Opening to Grief and Love

Being with the in and out breath, let the body relax.

Notice the gap at the end of the next exhale.

Before the next breath is drawn, let go into this gap…

Then let these phrases rest in the heart:

May I be open to receive love and compassion from others.

May love fill and heal my body and mind.

May I find peace and strength that I may use my resources to serve others.

May all those who are grieving be released from their suffering.

May I offer love, knowing that I cannot control the course of life, suffering, or death.

~Roshi Joan Halifax

and then it was simply time to go…..

inquiry for today~ when I miss you….

how to listen

Now that we can’t touch, I am awash with all the ways that touch sustains us: 

like an electricity from one heart to another or the ancient rush of water down a falls into the basin of a village.

I’m thinking of how you wiped my brow in the hospital and the time you stroked a fallen bird,

its beak aquiver, and the time your mother held your face, saying,

“I saw how loving you are the day you were born.”

Or the moment I caught a stranger in the parking lot as her groceries splattered,

her cart wobbling away. Earlier, it was Grandma hoisting me to my feet in her Brooklyn alley

and the hands of my father guiding mine as he taught me to use a chisel.

Now I’m seeing Whitman as a medic in the Civil War wrapping a bandage around a corporal’s chest.

And  now I close my eyes to send my touch like a Shaman across the dreamscape, 

hoping it will reach you.

~Mark Nepo