Noah Gundersen – Oh Death
February 7, 2024
Tag: grief
Mother Death
January 17, 2022
Loving death
With all of its requisite pains,
Has come
To each of us in its own way
Each secret strand is strange to the others
Though they flow from the same spring
Silent and dark, barren and daring
You always feel
It is your fault:
“What did I do to deserve this?
“There must have been something.”
The Foundational Spiritual Practice Of Surrender
January 23, 2019
One more spiritual practice with which to reckon is the practice of surrender. This may be the most far-reaching and sophisticated part of the spiritual life. It appears there are a million ways we can practice surrender. We can probably be practicing it at all times in all circumstances. Surrender is allowing ourselves to be subject to and even overwhelmed at times by what is happening to us, without wrestling to assert our will on others and our environment. We may think of surrender as “letting go,” letting our guard down, being receptive or just no longer believing in and relying on our own power. It also may be the most difficult of the spiritual exercises. It goes against our normal, natural instincts to stand up for ourselves, fight for our own rights and win.
Ben Howard – Everything
October 31, 2016
What a track for a fall day!
Every kingdom must one day come to an end.
Growth and Death
August 4, 2016
It seems like life is equal parts death and growth. You cannot have one without the other – unbounded growth not pruned back by a little death will become unruly and unmanageable. At the same time, you will not always be moving backwards (experiencing death and loss). There will be a time to burst forth in growth. Don’t be afraid of either. You should learn to make friends with your loss and pain because they have so much to teach you. What has taught you more than your pain? At the same time, do not be wary of growth and success. You should be wise enough to realize you can lose at any time, but you do not need to live in fear of these losses or when they will reemerge. The losses only serve to shed what is not needed and let you return to a phase of growth and thriving. It is all the gift of life.
Grief Support
January 28, 2016
Supporting someone in grief is probably more about what you don’t say than what you do say. This can be a little off-putting and frustrating because we always want to be so helpful. We ask what we can do because there is usually not much we can do and we know that. We also ask what we can do because one of our greatest impulses when someone is in pain is to comfort them. Comforting someone when they are grieving, though, is often preventing them from going through a natural process through which they need to go. That is why they naturally resist you when you try to comfort them. They need to go through their process. It is counterintuitive not to comfort someone when they are in grief, but that is the very thing they need and may want you to do. They do need you to be there alongside them, but don’t try to do the work for them or interrupt them as they do it. That is the hardest thing – to just be with someone when they are in such pain, but if you can force yourself to do it, you will help.
Organization
March 18, 2015
As relational beings, we are in relationship to everyone and everything around us. That means we get “organized” in a certain way – in our culture, in our family (of course), in our beliefs and in the roles we play with those around us. We don’t even notice how we are organized really until something changes or is taken away. When the thing that organized you is taken out from under you, you may have a feeling of disorientation or even grief. You will soon reorganize yourself, but for the time being, there is usually some protest – even if the thing that was taken from you was the thing that was killing you.