What Grief Wants, Episode 366
Some words about grief, and about grief's intelligence, and what it might be here to teach us both when it arrives in full force and when we 'catch a glimpse of it' in the moments with those we most cherish and love. How might grief - and its inevitability - open us to receive the life we are in the midst of right now, and how might it move us to take care of what and who we care about the most?
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
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Here’s our source for this week:
What Grief Wants
I only want one thing.
I want you to pay attention.
I want you to look in her eyes, now,
While there is time, while there is
Still breath, while the magnolias unfold
Into flower, quietly, in the garden.
I want you to feel, all the way through,
What it is like as she looks back at you,
While she still can, while you are here to
Receive, to be seen.
I will be ready to hold you, flood you,
Carry you, when all the gazing is done.
I want you to receive your life,
While there is life to receive.
We will wail together about its loss
In good time.
But now is not the time for that.
It is not the time for turning away,
For trying to avoid anything,
For trying not to feel.
There will be a time when you have
No choice but to be turned away.
But that time is not now.
I want you to feel what it is like to
Release your desperate grasp around
What you could never hold onto anyway.
To delight in the living flow with its
Everyday beginning and its always endings.
I want you to feel the shining aliveness of
Everything you will lose
While it is still here.
Justin Wise
justinwise.co.uk
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash