Advent: In a Dark Time the Eyes Begin to See

Twice a week I sit in shared meditation, in the dark, with friends. The silence is lit by three simple candles. One of the things I love about the time, early in the morning, is that during the weeks of November and December we begin in darkness, as the silence ends we remain in the dark and then as we share where we are personally at spiritually the sun rises and the day begins. At the end of the hour our space is fully lit by sunlit. I love this time and space as we move from darkness, to half-light, to full light. It is a gentle transition from one spiritual space into another, without physically moving.

There is another time in the week when I do something similar, only it ends very differently. There is not the same transition from darkness into light. As the time ends the lights are switched on and I find the transition from darkness to light, a little shocking. There is no in-between space as we move suddenly from darkness into bright, shocking neon light.

We are approaching the darkest time of the year as we head towards the Winter Solstice, closely followed by the coming of the light that is Christmas. Today is Advent Sunday, the day that marks the beginning of the days leading to the coming of the new light, that is Christmas.

Advent is a time for waiting, a time of preparation. A time set aside to wait for the “coming” of Love in human form symbolised in the birth of the Christ child. A promise of what love can become if we let it grow and nurture in our hearts and lives. For every new life is the gift of promise and possibility. A gift of possibility that can be reborn in each of our lives if we allow it to be.

Advent is a season of preparation and it cannot be rushed. It requires patience. We cannot wish the days away, we cannot wish the winter away. We have to wait patiently, but not passively. We have to adjust ourselves to the coming light. If it was to come all at once, it would be too much for us. Let us not wish away the darkness of winter and look forward too desperately to the future, for what is yet to come. Let us adjust to the limited light we have been given, just enough to take the next step.

We impatient people, we who live by neon light and instant gratification do not like the dark and certainly know little about patience, about waiting. If you don’t believe me just watch yourself the next time your computer freezes when you’re trying to watch a clip on YouTube. We want it all and we want it now. We also want it all in bright lights, with bells on. We certainly don’t want to have to go through the hardships to take us there.

Yes Advent is about the coming of the light, but not something sudden and dazzling, more a journey from darkness into natural light. This is the classic spiritual journey. This is the beauty of the holy month of December. I experience this powerfully in that dark silky silence of early morning, when the frosty winds make all moan. I revere this dark, cold, humbling time that leads to the coming of the light. I have noticed these last few years that if I don’t rush and push my way through this time, If I allow myself to savour it, something shifts deep within me if I allow myself to truly embrace the darkness. Somewhere between Solstice and New Year, probably on Christmas Day, some new light comes into my vision, but not suddenly. Like most good things in life, slowly it rises. It is coming. This is Advent, the coming of the new light. If we allow it to it will work its magic and something new will grow within each and every one of us.

We are afraid of the dark though aren’t we. We want to rush through these weeks and force the light, we people born in neon times. We impatient and expectant folk. The truth is though that in order for us to truly appreciate the light we must first know the dark. Brings to mind those beautiful words from Isaiah chapter 9 verse 2 “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness-on them light shines.”

Now of course the very same light shines on us all, it’s just that we don’t always notice it. We only really notice it when we are in the deep darkness. I saw a beautiful example of this during the last singing meditation I experienced. I always light a hundred candles as we sit together in the dark. The candles are meant to light what we are engaging in, to allow those present to read the words we sing around. Now usually I leave the kitchen door open which adds a little artificial light. I now realise how much this has been a mistake. Last week I didn’t and do you know what the room seemed even more illuminated. The candles burned ever more brightly in the darkened room. The light shone even more brightly on we that were singing and sharing silence in deep, deep darkness.

We need to honour the darkness in order for us to truly rejoice in the light, when the moment of magic comes.

But first we must know the dark, we must learn the patience of sitting in the dark. This brings to mind that beautiful short poem “Know the dark” by Wendell Berry

“To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.”

But we don’t want to know the dark, we want to walk in the light. Often we spiritually inclined do not want to look at the darkness, we only want the light. Who really wants to take the time to look at the darkness within ourselves and within our world? The truth is of course that if you refuse to look at the dark, to shine a little light on it, is to truly live in the dark; this is a life without joy, this is not truly living in life. We need to bear witness to all life, to hold life with a steady gaze, to live spiritually alive.

