In my blog-hopping adventures this morning I discovered two absolute gems. 
The first is from Rachel at Swandive: a poem from Jack Gilbert’s book Refusing Heaven:
A Brief for the Defense
Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants.
Otherwise […]

Posted in Poetry, Resources | 4 Comments »

Grief resides deep in the body.  My sense of loss is palpable. At times my heart literally aches, I breathe deeply letting out heavy sighs for relief, I long for my dog’s warm solid body to hold.  Now it is simply a pile of ashes.
When my mother ended up in the ICU unconscious, with pneumonia […]

Posted in Grief | 13 Comments »

After my mother died I was very comforted by the image in the Christian Tradition of being surrounded by a “great cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 12:1). I had always loved the image of the Communion of Saints, but suddenly it became much more personal. Certainly I had lost grandparents previously whom I had known, but […]

Posted in Grief | 3 Comments »

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning is a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
[S]he may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the […]

Posted in Grief | 9 Comments »

I went away to the woods and water
expecting to meet God.
Instead I met Myself.
And we swam together for hours in a
blue pool of desire
for silence and beauty and
stillness so strong that it threatened to drown me
with its urgency and longing.
The skin of my fingers and toes
curled into rivulets,
water flooding my ears,
I emerged as if from […]

Posted in Poetry | 4 Comments »

I read this quote yesterday in an article in the Sept/Oct 2006 Spirituality & Health:
“Those who have suffered heartbreaking loss join the vast brotherhood and sisterhood of those who have been fired in the crucible of deep sorrow.”
I love the image of the brotherhood and sisterhood of loss and the crucible of deep sorrow. It […]

Posted in Grief | 3 Comments »

I know I am at the start of another long journey.  There is no way out of the landscape of grief except straight through the heart of it, even though we may construct all kinds of useful diversions to try and avoid it.   
These last few weeks I have been feeling this invitation to move even […]

Posted in Grief | 16 Comments »

My dear friends and readers,
I am deeply grateful for the prayers and support I have received through comments, emails, and phone calls.  I kept imagining myself surrounded by this circle of light and that was comforting.
All day yesterday I lay on the floor holding Duke, telling him how much I love him, trying to say […]

Posted in Grief | 8 Comments »

Dearest Friends,
Last night our beloved dog Duke became very lethargic and wouldn’t eat. We took him to the vet this morning where they felt fluids in his abdomen and so they sent us on to the hospital in Lynnwood where the did a number of blood tests and an ultrasound.  The diagnosis is Hemangiosarcoma of the […]

Posted in Uncategorized | 8 Comments »

There is a vitality, a life-force, an energy,a quickening that is translated through you into action. And because there is only one of you in all of time this expression is unique.  And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. 
The world will not have it. It is […]

Posted in Creativity | 6 Comments »