Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again

 

May all beings be at peace. May all beings be free of suffering. May all beings remember who they are. I'm not about to suggest that everything is easy. I have some days that are better than others. Some days that are not in the midst of all that was going on, such a beautiful song about grieving, about loss. Yet at the same time, if we begin to realize that even in the midst of our grieving and our loss, there is such power in the love that we have the love that we give. The love that we have been given.
 
I recall years and years ago, when my mother made her transition, I was getting ready for the funeral. I was standing outside of the funeral home. It was a gray day in March in Brooklyn. I often think there was nothing ever grayer than that. The streets were gray. The sky was gray. The people were gray. My mood was gray. I remember praying at a moment outside in the misty rain on that gray, gray day saying, "God, why do I hurt so much?" Blaming God for the hurt, but also knowing it wasn't God's fault, nor it was mine. 
 
It was one of those prayers that got an immediate answer in words that came into my mind.
 
The voice of spirit very simply said, "You hurt because you chose to love." I never forgot that wasn't blame. It was just the essence of this, this raw human emotion of pain of losing somebody and recognizing that I would not feel that way unless I love them deeply. Am I going to trade that for anything? What would I trade my ability to love that deeply for erasing some of the pain?
 
I am deeply missing my grandson. Finn lives in Chicago. I recognize that my missing him is also a reflection of how deeply I love him. Would I trade that for anyone or anything? The answer is no. We are all grieving these days. There are many things that we miss: some simple, some profound. Yes, we are doing that. We are grieving and we need to grieve. Can I begin to recognize that my grief is also a reflection of my love and how deeply I care?
 
Can we open ourselves to the gift of transformation? 

 

Not that I will stop hurting, not that this human pain might go away. I wish it would sometimes, but it lets me know this is a reflection. How deeply alive, how deeply I am loved, and how deeply compassionate I can be. We are living obviously in a time of great, great change. Any time we change, we grieve like that. Like that book "Life is Goodbye. Life is Hello." It always is. You know what I realized a while ago is that we're always grieving. There's always going to be change. There's always going to be something that is going to shift in your life or my life. We're always going to be losing something and getting something else.
 
See sometimes on the spiritual path, I think it becomes very difficult to deal with our human emotions. Sometimes we even think we shouldn't have them. Especially grief. You shouldn't be grieving because something good is going to happen. Wait, stop. We can experience more than one thing at a time. We don't do a race one and just claim another.
 
There is a marvelous story about a Zen monk who learned that his teacher, his master, who had lived a couple of towns away had just made his transition. He packed his little bag and was going to go to the funeral. Some of the students said, "We'd like to join you, master. If we could." He said, “Fine, come on with me.”
 
His little group went to the funeral for his master. During the eulogy for this wonderful teacher, the master who had brought his students broke down and started crying. The students were scandalized. Couldn't believe that their master was spent his whole life teaching detachment and concentration and focus was breaking down into tears. One of his scandalized students came to him and said, "Master why, are you crying?"
 
And he said, “Because I am sad.”
 
Now your mind can not understand that because for your mind it's either one or the other.
 
“Because I am sad.”
 
I recall that the shortest verse in Christian scripture is, "Jesus wept,” when he found out that his friend Lazarus had made his transition.
 
Jesus wept.
 
Not denying the human part of our emotions, our feelings, but not getting lost in them either. So many things on a practical level I might miss, some simple, some profound - just walking in a bookstore, sitting down, and having coffee with some friends - it's not there anymore. What am I going to do with that? I need to grieve that loss. Yes, but when do you get lost in it?
 
I mentioned at the beginning of our meditation this morning that we get a sense of all of these people, all of these beings who are in this, not in this physical space, but in this place of intention of purpose together. I miss your physical presence. There's a magical thing that happens when I get this wonderful opportunity that I truly honor being able to share with you when you're there and I'm here and we connect with one another. There’s sort of this wonderful feedback loop that happens. I get energy from you and you get energy from me. You know what? That's not bad. Yet it is because I often wondered what was it going to be like talking to them.
 
I'm not talking to them at church. I can't see you, but you can touch me. I can touch you as well. It doesn't take the place of your physical presence. I noticed this in our Sunday school class, which we do by Zoom. I have an AA group that I'm doing on Tuesday evening. It's a 12 step recovery group that I do. Even though we are not physically present with one another, we can experience one another's presence. I am touched by you being here. I can not be with you now. I'm not suggesting that grieving is something that takes the place of what we've lost. That's just creating another attachment. Grieving is allowing ourselves to become more and more at peace with what we've lost, but to continue to learn from what we've, what we've let go of.
 
I can continually be taught by my mother, my father, my sister, my brother - whoever has passed in my life. They still exist as teachers for me. The situations in life that I might've let go of, they are still here to teach me. Everything is here to teach me. Grief is not just about letting go of something. It is becoming able to learn, to be at peace with what we are, what we have lost, or what we have let go of. It's still there to teach us. It doesn't mean that I throw something away. I still have that sadness, but my sadness continues to be a reflection of my deep love or the deep care of my deep concern. It's still there to teach me and to teach you. I continually ask myself when situations arise, especially during these times "How am I going to hold this?" I can hold what is going on with me and what is going on with the world. I can hold in anger, fear, and separation in chaos. I can hold it as the power of love and transformation. I don't know what that's going to look like.
 
