Welcome to The Rules of Engaging Grief - A Path to Healing
This site is eclectic – sharing a wide experience, personal reflection, and abundant curiosity about life that has drawn me and I hope draws you to greater stillness.
Please be sure to visit the Blog to which material is added regularly.
What is This Site About?
Grief, loss, or rejection, is what we experience in a lifetime -- be it in the death of a spouse, divorce, or losing a job – whether or not we are prepared. How willing we are to address these overwhelming challenges determines how soon we return to emotional and spiritual harmony. In time and much work, we may even discover – as I did -- a deeper stillness that manifests a peacefulness and joy that I had not experienced earlier, before my journey was interrupted without warning.
The sudden loss of my spouse of almost forty years prompted me to plumb the depth of this experience. I can remember thinking I must clear the decks to determine what this loss means. Like the opening lines of the Divine Comedy recount, I realized that with the loss of my wife it was as if I had woken in middle age, in a dark wood, and without a path to follow.
My intention with this website is to share that journey and offer resources that sustained me as I made my way out of the dark forest. You will discover that I am grounded in Christianity, much influenced by my education and the Christian mystics that flavor Christianity over the centuries – to name just a few -- Meister Eckhart, the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing, St. John of The Cross, Thomas Merton, and Bede Griffith. I am quick to add that I have also been privileged to experience in my travels the spirituality of Sufism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Sikhism. As appropriate I will offer insights from these traditions as well.
I am in the process of publishing my book, Rules for Engaging Grief: A Journey To Further Still. You will note that I will refer to the Rules in some of the postings. I encourage visitors to this site to experience what I applied to recover a deep peace in the midst of the chaos in which I and probably most of you operate. I invite your participation in this journey and welcome your insights.
Rule # 19-- Practice patient endurance.
Reflection: When I was a student at P.S. (Public School) 86 in The Bronx, New York, my elementary report card regularly signaled that I could do better. As I grew older, the words could do better were replaced in my life with could show more patience. And if there is any lesson for me to learn in life it is that – be more patient. I learned – or maybe heard – for the first time not long ago that one of the nine gifts of the Holy Spirit is patient endurance. *
I have prayed mightily for this gift – to be free from the entanglements of a future that does not exist and a past that is less substantial than the smoke from a dying campfire in the desert. Patient endurance fills me with peace and hope.
The inspiration for I Corinthians 13:4-8 came to me during a one-week visit to Beirut, almost a year before my family and I were assigned there. It was prior to the outbreak of a full-fledged civil war, when the fashion shops on Hamra Street were filled with Paris originals. There was a color and a vibrancy and bustle of the people walking along the Corniche that ringed the Mediterranean. The hotels burst with the glamour and exuberance of what was once referred to as the jet set and the pilots and stewardesses that made it possible. The banks held the fortunes of those in the region who sought comfort from Beirut’s stability that was soon to shatter.
At that time, I was at the top of my game as I would describe it. Recently promoted, soon to be reassigned from New Delhi to Beirut and assume a most responsible position, and yet . . . I was reflecting deeply on a healing process that was urgent and underway in my relationship with Donna. And it was a time to allow an unfolding in grace to occur.
Exercise #19 – What about you? What contributes to your patience? And how about endurance? Identify an outcome of your present circumstances that you have identified or for which you hope or pray. Perhaps, you have even set a timetable for the solution to take place. For now release yourself from the outcome. Write below that release and acceptance. Sign and date the release. Put your pen down. Stay quiet, still, and listen to your heart and feel the peace and calm that enfolds you in that moment. After a time, jot down what you experienced.
* See Galatians 5:22-23 “But the fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control.
**"Header Photo: "Rope Bridge" Daniel Pupius, 2000".
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