I forgot a most important line in Nepo’s poem: “I’m not afraid of dying but missing those I love. I can’t quite imagine the world without them. Like waking to a rip in the sky through which the sun might leave…” So much love to you Renee.
…and oh! I was also just this morning contemplating gravity in the context of death. Feeling how death, though we describe it as heavy, is actually more ephemeral, gossamer. I was looking at my kitty Otis, seeing his shape, the beautiful density of his body, and how many deaths each day give him life, give him weight, substance, warmth. To me, it feels as if life is actually weighted, full of delicious, sensual gravity, and then death is the eventual reversal, weightlessness of all that.
Holding quiet vigil with you and your dear friend. I wrote about death, his visitation, this week as well, and spent quite some time feeling the chambers of my heart emptying, filling, pumping life, and in doing so, its eventual undoing.
So I meet you in the emptying, and repeat your words, “But the void is no less alive,” because oh that line feels so good right now.
Kimberly, thank you for holding vigil, as I do with you and your beloved winged ones. So struck that we both wrote about the chambers of the heart emptying and pulsing. There is comfort in the shared bodied understanding, dear friend.
. . . the void is no less alive. There does seem to be something in the feeling not for the healing (paraphrasing you) but that avails the void. . . .
Life is so full of wonder, including even those things that cause so deep pain. How can what wasn’t become a living consciousness who understands, a least a little, the mystery of eternity and who can also, in small ways, create thoughts and objects that remain after the living consciousness, so fragile, departs? What happens to living consciousness at death? They say religion has no role in this present world, but where else can we find answers? Not in science and only tangentially in philosophy.
I hope you can find consolation in the good years you shared and that you can continue to react to the thoughts and ideas you shared.
Switter, I so appreciate your reflections and questions here on the wonder and mystery of it all . . . and this: "They say religion has no role in this present world, but where else can we find answers? Not in science and only tangentially in philosophy." Yes, I echo you.
I do find consolation in the good years and love we shared. And I thank you for your kind words and care.
My Dear Renee, I have thought much about your loss these past weeks. And I have been lost myself in finding words, finding inspiration, finding the pulling at my heart from within — to offer what I can in honoring your sorrow. As I have moved through the rich and sacred weeks of the Hunter’s and Beaver’s moons, I have found this recent cycle of the Cold moon casting a spell defined by contraction and hollowing. My grief has entered an unfamiliar domain that is more about emptiness and keen attention than quick breaths and tearing eyes. Now so much more about stillness and a clear and present watch — mostly of the forest and the sky and my “wonder/wander boy” Buster. So much detail, as if I am in a trance brought about by some ancient enchantment.
I want to share with you a wrinkled and worn and curled copy of an article I discovered six months after B’s death. I have kept it on an old wooden clip board adorned with Greenpeace stickers on the back and a lush, green oak tree on the front. The article is from the ‘Lion’s Roar’ issue July 15, 2017. The title is “Breaking Open in the Bardo” and the author is Pema Khandro Rinpoche. I am continually drawn to reading and rereading this over all these years. I want to share a few passages:
“In bereavement, we come to appreciate at the deepest, most felt level exactly what it means to die while we are still alive. The Tibetan term bardo, or ‘intermediate state,’ is not just a reference to
the afterlife. It also refers more generally to these moments when gaps appear, interrupting the continuity that we otherwise project onto our lives….But to be precise, bardo refers to that state in
which we have lost our old reality and it is no longer available to us.”
“Anyone who has experienced this kind of loss knows what it means to be disrupted, to be entombed between death and rebirth.”
Barbara studied and practiced Buddhism, me not so much. I watched her. Soon after she was buried, I felt compelled to help her, to witness her 45 days of Bardo. So from mid November through early January, I would walk out to her cairn and recited a Native American prayer that we discovered at the Rowe Camp and Conference Center where we first met. The title is “A Winter Prayer” and was taken from Ken Cohen’s book, “Honoring the Medicine.” For those 45 days in sun and cold and sleet and snow and strong westerly winds, I would stand before her and recite the prayer. Each time I would change the pronouns to be hers. Each time I read the line “Snowy owl, you are beautiful” that became her. Every time I started in, my voice would inevitably break while I fought back sobs.