In order to live spiritually alive we need to see life in its fullness. We need to practice holding an unwavering gaze in the dark to not look away or to flush it out with neon light, one that is far too bright.

You see as Roethke said: “In a dark time, the eye begins to see.”

I am learning to surrender to a more natural light, to the dark. I am learning to allow my eyes to adjust to the whole of reality. I need to do so to truly embrace the beauty of the dark. This includes the lingering darkness within myself that leads me to still reject and to turn away from some aspects of life.

I am slowly learning to follow those words of Wendell Berry

"To go in the dark with a light is to know the light. To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight, and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings, and is travelled by dark feet and dark wings"

I am learning the lessons of the darkness and during these Advent days I will not be waiting passively for the coming of the light. Instead I will appreciate these dark days, shed some gentle light on the dark places within myself, my life and this our shared world, so that when the moment of magic comes I can become a child of the light and become a light for others. This is what we are here waiting for. To be a light to others who may be struggling in their own dark times. We can light the way. This brings to mind the following beautiful words by Mary Oliver “The Buddha’s last Instructions”

The Buddha’s Last Instruction
by Mary Oliver

“Make of yourself a light”
said the Buddha,
before he died.
I think of this every morning
as the east begins
to tear off its many clouds
of darkness, to send up the first
signal—a white fan
streaked with pink and violet,
even green.
An old man, he lay down
between two sala trees,
and he might have said anything,
knowing it was his final hour.
The light burns upward,
it thickens and settles over the fields.
Around him, the villagers gathered
and stretched forward to listen.
Even before the sun itself
hangs, disattached, in the blue air,
I am touched everywhere
by its ocean of yellow waves.
No doubt he thought of everything
that had happened in his difficult life.
And then I feel the sun itself
as it blazes over the hills,
like a million flowers on fire—
clearly I’m not needed,
yet I feel myself turning
into something of inexplicable value.
Slowly, beneath the branches,
he raised his head.
He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.

So let’s prepare ourselves for the moment of magic yet to come. Let’s nurture the love within us and prepare to give birth to it in lives. Let’s not wish these dark cold days away. There is a beautiful gift in them if we allow ourselves to fully experience them. We need to experience each and every sensation of this season. We need to not fear the dark, we need to know it and fully embrace it. And when the time comes to once again give birth to the new light.

Amen

Inbetween Days: Liminal Space

So here we stand on the hinge of another year. The winter solstice has passed, Christmas has been and gone and we find ourselves in those in-between days standing at the threshold of a new year. Yes the day light hours will increase over the coming weeks but still we must face winter. January and February can be difficult as we feel stuck in the cold on these dark winter evenings.

Winter is not an easy time, so many of us want it over as soon as possible. We want spring and the new birth and life that it brings, but that is not the way to live and we know it. To live, always holding on to the spring yet to come, is to fail to fully experience what is present now. There is such richness in the dark cold of winter and we need to feel it and allow our eyes to adjust to the darkness. There is a beautiful wonder about winter that we would do well to embrace. For it is in this cold stillness that change can begin to form and grow.

There is a beauty in those in between days as we stand on the threshold of something new, in that space. As we stand together between the worlds in the changing of the light.

The truth is though that we are always standing at thresholds, at times of change. Each beginning is actually the end of something and each ending is the beginning of something new and what stands in between is threshold.

Over the last few months I have kept on hearing a phrase that I was not really consciously aware of before; it is phrase that has kept on knocking on the window of my consciousness all this year, staring right into my soul. The phrase is “Liminal Space”. Now what on earth does it mean? You may well be asking. Well “Liminal Space” is a threshold, a space between things.

The word “Liminal” comes from the Latin “limens”, meaning “a threshold.” A threshold is a doorway or the entrance, it is a place or point of entering or beginning. In psychology the term “Limen” means the point at which a stimulus is of sufficient intensity to begin to produce an effect.

So “Liminal Space” is that moment when something changes from one state to another. Such as the dawn of each day, when the morning sun rises high in the sky bringing daylight. Or at dusk, when the evening sun sinks into the horizon bringing nightfall.

