Everything is Beautiful and I am So Sad, Episode 432
Perhaps we are so afraid of grief because we have forgotten how vast we humans are and can be. When we forget this, we mistake ourselves for a tiny receptacle, unable to imagine that we can meet life as it is. And then how little we let in, and how frightened we get of feeling the immensity both of our sadness and of the wonder of being here.
In this episode we consider what it is to let ourselves widen, to relax our defendedness and our clinging-on so we can find ourselves in the sacredness that is both love and grief together, and meet one another - and life - there.
This week's Turning Towards Life hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Our source for this week:
Adrift
Everything is beautiful and I am so sad.
This is how the heart makes a duet of
wonder and grief. The light spraying
through the lace of the fern is as delicate
as the fibers of memory forming their web
around the knot in my throat. The breeze
makes the birds move from branch to branch
as this ache makes me look for those I've lost
in the next room, in the next song, in the laugh
of the next stranger. In the very center, under
it all, what we have that no one can take
away and all that we've lost face each other.
It is there that I'm adrift, feeling punctured
by a holiness that exists inside everything.
I am so sad and everything is beautiful.
Mark Nepo
Photo by Phil Botha on Unsplash