At this moment, I'm standing on this particular threshold of making a choice of "What I am going to do with this moment?" What am I going to do at this moment?
 
I can affirm that it is chaotic. It's horrible. It stinks. Or, I can affirm that this is a moment of transformation. Even though I might not know what this is going to look like, I affirm a higher vibration that is working on making itself, manifest at this moment in this time and in the space, or I can just shut down and say, this stinks. I hate, where am I going to go? What am I going to do now? My little self, my small self is going to experience things in limitation. I also know, the divine truth that you are the divine truth, that I can see beyond limitation.
 
It has the ability to see things differently. It's like in the Course in Miracles, I could see peace instead of this. Now my little self might not be able to do that, but I know my divine self can. I could see peace. I could see this differently. I also know, not only can I see, it's not just about seeing physically or even emotionally, but I realize that when I see things differently I create them differently. I choose to look at you differently, to look at you beyond your personality self, to look at you as the divine child of God that you truly are. I create. I create something new. I don't just create a new vision. I create you again in a way, maybe you couldn't do for yourself. Whatever. It might seem to be lower. I can make it higher.
 
That's my choice.
 
Do I hurt? Do I grieve? Even when I let go of stuff that no longer serves me, it still hurts. I'm not going to pretend that goes away. Stuff that might have served me. Some patterns of thought and behavior that might've served me for years, I find out it no longer serves me. I'm going to let go of that. I'm not just going to snap my fingers and let go of it. It might be kicking and screaming a little bit as I let go of it. That's just part of the process. I'm not going to pretend that disappears, but that's what Francis was saying. That wonderful prayer of his, where there is hatred led me. So love, let me take the hatred and transform that into lovingness. You can go through the whole list, the whole gamut of that whole prayer. It was all about transformation. It was all about looking at things differently. It wasn't about getting rid of something necessarily. It was about grieving the loss of something that I've been holding on to and allowing that to transform in my heart, into my space. So it becomes something different, something transformational, something new. Behold. I make all things new. I transform love hatred into love, fear into faith. My grieving into compassion. Grief.
 
Letting go is not hopelessness. It is living in the transformational power of love so that no matter what I might be feeling, no matter what I might be experiencing, it has the ability to change, to transform, to become something different than what I thought first.
 
Can I see this differently?
 
Can I let go of the perception that I am holding for this person or this situation? Can I let it go so that I am more open to the truth of what really exists here? Can I let go of my attachment to hating this person's personality self, to letting go of that and knowing that's not the truth of who they are? Can I make room in my heart for them? Can I open myself up to the truth of who I am? Here's one of the keys to a kingdom. Can I allow myself to be open sometimes even painfully to those areas of incompleteness and unfinished business in my life, the things that are not done, the things that are not cooked yet? Can I let go of my attachment even to making them finished and realized that as long as I have not completely embraced or been embraced by the kingdom of heaven, that there's still work for me to do? That's not a judgment, but it's kind of like they said, "Oh God, to be at the point of death."

 

To realize that I have never lived grieving is part of living. It hurts sometimes, maybe all the time, but here I am at the edge of my grieving, what is lost, letting go of my attachment to those thoughts and ideas and those patterns of behavior that no longer serve me. I am grieving that loss. I am opening myself up to the fullness of life to be loved and to love completely and unconditionally. It's two sides. I can't tell you how to do that, but I know that every moment of every day I can ask the question, what are you teaching me?
 
What am I supposed to learn from you? Whether that's my pain or my joy, what are you teaching them? It's more than just growing. It is raising everything up in my life to be my teacher, to be what is working with me. What is working on me? What is stretching me?
 
I remember a teacher of mine who was working with dying people during the AIDS crisis. He said, "I work with these people time and time again, day in and day out. You know, there were some I became lovingly attached to almost fall in love with them. At the same time, I knew they were going to leave in a day or so."
 
He said, "Let me tell you this, when I was standing on the edge of love and heartbreak was when I was most alive. I've loved. I was hurting. I was pained. I was letting go. I was grieving and I was joyful and I was celebrating. I was in transformation all at the same time. I wouldn't trade that for anything."
 
None of us are going to experience all of that in the depth of any moment.
 
To be moments that come along today. I realize what I miss when I grieve what I miss, especially those deep things, those people, connections that we might miss, and realize that even my pain, even in my grief, I can be grateful and thankful that I can love this much, that I can love this deeply. Then on the flip side of things, I can be loved this much and loved this deeply. In this moment of healing, in this moment of grief, in this moment of letting go. In this moment of enlightenment, in this moment of transition and transformation.
 
Okay, may I be at peace? May I be at peace? May I be at peace? God bless.