“Liminal Space” is that moment when we move either into or out of a deep fog, whether physical or one made from our own minds. Sometimes in that fog we find a complete stillness and in that stillness a new truth can be revealed. As we do we come out of the fog once again and step into a new clear light. Similar to those moments when we awaken from a deep sleep, when we are not yet fully awake but no longer asleep. And at the other end of the day that state when we move from being fully awake and conscious into deep sleep. Then there are those moments of life’s transitions, between life and death itself. The following reflection by Victoria Safford, describes this beautifully.

“In Between” by Victoria Safford

"One afternoon some time ago I brought my little baby out to visit a very, very old neighbour who was dying that year, quietly and gracefully, in her gracious home. We were having a little birthday party for her, with sherry and cake and a few old friends gathered round her bed. To free a hand to cut the cake, I put my baby down right on the bed, right up on the pillow - and there was a sudden hush in the room, for we were caught off guard, beholding.

It was a startling sight. There is the late afternoon light were two people side by side, two human merely beings. Neither one could walk, neither one could speak, not in language you could understand, both utterly dependent on the rest of us bustling around, masquerading as immortals. There they were: a plump one, apple-cheeked, a cherry tomato of a babe, smiling; and a silver-thin one, hallow-eyes, translucent, shining, smiling. We revellers were hushed because we clearly saw that these were dancers on the very edge of things. These two were closer to the threshold, the edge of the great mystery, than any of us had been for a long time or would be for a while. Living, breathing, smiling they were, but each with one foot and who knows how much consciousness firmly planted on the other side, whatever that is, the starry darkness from whence we come and whither will we go, in time. Fresh from birth, nigh unto death, bright – eyed, they were bookends there, mirrors of each other. Radiant.

Cake in hand, and napkins, knife, glasses, a crystal carafe a century old, we paused there on the thresholds of our own momentary lives. Then, “What shall we sing?” said someone, to the silence, to the sunlight on the covers, to the stars. It was the only question, then, as now, years later. What on earth shall we sing?"

“Liminal Spaces” are “Thin Places” occurring on boundaries between things. This brings to mind a beautiful song by Justin Sullivan. Please listen to a version of it here...

“Liminal Space” is a boundary. Think of fences, walls and trees between property. It is the edge between things. Such as water and land, a valley or a hill. When I think of where I come from in West Yorkshire, such boundaries are everywhere in those hills and valleys of green and grey. Another example is in the change of the shape of the land, just look around you then next time you are out and about where you live . Another example is the East Coast of Yorkshire , around Filey and Flamborough Head where the cliffs are eroding and falling away into the North Sea. It is amazing to stand there sometimes and stare out into the sea watching the waves hitting and then retreating from the coast . It is that moment of contact, just before the sea withdraws once again that is a kind of “Liminal Space”.

“Liminal Space” is not only physical in nature though. It is that moment, which may last a lifetime, that lies between the known and the unknown. It is a moment of transition a space of heightened intensity when we cross the threshold of what we think we know. That moment of abandon when things change and are never quite the same again. Moments that can change us forever. Moments that change everything. We all have them, it’s just that too often we are not fully awake to them. We all of us stand in that space, between the changing of the light. Between every sunrise and every sunset a whole new world of possibility is born.

Now sometimes we enter such times, “Liminal Space”, willingly, as a result of a decision to try something new. But there are also others times when we just drift into them a bit like driving into a fog on our journeys somewhere, not knowing when the fog will clear. Such moments are filled with uncertainty, they are times of transition we did not ask for at all. These can be confusing times and such confusion can cause fear and anxiety. We humans do not like uncertainty, we like to know the ground that we stand on is solid and secure. We want the path to be clear, we want our goals to be certain, we want to rush through the fog and enter once more into the light as soon as possible. This is why so many of us don’t like the cold and darkness of winter, spring is so much more appealing, but we cannot have the joy of spring without life’s winter. We want certainty, we want firmness now!!! This though is not realistic, this is not life.

