Dreaming the World

This morning brought bright sunshine, clear skies, and an abundance of birds and song. Yesterday’s rain awakened the world into vibrant colour. Now the breeze and some clouds have arrived and the day turned chill.

As the trees around our house have come increasingly into leaf, we have more bird visits to the yard. There is more cover and more nesting material, and hopefully, more food. Most of the birds are regular summer visitors or year round residents, but occasionally a small flock of warblers slides through, most likely heading further north.

Suzanne and I had a brief conversation in the comments about my last post. I wrote, “I forget too often that grieving is also a gift we can give,” and she asked whether I could write a longer post about that.

Here in North America we are more than a little grief phobic. Grief hurts, often terribly, and we struggle to live with it or with those who are grieving. Many of us avoid grieving whenever possible and treat grief as a form of psychopathology when it arises.

Yet grief, being our body’s response to the rupture of affective ties, is inevitable. We grieve because we care deeply about relationships with other beings and places, and their potential or actual loss. During times such as ours, when personal and ecological losses seemingly multiply daily, grieving can feel endless and profoundly lonely. Given the surreal environment created by media, an environment where nothing is at risk and loss is invisible, it is easy to feel profoundly invisible, isolated and alone, and perhaps, a bit crazy.

When I watch tv I often feel lonely, as though I am the only person in the world grieving the destruction of so much I care about. Yet when I speak with friends or read recent literature or the comments here on my blog, I realize this simply isn’t so. Many are mourning these ever growing losses.

We warm bloodeds, human and otherwise, grieve our losses and the prospect of future loss; its is very likely other beings do as well. The loss of what and whom we love simply hurts, terribly. While becoming stuck in loss and mourning is not useful or desirable, grieving is crucial to our well being. We need to grieve for as long as we need to grieve. Through grieving the broken strands of relationship are rewoven and healed, allowing us to both hold dear those relationships while continuing our lives. When worked through, grief is a gift.

Grief is also a gift to the lost other. Through our grief we acknowledge just how dear the other was and continues to be. We express gratitude and longing, holding the other up as infinitely precious, and building bridges that allow us to carry those relationships forward in a new way.

Our old cat who died more than a decade ago continues to have a large space in our hearts, his picture sitting on a bookcase in the family room. For a long time we sensed visits from him, even after we moved, but since taking in our present cat, no longer do so. Still, just writing about him brings tears to my eyes and an ache to my chest.

Looking out the window, I feel joy as I watch the birds move from branch to branch, then dash between trees. At the same time I know there are many fewer birds here than there were just a few years ago, and that next year there may well be fewer still, and I feel deep grief.

We make meaning of loss by sharing it with others. When we can remember to share our grief and to offer it to the world, grief becomes a kind if ceremony of remembrance and gratitude, and a way of reweaving the threads of connection that make life sweet. Just because a being or a place is no longer physically with us does not mean they are gone or forgotten. As long as those connections live in our hearts we make room for hope, surprise, and magic.

Joy and grief allow us to stay present to the unfolding catastrophe and to remain connected to the many beings who grace, and have graced, our lives. They encourage us to embrace and honour those now gone and to move on into our unfolding lives, carrying those affectual bonds and memories with us. Let’s trust that our hearts can grow large enough to hold all of the joy and sorrow this life, in an age of disaster, brings.