Grieving to Love

Recently, I had a chance to spend some time away from my day-to-day environment and take some serious time for reflection. During these days spent in a remote part of the Catskill Mountains, I was able to use a journal to let me capture my thoughts and feelings as they came to me in the quiet of the mountain setting. I was focused on some heavy topics and when I read the words I had written, I tried to capture their essence in poems. Why, I do not know. As I wrote in a previous posting, I have not written a poem in over forty-five years and although I do enjoy reading, poetry is not a format that attracts me.

There is good and bad in almost every aspect of living. Most of us spend our life time trying to sort the good from the bad and aspire toward the good and agonize when we gravitate to the bad. Most religious teaching we have experienced tend to emphasize the dichotomy between good and evil choices. This is certainly true for me. I want blue skies and no rain, want peace with no war, joy without grief. With lots of help, my time in the mountains has opened me to accept that there are no blue skies full of flowers and trees without the nourishment of rain. In fact the rains provide a chance for me to slow down and rescue myself from my busyness. Can I truly expect to know joy without having faced the agony of grief?

Grieving To Love

Near and far, my fears they lie,

Yet I do escape them bye and bye.

It is not the fear that is the beast.

It is the grief on which fear feasts.

The grief in me keeps sinking deep,

It reaches down, right through my feet.

Grief winds around my every bone,

Chills my flesh, it eats my soul.

Grief fills my mind with blackest ink.

It chokes all joy, my will to think.

I am transfixed afraid to move.

Grief, oh grief what more to prove?

How do I face this grief so bold?

Where do I turn, whom do I hold?

Easy say some, "To Jesus, brother."

But where was I when He did suffer?

Did I help Job in all his sorrows?

Did I save Joseph in the burrow?

Did I tell Jonah, I will join you?

I judge I need to earn my rescue.

I am like Adam who had all for nothing,

But wanted more by his own working?

Grief has me blinded, my pride kicks in

I become the "god", my original sin.

At last I know my grief is real.

It is with me from head to heel.

My grief is now a tomb of stone,

Show me the way, let me atone.

I fear each thought, each pulse, each pore

Will urge my grief to travel more,

Reach through the bone into the marrow,

Make me regret each new tomorrow.

There's nothing left but to embrace it,

Let grief itself become the prophet,

Let its hard lesson to me be

The guiding light to set me free.