Grieving For a Lost World

WHEN YOU MEET SOMEONE DEEP IN GRIEF

Slip off your needs

and set them by the door.

Enter barefoot

this darkened chapel.

hollowed by loss

hallowed by sorrow

Its grey stone

Walls and floor

You, congregation

of one

are here to listen

not to sing

Kneel in the back pew

Make no sound

Let the candles

Speak.

Patricia McKernon Runkle

“We need to learn once again how to walk and breathe in a sacred universe, to feel this heartbeat of life. Hearing its presence speak to us, we feel this great bond of life that supports and nourishes us all. Today’s world may still at times make us feel lonely, but we can then remember what every animal, every insect, every plant knows — and only we have forgotten: the living sacred whole. — Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

We are still in denial at our time of loss that the world we have known is disappearing. We calmly wait, knowing it will come back just as it was, or else we anxiously try to force it back into its old clothes that…