Live each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit and resign yourself to the influence of each — be blown on by all the winds. (Thoreau)
As autumn deepens into winter the light gives way to darkness, bringing with it coldness and barrenness, and it is easy to feel lost and alone. Soon the trees will be bare from the ravages of cold. The crystal stillness of snow, intricate frost designs that glitter in the sunlight on a winter window, the steely blue of a winter’s early dusk . . . all remind us of the incredible beauty that is present in the cold and barren times. But it is still cold. Important changes are occurring deep underground and in the depths of the soul, but unaware of that necessary inner process, we can feel dead inside, and as if life is meaningless. Our experience can be one of grief, loss, loneliness, and even despair.
The morning following the unexpected death of my husband, bewildered and in shock, I opened my journal to find a quotation that I wanted to be read in his eulogy, and the first thing my eyes fell upon was the following quote from Joseph Campbell: We must be willing to release the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
That began a long journey through grief that lasted years. Through all the seasons of those years, it was always winter. One of the few things that gave me some solace and kept me clinging to life was that incredible beauty that I mentioned earlier. That, the love of friends, and writings and images from others who had walked this path ahead of me . . .
The quotations that I offer to you were ones that kept me going through that time. If and when it is given to you to walk the short days and long nights of the winter of grief, perhaps they will comfort you as well. I offer them to you with so much love, and the awareness of how hard this part of the journey is, but also with the faith that there is a way through.
I give you this one thought to keep: I am with you still — I do not sleep. I am a thousand winds that blow. I am the diamond glints on snow. I am the sunlight on ripened grain, I am the gentle autumn rain. When you awaken in the morning’s hush, I am the swift uplifting rush of quiet birds in circled flight. I am the soft stars that shine at night. So do not think of me as gone . . I am with you still — in each new dawn. (Native American prayer)
Sorrow, like the river, must be given vent lest it erode its bank.
Death brings you a choice. It can lead you to the edge of the abyss. Or you can build a bridge that will span the chasm.
Everything flows. You can never step twice into the same river.
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
. . . the way past the pain is to go all the way through it.
Don’t pass so quickly over the Present. Before you can determine what will be, it is necessary to determine what is now. (Haydon)
Know you are where you are not by accident but by the design of your Creator for your development, or for the development of those around you. (Bahan)
We have to be whatever we are at any given time in our lives, even when we are wounded. We have to live that moment on the way to other moments. (Neeld)
The Lord is close to the broken-hearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. (Psalms)
To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heavens. A time to be born and a time to die . . . (Ecclesiastes)
The only kind of courage that matters is the kind that gets you from one moment to the next.
How strange to think that great pain may be impermanent. Something in us all seems to want to carve it into granite, as if only this would do honor to its terrible significance. But even pain is blessed with impermanence. (Remen)
Perhaps before we live our lives, we choose our earthly lessons . . . and once we’re here, it is really our decision whether we will or will not honor our soul’s journey with as much grace as possible . . .
Seek only to keep growing. Accept gratefully whatever the earth gives. If you live with its rhythms, you will learn to bend. There are marks on you, evidence of brokenness and age; do not think of them as scars: they make you more beautiful. (Smith)
Part of getting over it is knowing you will never get over it. (Finger)
Truly it is in the darkness that one finds the Light, so when we are in sorrow, then this Light is nearest to all of us. (Eckhart)
Sometimes I go about pitying myself, And all the time I am being carried by great winds across the sky. (anonymous Chippawa fragment)
Life breaks everyone . . . but some grow stronger at the broken part. (Hemingway)
. . . I learned that life knew best, that it was wise, and would lift me up and carry me, whether I wanted to or not — in the face of this reality, all I could do was respond with gratitude, praise, and reverence for whatever life brought — I learned that this was healing.
Only the heart that has walked the knife edge of grief, fear, and suffering can see through the fiction of the pitifully limited “me” invented by the ego — only when suffering ceases to be an abstract concept do we act to free ourselves and others. The twisted pine clinging to its rock above the sea, buffeted and bent by the wind, has a more enduring strength than the beautiful rose grown in a sheltered garden. Compassion is the fruit grown in the grisly groves of the haunted charnel grounds; it cannot be found in the pleasure gardens of the gods. (from Parabola)
We turn to God for help when our foundations are shaking, only to learn that it is God who is shaking them.
Out of every fresh cut springs new growth. (Karon)
You have no plans for yourself. Well, that is of no consequence, as God most certainly has. You have merely to wait and pray until they are revealed to you. (Goudge)
Tears are a river that take you somewhere. Tears lift your boat off the rocks, off dry ground, carrying it down-river to someplace new, someplace better. (Estes)
Death is nothing at all. I have only slipped away into the next room . . . I am I, and you are you. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. Call me by my old familiar name, speak to me and about me in the same easy (or maybe not always so easy) way you always used. Put no difference in your tone . . . . wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me, still pray for me. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without effect, without the ghost of a shadow on it. Life means all that it ever meant . . . it is the same as it ever was. There is absolutely unbroken continuity. Do not feel that I should be out of mind because I am out of sight. I am waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near just around the corner. All is well.
These words are dedicated with deep caring to all those who are in loss, but especially to Joyce and Marilyn. Be at peace, my friends.
(Many of the above quotes were scribbled on scraps of paper before being transferred to my journal, and for many, I am unable to give appropriate credit. This is done with my sincerest apologies; these words meant a great deal to me, and I am so very grateful that others wrote them to show the rest of us the way, to shine the light a bit further down the path when we were in darkness.)