The French Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin captured this perfectly when he wrote: “We are quite naturally impatient in everything. To reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability – And that it may take a very long time.” He urged us to be patient, to embrace this time of uncertainty, to allow it to unfold naturally as we evolve into what we are meant to become. The key it would seem is to be open and to experience everything, because everything matters you know, even the experiences we don’t want to feel. We need to experience the thresholds, so as to learn all that they offer. To stand between the worlds in the changing of light. To pass through the “Liminal Space” and become all that we were born to be. Born again and again and again in each moment of life.

This year has been one of great change for me. This year has been one when I have come out of the mist of threshold into something new. New dawns have emerged and new beginnings have arisen. New truths and experiences have come to me. My life has changed on so many levels. In every sense. There has been the obvious physical change as I have lost over a third of my body mass. That said there have been other changes too in terms of my understanding of life and it’s meaning to me. These changes have been mental, emotional, spiritual as well as the physical one.

My understanding of my own spiritual faith has opened and awakened to new levels too. There has been one phrase that comes from “The Sermon on the Mount”, from Matthew’s Gospel, that has been taking shape in the soul of me all year long. The phrase is “You are the light of the world”. That this is the real message that was brought to the world 2.000 years ago and that it is our task to bring this to life in our mortal lives. That it is our task to incarnate this love in our world. That we are responsible for this our world. That we are the ones that our world has been waiting for. It is up to us you know, it’s up to us to bring this love alive.

Last year as I stood on the threshold of the year I did not know what was to come. None of us did, did we? This year we all stand at a new threshold uncertain of what is to come. As we stand in the coldest darkest days. Let’s not rush through these in between days and wish them away. Let’s instead appreciate this “Liminal Space” for what it is and when we are ready, let’s step into the days of the new beginnings and truly give birth to the love that is within us all.

I will end with this beautiful meditative piece by Kath R Walker...Best wishes for the days ahead and may you experience all that lies inbetween...

“In Between” by Kate R Walker

In between, liminal, that space where we wait.
Between moments; events, results, action, no action.
To stand on the threshold, waiting for something to end,
And something new to arrive, a pause in the rumble of time.
Awareness claims us, alert, a shadow of something different.

In between invitation and acceptance.
In between symptom and diagnosis.
In between send and receipt of inquiry and question.
In between love given and love received.

Liminality, a letting go, entering into confusion,
ambiguity and disorientation.
A ritual begun, pause … look back at what once was,
Look forward into what becomes.
Identity sheds a layer, reaches into something uncomfortable to wear.

In between lighting of the match and the kindling of oil.
In between choosing of text and the reading of words.
In between voices and notes carried through the air into ears to hear.
In between creation thrusts ever forward.

Social hierarchies may disassemble and structures may fall.
Communities may revolt or tempt trust.
Tradition may falter or creativity crashes forward.
Leaders may step down or take charge.
The people may choose or refuse.

In between, storm predicted, the horizon beacons.
In between, theology of process reminds us to step back.
In between, where minutia and galaxies intermingle with microbes and mysteries.
In between, liminal, that space where we wait: Look, listen, feel, breathe.

I Still Feel the Wonder

This is one of my favourite songs... "Changing of the Light"

"...I still feel the wonder as the sky turns to fire..."

The following words by ee cummings have been floating around in my consciousness these last few days...

i thank You God for most this amazing day:

for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky;

and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today, and this is the sun's birthday;

this is the birth day of life and love and wings:

and of the gay great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing breathing any

--lifted from the no of all nothing—

human merely being doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake

And now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

I also love the fact that cummings hasn't used capitol letters, not even for his own name, except for two words...

"...now the ears of my ears awake and now the eyes of my eyes are opened..."

D. H. Lawrence once declared “The sense of wonder, that is our sixth sense and it is a natural religious sense”.

Our sixth sense is a natural religious sense, what on earth could that mean? I suspect that he is saying that the sense of wonder is something that is natural to us all and it this that sparks our natural religiousness. Viktor Frankl drew similar conclusions, with regard to our natural religiousness, claiming that we possess a will to find meaning; that in some sense we human beings are the meaning makers; that there is something within us that searches for meaning in life; that there is something that occurs when we truly see life in all its majesty; that there is something that ignites this natural religiousness within us. We are the religious animal.

We each of us seemingly have this religious impulse ingrained within us. Now of course sometimes that gets shut off and or closed down by life’s busyness and or suffering. We can all become desensitised to life from time to time, but the impulse is still there and can be reignited, even when all seems lost.