I was driven to make this ‘right by her’ — to make this right for all the pain and suffering she had endured through her long illness. But as the days went on (on one particular day, while sitting with my Buddhist therapist, whose name is also Barbara, told me that my heart is broken open. And it did) this ritual slowly became a mantra for me as well as her. I began to realize I was also standing with my own grieving heart. That I had begun learning and leaning into the path of death and rebirth — the great unknowing that lie in between. My heart was informing me of all the pain and suffering I had endured; that my heart was capable of holding compassion for her as well as myself. I can also say that my heart “…was fleshing out the holy chambers of the eternal.”
Barbara was my ‘Soul friend’ also. She was my ‘Spiritual mother,’ too. She would call me her ‘Mommy/Daddy Boy’. I would call her my ‘Mommy/Daddy Girl’. Maybe the stillness and watchful presence that carry’s me these days is simply where “the hollow yawns silent” those “tender hours” of our loved ones’ eternity.
Dear Mark, I am stirred in the depths of soul that you have held so tenderly my own grief, waiting for words to come. I thank you for sharing this passage from Pema Khandro Rinpoche about the bardo as mutual, as happening on both sides, bereavement as itself a death that pulls us through a bardo, a disruption here in life, that there's no going back to life as it was . . . the great unknowing. I am touched, too, by your daily bardo ritual with Barbara, reading the Winter Prayer, coming to the passage about the snowy owl. This brought tears. So tender is the heart touched by grief.
I take refuge in the still of night, the deep dark so sweetly cradling the abyss of sorrow.
"In the primordial mode of human being—whispering still from deep down inside us—this dead-world view (which is no different than the solid-world view) has not yet come to be."
I am holding on to hope that your words will bring that view into beautiful clear light dear Renée, both for you in your loss and my own recent loss too... though I read this many days late, I will keep a silent vigil for you today, for our dear friends passed into that other space - no less living just, perhaps, differently. My love to you xx
Dear Susie, thank you for sharing in this revelation about the loss of our loved ones, as I hold you, too, with the hope that in your silent vigil, you may be comforted in this understanding. I regret that I have been mostly offline for several weeks and have missed your letter sharing of your recent loss. Holding you with love. Ever grateful for your tender, heartful presence. 🙏❤️
Stunning Beholding on the language of Death. You are held, as you have held. I yearn for your heart to be filled form this hollow. As I know, you know it will. With the natural Gravitas of your own plume. Blessing Renée.
Oh Renée, I feel the thud, the skipped heart beat. As you know I too have lost loved ones recently. But I can't say I know how you feel, because each relationship is unique, each connection forged with time and presence. So I will say, love to you during this time. May you be embraced by what you deeply need.
Julie, I have thought of you these past days and your recent losses and your presence to your losses. Thank you for your kind presence, and your love, which I receive with gratitude.
At last, I circle back here to read of your grief, and I think I understand better the beauty I noticed around you today. It was the gravitas of grief. My heart goes out to you for this loss. Dona nobis pacem. 🙏🏼 May your friend continue to love and support you in ways only perceptible to the perceptive.
This insight -- “We, the human, walked hapless out of everywhere-flickering-aliveness-Eden into a mirage-world where all that appears, appears to have its beginning in the hard rock clay of all that must be dead.” — is such a true telling of our modern mindset, how we have exiled ourselves from our belonging. My condolences to you for the loss of your friend.
"how we have exiled ourselves from our belonging."
Julie, it is exile, isn't it? When I read your work, when I read the work of others so intimate with the natural world, there is a deepening sense that we are coming to our senses, even as there is an equal and opposite reaction pulling the other way. That reactivity is a clear sign that coming to our senses is already "in the field."
Thank you for your condolences, which I receive with gratitude.
Dear Renee--I feel that I never know what to say to someone who is grieving. Maybe because there ARE no words that can fix or heal. But I hope it does help some to know that my heart is with you and maybe that offers yours some little support as you walk through your grief. With tenderness and love...
Brenda, thank you. It is true that grief is a wordless place; the greatest blessing and tenderness is the heartful presence you offer, which I receive in thanksgiving.
I forgot a most important line in Nepo’s poem: “I’m not afraid of dying but missing those I love. I can’t quite imagine the world without them. Like waking to a rip in the sky through which the sun might leave…” So much love to you Renee.
These words from Nepo are resounding. Thank you, Ed. With love to you.
…and oh! I was also just this morning contemplating gravity in the context of death. Feeling how death, though we describe it as heavy, is actually more ephemeral, gossamer. I was looking at my kitty Otis, seeing his shape, the beautiful density of his body, and how many deaths each day give him life, give him weight, substance, warmth. To me, it feels as if life is actually weighted, full of delicious, sensual gravity, and then death is the eventual reversal, weightlessness of all that.
