Ground of Grief & Grace
There is a ground that lies beneath us all, sustained by the ensouled tears of generations past. This nurturing foundation supports our every movement, embraces our entirety, and offers the natural bedrock from which we can praise the profound beauty of life’s fierce grace. On this sacred ground, we unearth a wellspring of humility, compassion, and quiet strength. Only from this foundation can we cultivate a truly wise heart to face the immensity of life. To travel this ever-changing earthen terrain and kneel at the ancestral waters of our shared humanity invites a depth of soul found no other way.
There is a mycelial intelligence beckoning us to softly sink into the dark, rich aliveness of our humanity so that we may feel more deeply and see more clearly the complex elegance of sorrow, suffering, and loss. From the boundlessness of our pain, woven with the disquieted murmur of uncertainty, we expand our capacity to meet the vast enigmatic mysteries that linger unsolved.
Like a spiritual enzyme, grief metabolizes the painful void left by loss, transmuting it into a hallowed bridge that brings us into greater intimacy with our hearts. It is one of the sacred gifts of life to love so greatly that we must endure extraordinary change. We are transformed by our losses; our hearts carry the scars of change forevermore.
Miraculously, within our grief exists a venerated praise for life: a grounded gratitude borne of compassionate communion, an eternal sustenance of earthly abundance, and a raw grace that can illuminate any shadow cast by sorrow. Although the path forward during times of loss is often unclear, the very ground upon which the next step is taken is holy.
Along this spiral of life, a kind of courage is available to all who can metamorphose their suffering, sorrows, and losses into a graceful art of love, where the past and future unite in the present, becoming a healing balm for the soul. Like breath, this living undulation of grief and praise holds the power of life and love, wonder and mystery, and the compassionate recognition of our shared human experience.
Grief is praise because it is the
natural way love honors what it misses.
— Martin Prechtel