A heavy one is on the docket for today,
Friends,
And maybe you've guessed it,
But yes,
Our element of discussion today is going to be about the element of grief.
And this discussion might surprise you a little bit because we are going to discuss and reflect upon this construct of grief in probably ways that many often do not think of.
Before we get there,
Thank you,
Good morning,
Good afternoon,
And good evening,
Friends.
Whenever you are watching this and listening to this,
Thank you for being here and I hope all is well.
So we are in the thick of the holiday season for those that are celebrating in different parts of the country.
So I hope you and yours are doing well.
This is a heavy one today,
Folks,
But it also is arguably the most profound one we might talk about.
We have all come face to face with this emotion and process of grief,
And it may not be in the ways that we often,
Our brains immediately jump to.
This idea of losing a loved one,
A family member,
A friend,
A sibling,
A beloved fur baby family member.
If none of those things have happened to you,
You may still have come face to face with how you respond to this element of grief.
Because if you have ever lost a job,
You have grieved that loss.
If you have ever gone to a doctor or a medical provider and they said to you,
Hey,
Look,
This or that is going on with one of your joints or a ligament.
And so it is a little bit more serious than we thought.
So we will have to do X,
Y,
And Z type of treatment,
And you will no longer be able to do X,
Y,
And Z type of lifestyle activity.
You may not have looked at it that way,
But that is grieving the loss of what once was.
Regardless of the subject matter that is either being taken away or no longer in your life for whatever catalyst caused that to happen,
If there was once something that was in your life that either you were doing or the presence of,
And then boom,
Shift to now my life looks like this and it no longer has X,
Y,
And Z in it,
That in itself is a form of grief.
And how do we respond to the loss of something that once was?
So this could be a new form of mindset and viewing the element of grief in your life.
And if it is new,
Congratulations,
Welcome.
You are embracing the foreign.
You are stepping into a little bit of the unknown.
I congratulate you on having this courage to listen to this,
Internalize it,
And hopefully go on this journey for yourself as far as let me reflect upon some of the situations that maybe I didn't realize I was actually grieving for.
In this type of context,
We will then get into our morning devotion and reading for the element of grief,
And then we will dive into the evening reading.
For this one,
Since grief is such a deeply intrinsic experience,
I am going to also include the intention statement before we dive into the readings.
That way you can have that.
You can come back to this video,
Listen to it.
We will start off with the morning devotion intention to understand and breathe through sorrow and grief as it inhabits my soul,
Body,
And existence.
A new day dawns.
Darkness remains for me.
The weight on my soul is black,
Its mass I must endure.
Despite the light,
The hours before me are grim.
I walk this journey alone.
No one hears my silent scream.
When our paths diverge,
I became someone else.
Whose eyes are these?
Whose heart is this?
Help me to know this reconfigured soul.
Help me to navigate this new path.
I am fragile.
My breath is shallow.
And yet,
Despite it all,
I persist.
My heart still beats.
In the distance,
An ember burns.
I will walk toward this spark.
Faint.
Weak.
Dim.
I reach for this sign.
Could it be you?
Evening devotion intention to appreciate that another day has passed and I remain.
I have lived through a day of pain and sorrow and can now lay down my burden for a few earthly hours.
I welcome the dark of night and the silence of sleep.
May they offer me refuge from the light and comfort from the effort of life.
During this time of rest,
I ask for healing.
May my dreams be a respite from the long hours of loneliness.
Help me to remember that our earthly existence is but a blink in the eye of eternity.
I give thanks for the souls that I have encountered even for a short time.
I give thanks for my time with you.
I give thanks for the tender and precious memories.
While it's difficult to appreciate life in the face of such imaginable pain,
I remain grateful for this experience even in the face of suffering.
Help me to keep my heart open,
My spirit pure,
My soul yielding.
Allow the love I still hold close to radiate through me in dreams and be with me when I wake.
Help me to breathe through the pain and let it transform me into a new instrument of this earth.
Thank you,
Friends,
Local and global souls all around.
Thank you for being here and doing the hard work.
We will reconnect again very soon,
And until then,
Breathe easy,
Friends.
