HUG Corner – Thought for the Week 5/22/17

From “Healing After Loss” Martha Whitmore Hickman

“By discovering my own inwardness I am in communion with all other human beings, with nature and beauty and the goodness of all that is.“

-Maria Boulding

In our grief, sometimes we feel so alone, as though fate has singled us out for this misfortune and we have no companions, no one whose experience of the world even touches ours.

While our situation is in some ways unique – as unique as the person we have lost — perhaps we can find comfort in realizing how profoundly we are a part of the great human story. And not only the human story. For life in all its forms is a cycle of birth, living, death, rebirth. Even the mountains rise up, are eroded flat, and rise up again.

In contemplative silence we can sense communion with all people, and with trees, flowers, wind, & sky; I remember how, in the anguished months after my daughter died, I would step out into my backyard and commune with the trees— laying my hands against the bark. Sometimes (when I was sure no one was looking!) I put my arms around a favorite tree, and rested against it, as though the common source of life that fed us both would bring me strength and stability.

I am a part of all that is. The great mystery of creation holds me at its heart as it holds my lost love. In this we are together.