Mary Oliver: Heavy

It is not easy to be human. It is especially difficult to keep our hearts open when there is deep personal, national, and global pain, loss, trauma, and suffering within our world and our own hearts. This is where our capacity to hold grief is so deeply important. 

Knowing that we humans all fall somewhere on the continuum of open-heartedness, the strength of our connection with our hearts, our Self, our Sacred core truly matters. Because the inner is a reflection of the outer. And whether we are aware of this or not, the joy and the suffering of others is also ours. This interrelationship with all of life illuminates a larger picture beyond our own personal pain. We absorb and are impacted by what is happening within and beyond ourselves, both the joys and the sorrows. 

And thus I am moved to share this beautiful poem on grief by Mary Oliver.

Today and everyday, may our internal and external systems of support grow and expand. May we experience the strength that is found in the gentleness and tenderness of our hearts. In the midst of darkness, may we also remember beauty and joy and compassion and love. We are all related, all family, all in this together. 💗 Molly

Photo by Molly

Heavy

That time

I thought I could not

go any closer to grief

without dying

I went closer,

and I did not die.

Surely God

had his hand in this,

as well as friends.

Still, I was bent,

and my laughter,

as the poet said,

was nowhere to be found.

Then said my friend Daniel,

(brave even among lions),

“It’s not the weight you carry

but how you carry it -

books, bricks, grief -

it’s all in the way

you embrace it, balance it, carry it

when you cannot, and would not,

put it down.”

So I went practicing.

Have you noticed?

Have you heard

the laughter

that comes, now and again,

out of my startled mouth?

How I linger

to admire, admire, admire

the things of this world

that are kind, and maybe

also troubled -

roses in the wind,

the sea geese on the steep waves,

a love

to which there is no reply?”

― Mary Oliver