“I still feel the wonder as the sky turns to fire”

There is wonder present in all life. To see it we just need to reawaken the ears of our ears and open the eyes of eyes. Religious practise is one way of achieving this. It helps to create those Angelus moments I spoke of in the previous blog. We cynical adults need such moments to reawaken that natural childish enthusiasm and sense of wonder at life. It is no mistake that Jesus (Mark 10 vv 13-16) when speaking to his disciples told them that they needed to receive the kingdom of God like a child if they wanted to enter it. I suspect that he was talking here of the Kingdom now and not just what was to follow. He was teaching them that in order to experience that Kingdom that was already here and now they had to view life through the eyes of child; that they needed to reawaken the ears of their ears and open the eyes of their eyes; that they needed to reawaken their sense of wonder.

Prayer helps me to pay attention. Actually it does more than that; it helps me to connect to all of life. When I pray I feel that I am connecting beyond myself to the greater reality. This I believe enables me to reawaken the ears of my ears and open the eyes of my eyes. According to Thomas Heschel “to pray is to take notice of the wonder, to regain a sense of the mystery that animates all beings, the divine margin in all attainments.” I would go further than this and claim that the practise of wonder is itself a form of prayer.

Thomas Carlyle viewed wonder as the basis of worship. I see real truth is this. I believe that the purpose of worship is to reawaken, to maintain and to develop this sixth sense, this natural religiousness, this sense of wonder. One of the reasons I worship with others is to remember how to connect to that natural spirit in all life; to remember what is important in life; to connect beyond the confines of myself and then to carry that into my everyday activities. To worship is to remember, to re-bind together, this is the essence of religion.

That said I do not believe that mediators are required in order to achieve this. We can reawaken our natural religiousness, that sixth sense, that sense of wonder, alone. The nineteenth century transcendentalists brought this insight to western religion. They said that we do not need clergy, priests or religion itself to mediate our experience of God or the truth; we do not need the mediation of others in order to find meaning. They said that it was the inalienable right and duty of every soul to approach God directly. In fact they went further and said that there was no other way to know the holy or Divine other than to experience it directly through the creation, through nature.

Could this be true? Can the sense of wonder only truly be awoken through nature? Well personally I'm not convinced of this. That said I do suspect that if you cannot connect to the divine through nature it is unlikely that you will you will be able to connect to it through worship and words.

I recently came across the following words by Wendal Berry.

“I don't think it is enough appreciated how much an outdoor book the Bible is. It is a "hypaethral book," such as Thoreau talked about - a book open to the sky. It is best read and understood outdoors, and the farther outdoors the better. Or that has been my experience of it. Passages that within walls seem improbable or incredible, outdoors seem merely natural. This is because outdoors we are confronted everywhere with wonders; we see that the miraculous is not extraordinary but the common mode of existence. It is our daily bread. Whoever really has considered the lilies of the field or the birds of the air and pondered the improbability of their existence in this warm world within the cold and empty stellar distances will hardly balk at the turning of water into wine - which was, after all, a very small miracle. We forget the greater and still continuing miracle by which water (with soil and sunlight) is turned into grapes.”

I suspect that this applies to all religion and philosophy, which can never be fully understood or experienced within the confines of walls, institutions or books. As I have heard many times "The religious life is not a theory, we have to live it." and in order to live with, we have to truly experience it. This means embracing all that is life and increasing our sensitivity to it.

The sense of wonder is never lost. We can reawaken the ears of our ears and open the eyes of our eyes. We can re-awaken this sixth sense, this natural religiousness, this sense of wonder. Wonder can re-open doors which invite us to a greater experience of living that can transform our experience of life. This can enable us to fully sense life in all its forms; to fully sense our senses. We can be swept away by the elements or stand next a mountain and feel as insignificant as a speck of dust. All that is required is that we let the natural wonder at the core of our being work through our senses and as a result we become instantly connected to the joyfulness woven into the core of all creation.

Everyone can awaken to the wonder of life; everyone can find that sustaining joy which is at the core of all life; everyone can reawaken the ears of their ears and open the eyes of their eyes.

