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| Vincent Van Gogh - Still Life with an Earthen Bowl and Potatoes (1885) |
If you are a person who lives with open eyes and an open heart, you will encounter grief. Indeed, you will likely have a lifelong relationship with it. Sometimes you will dance with grief (a tango), sometimes you will be in a race with grief (a marathon), sometimes grief will cradle you in its arms, sometimes you will cradle grief in your arms.
There are different strains of grief. Some strains do wear away over time, once they have been exposed to the elements of a healthy inner life.
But there are other griefs that are like a some mysterious sector of the sea where it is always raining. It is as if it has always rained there, and always will rain there.
Such griefs are sacred; they nourish the biosphere of your psyche, they replenish the waters of your tears, they provide the salt needed for living with open eyes and an open heart, they make laughter deeper and joy sweeter.
When you find yourself out in one of these patches of endless grief rain on the sea of feeling, just remember it is all sacred, and that everything is as it should be in that space.
Know that some holy, rarefied secret of existence has been stored there just for you. Know that it will always be there, but that you will only have to visit it every once in awhile (although often when you least expect it).
Yes, when you find yourself out in one of these patches of endless grief rain on the sea of feeling, just stand up in the boat of your awareness and let that rain fall on you, it is a benediction; and as you stand there, listen to its sound, the sound of that rain will transform you forever.
-- Richard Power
Power's eighth book, Humanifesto: A Guide to Primal Reality in an Era of Global Peril , is available now in soft cover and Kindle versions, from Amazon and elsewhere.
