AUDIO RECORDING OF DISCUSSION FROM 2-5-2023
“Supporting Our Apprenticeship to Sorrow”
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1shX_2abjzTBBtr7mAQMFRO-N_OLHATkk/view?usp=sharing
Practices for continuing your “apprenticeship with sorrow.”
- Connect with a few people: Create a grief circle.
- Writing, journaling.
- Art and ritual.
- Practice Gratitude
- Discover and savor beauty.
- Practice self-compassion daily.
- What kind of ancestor do we want to become? We’re all ancestors in training. We’re all training for our own disappearance.
A few short quotes:
“This is a solitary journey you cannot do alone.” – Ira Progroff
“No one else can carry your grief for you but it’s very hard to carry it alone.”|
“Drink the tears of the world.”
“Metabolize the personal and collective sorrows.”
“What is silenced in the first generation, the second generation carries in the body.” – Françoise Dolto
“Sorrow is the pathway to joy and love; to be fully human, fully alive, fully awake. For the heart to be fully open and free.”
“Keep the material warm. When we ignore or push our grief to the side, it hardens, it becomes cold and congealed.”
Because
By Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
So I can’t save the world—
can’t save even myself,
can’t wrap my arms around
every frightened child, can’t
foster peace among nations,
can’t bring love to all who
feel unlovable.
So I practice opening my heart
right here in this room and being gentle
with my insufficiency. I practice
walking down the street heart first.
And if it is insufficient to share love,
I will practice loving anyway.
I want to converse about truth,
about trust. I want to invite compassion
into every interaction.
One willing heart can’t stop a war.
One willing heart can’t feed all the hungry.
And sometimes, daunted by a task too big,
I tell myself what’s the use of trying?
But today, the invitation is clear:
to be ridiculously courageous in love.
To open the heart like a lilac in May,
knowing freeze is possible
and opening anyway.
To take love seriously.
To give love wildly.
To race up to the world
as if I were a puppy,
adoring and unjaded,
stumbling on my own exuberance.
To feel the shock of indifference,
of anger, of cruelty, of fear,
and stay open. To love as if it matters,
as if the world depends on it.