"I still feel the wonder as the sky turns to fire."

The Ache of Loneliness Continued: Grief & Suffering

No person on this earth is immune from suffering and grief, it is part of human life as is joy and love and of course mystery and wonder. Everyone has experienced the loss of someone they have loved with all their heart. If we have not, then we have never truly loved; if we have never truly loved, then we have never fully lived. This sounds like the worst kind of suffering of them all.

While life may well be simple it is not always easy. M Scott Peck began his seminal book “The Road Less Travelled” with these words: “Life is difficult."

"This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult – once we truly understand and accept it – then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.”

Life is awry, there is pain and suffering in life and no matter how hard we try this cannot be avoided. Modern day attitudes to grief and death highlight this growing immaturity. We live in a death denying culture that so often wants to rush people through grief and sorrow to some imagined place at the other side of the rainbow, where there is no pain. Oz does not exist! Sorrow and suffering are conditions that we must acknowledge and accept. They cannot be simply let go of and thrown in the bin of life. Not only can they not be thrown away it would wrong to do so and disrespectful to those we have lost and claimed to have loved. Where is the love in this?

In trying to flee our suffering we actually intensify the pain. Herman Hesse saw the truth in this when he said:

“Love your suffering. Do not resist it; do not flee from it. It is your aversion that hurts, nothing else.”

It is this aversion that causes the suffering within the suffering. It is this that causes much of what so many people describe as the loneliness of modern life. In trying to suppress our pain all we succeed in doing is cut ourselves off from the joy of life. While life may well be difficult and does involve grief and suffering, it does not have to involve “the suffering within the suffering”. Life itself is not suffering. We need not be identified by our suffering.

Eckhart Tolle suggest that we create needless suffering when we blame others for all our personal pain. He claims that the habit of blaming and cultivating outrage, anger, resentment and other negative emotions, what he names as our “pathological ego”, is what blocks us from knowing the truth about ourselves and the human condition.

He explains that although we do suffer, we are not our suffering, it is not our whole identity. The trouble is that we can become trapped in it and then it identifies all that we are. He calls this the “pain body”. He claims that we can step outside of it, but not by simply ignoring the pain and hoping it will just go away.

There are other forms of suffering that can never be justified. We should not simply passively accept all forms of suffering. Dorothy Soelle rightly criticised the claim that suffering is justified because it was the only way to achieve Salvation or Nirvana. As she said

“No heaven can rectify Auschwitz”.

She did not believe that suffering was ordained by God. Instead she saw God within the suffering. For her God suffered with humanity. For her salvation was achieved through experiencing God within humanities suffering, not as a result of it. She saw God as being in solidarity with the victims of oppression in human society. Therefore in her view to fully experience salvation is to work for liberation of the oppressed and to end man made suffering, not passively endure it. 


What is required is a compassionate response to suffering.

Compassion means to suffer with. We can learn to be with others in their suffering and with ourselves in our own. The opposite of compassion is apathy. To be apathetic to the suffering not only of ourselves but also that of others is the worst kind of hell any one can suffer from, it’s inhuman, it creates our loneliness and it creates our isolation.

To suffer with is to experience compassion and of course to grieve is to love.

Forrest Church claimed grief is not really about death at all but more about life and the courage to love. Grief is truly about love and therefore it is not an end point, it is not a land of sorrow and regret in which we become lost, but a bridge that leads us back to life from death. He claimed that grief is so intensely powerful that it has the capacity to lift up our lives to the most sacred of moments and remind us what really matters. That said it loses its power if the grief is suppressed or silenced or neatly packaged and sanitised. Life is not neatly packaged so why on earth should we expect grief to be?

When grief is allowed to speak its truth it does so powerfully. It is personal in its power to change individual lives and it is also universal as it will visit all who dare to love what is mortal.


 I agree with Forrest’s belief that the choice is not between love and death but between a life lived in fear of love, because of the reality of death and loss, and a life lived courageously with love despite death’s presence.

Love and grief have the power to change us forever. 


As Forrest has reminded me once again, from the grave, the purpose of life is not to avoid grief and death. Instead the “purpose of life is to live in such a way that our lives will prove worth dying for by the love that we leave behind.”