A heart that has been ripened by grief knows the depths of love. It is sensitive to the suffering of others and carries the wisdom of understanding and care.
Grief isn’t something that happens to you; it is something that you do. And because it is something that you do, you can also choose not to do it. You may choose not to answer when Grief arrives at your door. You may resist and make your heart hard and small because it feels safer to stay inside your bunker of security. But Grief longs for something much bigger inside you. It yearns for you not to shrink in its presence but to meet it on the land where it walks—all of its hills and valleys.
Grief walks in the territory of Soul, and Soul territory is wild and undomesticated. This kind of feral landscape is unfamiliar to our straight lined and sterile modern culture. Therefore, it requires curiosity and discipline to become skilled in all of Soul’s subtle and subversive ways.
There is no pathway through grief. Instead, grief weds our hearts to time and place and draws us down to the ground. It invites us to radically reimagine who we are. When grief enters your house, there is no going back to “the way things were.” And when you choose to take up the mantle of grief, you become a new person. Ultimately, when you carry the ripened fruit of grief in your hands, you owe a responsibility to the piece of earth that gave you this gift.
How will you proceed with the wisdom you’ve gleaned from your journey? To whom will you share this wisdom? Our world is suffering, and we long to hear your story and be blessed by your gifts.