Gorgeous.
Echo!
Holding quiet vigil with you and your dear friend. I wrote about death, his visitation, this week as well, and spent quite some time feeling the chambers of my heart emptying, filling, pumping life, and in doing so, its eventual undoing.
So I meet you in the emptying, and repeat your words, “But the void is no less alive,” because oh that line feels so good right now.
Kimberly, thank you for holding vigil, as I do with you and your beloved winged ones. So struck that we both wrote about the chambers of the heart emptying and pulsing. There is comfort in the shared bodied understanding, dear friend.
. . . the void is no less alive. There does seem to be something in the feeling not for the healing (paraphrasing you) but that avails the void. . . .
Life is so full of wonder, including even those things that cause so deep pain. How can what wasn’t become a living consciousness who understands, a least a little, the mystery of eternity and who can also, in small ways, create thoughts and objects that remain after the living consciousness, so fragile, departs? What happens to living consciousness at death? They say religion has no role in this present world, but where else can we find answers? Not in science and only tangentially in philosophy.
I hope you can find consolation in the good years you shared and that you can continue to react to the thoughts and ideas you shared.
Switter, I so appreciate your reflections and questions here on the wonder and mystery of it all . . . and this: "They say religion has no role in this present world, but where else can we find answers? Not in science and only tangentially in philosophy." Yes, I echo you.
I do find consolation in the good years and love we shared. And I thank you for your kind words and care.
May your heart feel my heart when there are no words to offer comfort.
Donna, I feel your heartful presence. Thank you.
Sending you so much love. ❤️🙏❤️
Jenna, thank you. I feel your love.
My Dear Renee, I have thought much about your loss these past weeks. And I have been lost myself in finding words, finding inspiration, finding the pulling at my heart from within — to offer what I can in honoring your sorrow. As I have moved through the rich and sacred weeks of the Hunter’s and Beaver’s moons, I have found this recent cycle of the Cold moon casting a spell defined by contraction and hollowing. My grief has entered an unfamiliar domain that is more about emptiness and keen attention than quick breaths and tearing eyes. Now so much more about stillness and a clear and present watch — mostly of the forest and the sky and my “wonder/wander boy” Buster. So much detail, as if I am in a trance brought about by some ancient enchantment.
I want to share with you a wrinkled and worn and curled copy of an article I discovered six months after B’s death. I have kept it on an old wooden clip board adorned with Greenpeace stickers on the back and a lush, green oak tree on the front. The article is from the ‘Lion’s Roar’ issue July 15, 2017. The title is “Breaking Open in the Bardo” and the author is Pema Khandro Rinpoche. I am continually drawn to reading and rereading this over all these years. I want to share a few passages:
“In bereavement, we come to appreciate at the deepest, most felt level exactly what it means to die while we are still alive. The Tibetan term bardo, or ‘intermediate state,’ is not just a reference to
the afterlife. It also refers more generally to these moments when gaps appear, interrupting the continuity that we otherwise project onto our lives….But to be precise, bardo refers to that state in
which we have lost our old reality and it is no longer available to us.”
“Anyone who has experienced this kind of loss knows what it means to be disrupted, to be entombed between death and rebirth.”
Barbara studied and practiced Buddhism, me not so much. I watched her. Soon after she was buried, I felt compelled to help her, to witness her 45 days of Bardo. So from mid November through early January, I would walk out to her cairn and recited a Native American prayer that we discovered at the Rowe Camp and Conference Center where we first met. The title is “A Winter Prayer” and was taken from Ken Cohen’s book, “Honoring the Medicine.” For those 45 days in sun and cold and sleet and snow and strong westerly winds, I would stand before her and recite the prayer. Each time I would change the pronouns to be hers. Each time I read the line “Snowy owl, you are beautiful” that became her. Every time I started in, my voice would inevitably break while I fought back sobs.
I was driven to make this ‘right by her’ — to make this right for all the pain and suffering she had endured through her long illness. But as the days went on (on one particular day, while sitting with my Buddhist therapist, whose name is also Barbara, told me that my heart is broken open. And it did) this ritual slowly became a mantra for me as well as her. I began to realize I was also standing with my own grieving heart. That I had begun learning and leaning into the path of death and rebirth — the great unknowing that lie in between. My heart was informing me of all the pain and suffering I had endured; that my heart was capable of holding compassion for her as well as myself. I can also say that my heart “…was fleshing out the holy chambers of the eternal.”
Barbara was my ‘Soul friend’ also. She was my ‘Spiritual mother,’ too. She would call me her ‘Mommy/Daddy Boy’. I would call her my ‘Mommy/Daddy Girl’. Maybe the stillness and watchful presence that carry’s me these days is simply where “the hollow yawns silent” those “tender hours” of our loved ones’ eternity.
In peace, in gratitude
Dear Mark, I am stirred in the depths of soul that you have held so tenderly my own grief, waiting for words to come. I thank you for sharing this passage from Pema Khandro Rinpoche about the bardo as mutual, as happening on both sides, bereavement as itself a death that pulls us through a bardo, a disruption here in life, that there's no going back to life as it was . . . the great unknowing. I am touched, too, by your daily bardo ritual with Barbara, reading the Winter Prayer, coming to the passage about the snowy owl. This brought tears. So tender is the heart touched by grief.
I take refuge in the still of night, the deep dark so sweetly cradling the abyss of sorrow.
Please accept my gratitude for your care.
"In the primordial mode of human being—whispering still from deep down inside us—this dead-world view (which is no different than the solid-world view) has not yet come to be."
I am holding on to hope that your words will bring that view into beautiful clear light dear Renée, both for you in your loss and my own recent loss too... though I read this many days late, I will keep a silent vigil for you today, for our dear friends passed into that other space - no less living just, perhaps, differently. My love to you xx
Dear Susie, thank you for sharing in this revelation about the loss of our loved ones, as I hold you, too, with the hope that in your silent vigil, you may be comforted in this understanding. I regret that I have been mostly offline for several weeks and have missed your letter sharing of your recent loss. Holding you with love. Ever grateful for your tender, heartful presence. 🙏❤️
Stunning Beholding on the language of Death. You are held, as you have held. I yearn for your heart to be filled form this hollow. As I know, you know it will. With the natural Gravitas of your own plume. Blessing Renée.
Jacob, thank you for your kind words, which touch me.
Oh Renée, I feel the thud, the skipped heart beat. As you know I too have lost loved ones recently. But I can't say I know how you feel, because each relationship is unique, each connection forged with time and presence. So I will say, love to you during this time. May you be embraced by what you deeply need.
Julie, I have thought of you these past days and your recent losses and your presence to your losses. Thank you for your kind presence, and your love, which I receive with gratitude.
Beautiful.
May you find solace in the path between departed hearts.
Nessa, your words touch a tender chord: "solace in the path between departed hearts." Thank you.
At last, I circle back here to read of your grief, and I think I understand better the beauty I noticed around you today. It was the gravitas of grief. My heart goes out to you for this loss. Dona nobis pacem. 🙏🏼 May your friend continue to love and support you in ways only perceptible to the perceptive.
Tara, thank you for this: The "gravitas of grief" being held in an aura of beauty reveals the peace is granted, already.
These words will linger: "in ways only perceptible to the perceptive."
»Death is beginning and end.«
What a beautiful and moving post, Renée, may your soul mother's spirit rise on wings of your insightful soul. 💗🙏 🕯️
Veronika, thank you. 🙏
This insight -- “We, the human, walked hapless out of everywhere-flickering-aliveness-Eden into a mirage-world where all that appears, appears to have its beginning in the hard rock clay of all that must be dead.” — is such a true telling of our modern mindset, how we have exiled ourselves from our belonging. My condolences to you for the loss of your friend.
"how we have exiled ourselves from our belonging."
Julie, it is exile, isn't it? When I read your work, when I read the work of others so intimate with the natural world, there is a deepening sense that we are coming to our senses, even as there is an equal and opposite reaction pulling the other way. That reactivity is a clear sign that coming to our senses is already "in the field."
Thank you for your condolences, which I receive with gratitude.
Dear Renee--I feel that I never know what to say to someone who is grieving. Maybe because there ARE no words that can fix or heal. But I hope it does help some to know that my heart is with you and maybe that offers yours some little support as you walk through your grief. With tenderness and love...
Brenda, thank you. It is true that grief is a wordless place; the greatest blessing and tenderness is the heartful presence you offer, which I receive in thanksgiving.
So sorry for your loss, Renee.
Cathy, thank you.