be happy. We can experience loss and live in abundance. Grieving doesn't suddenly make life an and/or proposition. If I am grieving, then I can't possibly be happy. Quite the opposite, we grieve because we shared happiness. We shared abundance. We can grieve and laugh, and even giggle. It is okay. We can grieve and still have fun.
Abundant grief casts away everyone's darkness and causes them to shine brightly, giving off an eternal flame that never dims. No matter how many poor choices someone may have made, no matter how many dumb things they may have said or done, no matter what they suffered from, no one, in their right "grief-mind" cares. In our right "grief-mind", we only see the love they shared, who they forgave, what they did for people, and how they made people feel....how they changed someone's life for the better. The rest doesn't matter. The abundant griever finally sees as God sees, loves as God loves, and does as God does. We are here to learn how to live like the abundant griever every day of earthly llife. Abundant life needs and depends upon, the beauty of death. Abundant life needs the simplicity and the power of loss and letting go.
They were more
precious to us
than the sparrow, the
robin, the bluebird,
or even the wren.
As we kept vigil over their preparing to fly home,
We prayed that they
would light upon their chosen sturdy Branch of Peace,
where their soft song
would be heard,
and her wingspan
broadened.
Every time they soar higher, we will feel
the same eternal, gentle
breeze that has lifted her, and carried her
upward to larger
skies.
The Tree of Paradise
salutes them, where
deep inside, they
already knew its sturdiness,
its shade, and its
shelter.
They was already quite
familiar with its beauty, its provision,
and its protection,
and in their
deepness, they
recognized every branch that extended its welcome,
,
remembering every leaf as a faithful
friend…those fallen,
those changed with
new color, and even those just beginning to form.
Everyone that loves them
gathers round its circumference, rings of generations encircling their life.
May they fly to its
safety, its strength, and its shade,
where a Heavenly
Vestry of a thousand Holy People lines its branches.
May they soar to the
highest branch and sing a million hymns of cheerful, happy Sunday songs,
and may our friends
feast on The Word-Seeds of their Creator to their heart’s content,
proclaiming them to us from the holy lecterns
of our memories.
Their songs will
be heard in every Fall and every Winter,
every Spring and every Summer.
Fly home to the Life
you’ve always known.
Fly home to the place
you’ve always loved.
Fly in high, blue
skies, unafraid and free.
Fly strong and happy.
Fly….. untethered by
limitation, pain, and death.
Fly high and far, and
follow the chosen path of your
Great Migration to a
warmer place.
