Day 86 – Joy and Grief

Looking forward,
looking back — I am chased by
duties. I want ... Life.
- Saoirse Charis-Graves 

Sometimes, on days like today, days so full of joy and love, magic really … grief is so very close. The reality that “all you love you will lose,” as Francis Weller names, arrives in the back of my throat and in the ache in my chest. The here today, gone tomorrowedness of life lingers mixing with gratitude and joy.

It’s a fearful thing to love
what death can touch.

A fearful thing to love,
hope, dream: to be —
to be, and oh! to lose.

A thing for fools this, and
a holy thing,
a holy thing to love.

For
your life has lived in me,
your laugh once lifted me,
your word was a gift to me.

To remember this brings painful joy.
It’s a human thing, love,
a holy thing,
to love
what death has touched.
- Judah Halevi 
Translated by Chaim Stern

I used to think this was scarcity in me, but now I see… I feel … that when you live with your heart wide open to life, to others, to the world and all it’s abundance … to the black ants crawling in the grass, the ducks flying so close overhead I can feel their wings beating, to kiddos dancing in the sunset , planting the garden with helpers, to a deer creeping up on me as I sat still next to the water this morning, to baby kittens and blue skies, laughter and joy of this day … the more there is to let go of, to lose, to grieve.

“Grief and love are sisters, woven together from the beginning. Their kinship reminds us that there is no love that does not contain loss and no loss that is not a reminder of the love we carry for what we once held close.”
Francis Weller

To remember it’s all temporary and fleeting and to still love anyways… to still jump in and risk and engage with it all. To not shut down in anticipation of pending grief, numb or avoid, or for me … live in fear, but to allow and be in relationship with grief , with the sorrows and hardships in and of this world, alongside love and joy … this. This feels sacred, “a holy thing.”

“Grief is not a problem to solve - it needs witnessing.  Grief is not just an emotion, it’s a skill, a core human faculty… we must build the capacity to keep staying open to grief.”
- Francis Weller 

… perhaps love can only be as large as grief demands. 
… grief is the growing up of the heart that bursts boundaries like an old skin or a finished life. 
… grief is gratitude. 
… the heart is a front line and the fight is to feel in a world of distraction. 
…that your grief is worthwhile of your time. 
-Adrienne Marie Brown 

And that none of this we are meant to do alone. So here I share, in gratitude and love … for the beauty and gifts and sorrows of being human. This being fully alive.

Here today, gone tomorrow.

In gratitude for it all …

N