The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief
When feelings of shame arise, we pull back from the world, avoiding contact that could cause or risk exposure.
Francis Weller • The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief
Bringing soul back to the world means perceiving the world through a deepened imagination, one that is capable of experiencing our intimacy with the surrounding world of finches and dragonflies, creeks and woodlands, neighborhoods and friends.
Francis Weller • The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief
We are a part of naturenot separate
omissions of attention and care. In those moments when we needed to be soothed or held, the touch often didn’t come, or what was offered was a partial and distracted attention. What we were granted was too thin and didn’t provide us with enough substance to calm the effect of the experience we were having.
Francis Weller • The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief
The participants’ bodies are giddy with joy—a wild alchemy of sorrow and joy, played out once again, as it always has been, in the container of sacred ritual.
Francis Weller • The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief
We long to feel cosmically significant, that it matters that we are here and that we make a difference.
Francis Weller • The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief
We are stripped of excess and revealed as human in our times of grief. Grief ripens us, pulls up from the depths of our souls what is most authentic in our beings. In truth, without some familiarity with sorrow, we do not mature as men and women. It is the broken heart, the part that knows sorrow, that is capable of genuine love.
Francis Weller • The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief
It takes “the outrageous courage of the bodhi heart,” as Pema Chödrön calls it.6 It takes outrageous courage to face outrageous loss. This is precisely what we are being called to do. Any loss, whether deeply personal or one of those that swirl around us in the wider world, calls us to fullheartedness, for that is the meaning of courage. To honor
... See moreFrancis Weller • The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief
No one escapes suffering in this life. None of us is exempt from loss, pain, illness, and death. How is it that we have so little understanding of these essential experiences?
Francis Weller • The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief
They intuitively knew that the greater rhythm of relations hinged upon respect, reciprocity, and restraint, that is, good manners.