Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott,
Up on Dartmoor on a wonderful evening.
This is my perfect kind of weather.
Blue skies,
A little bit of cloud,
A cool,
Cool easterly wind that keeps the temperature down.
I'm actually sheltering in a thicket of gorse bushes.
This is often where I shelter.
The landscape here on Dartmoor is wide open,
So there's very little shelter.
Either stone walls or gorse bushes seem to be the place I often go to keep out of the wind and that's where I am today,
Amidst the gorse bushes with their dark green thorns and their bright yellow flowers.
And today's reflection is about grief and it's been prompted by a funeral that I attended today.
The funeral was of somebody I didn't actually know,
But I knew the lady whose sister had died and I wanted to support my friend.
So my friend's sister had died and I went to support her at this funeral.
And it had me thinking about grief and I guess there are three things that have caused me to reflect on grief and I'm only going to refer to grief as I see it and my experience of it.
So please don't think I'm speaking on your behalf.
I think grief is a very personal thing.
But see if any of this resonates for you.
I kind of see grief in three ways.
Firstly,
I see it as a form of a blessing.
Secondly,
As a form of love.
And thirdly,
As a gift.
And I just want to take you through these reflections.
So first of all,
Grief is a Well,
With me in my world,
It's a blessing because the grief that I feel for my dad,
For my dog,
For my aunts that have died,
For the loss of my mum to dementia,
She's slowly declining.
The grief that I feel in all of these situations is a blessing in so much as it's a grief of reminding me of something that I cherish,
Or someone that I've cherished,
Or my pet dog that I cherished and loved and adored.
And so grief is a blessing because it reminds me of the intense love and blessing I feel in experiencing those people or animals in my life.
So for me,
Grief is a blessing.
And secondly,
I see it as love.
Grief is love.
Grief,
For me,
Is love in motion.
It's a form of love that sort of walks hand in hand with sadness.
But actually,
Ultimately,
The grief that I'm reflecting on in my life is love taking shape in a different form.
So I no longer have someone or something that I can look at in the physical realm and see them as they once were.
Instead,
I feel like my love is still expressed,
But it's without that person or that animal here still.
But it is still a form of love.
So whereas before,
I guess I kind of see it like a reflection.
When somebody was physically in this realm,
I loved them and love reflected back to me.
Now I still feel that love,
But it's not reflected back in the same way.
But it is still love.
So grief,
For me,
Is a form of love.
And finally,
Grief,
For me,
Is a gift.
And it's a gift because it has me contemplate the greatest mystery of all.
And in contemplating this greatest mystery of all,
I fall back into the most nourishing spiritual reflections that I ever have.
Because ultimately,
Grief reminds me that we come from nothing,
From the formless,
And we fall back into the formless,
All of us,
No exceptions.
And it reminds me of this benign,
Wise,
Compassionate,
Loving,
Formless energy from which we all emerge and take shape.
And for me,
Reflecting on this energy,
This loving presence,
This divine energy,
That for me is the greatest of gifts I could hope for.
So for me,
Grief is a blessing.
It's a form of love.
And it is a gift.
And I'd love to know what resonates for you as you reflect on what grief means for you.
Don't forget to join me again tomorrow for another Five Minutes in Nature.
I look forward to connecting with you then.
