The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief

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But then every time we encounter defeat, inadequacy, or loss, we’re at war with ourselves, and that’s a bitter fight. Utilizing the powerful tools of writing practice , singing, movement and comm unity ritual, we will coax our stories into the visible world where they can be held within the healing embrace of community. The tension between these two sisters, grief and gratitude, is what helps us to avoid leaving this life ‘sighing and frightened, or full of argument’ in the words of the poet, Mary Oliver.

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Certainly at this time we have much to grieve both as individuals and as a culture; but our collective amnesia about the traditional practices of grieving keep us from uncovering the buried treasures that could be our salvation. In that moment, I understood powerfully the cost to a child who had to be the one to make the overture of repair. To deny either truth is to live in some fantasy of the ideal or to be crushed by the weight of pain. To develop an apprenticeship with sorrow, we require community support—safe spaces where we can grieve with others, our bodies reverberating with the grief we feel and that others feel with us. F or a man who specializes in grief and sorrow, psychotherapist Francis Weller certainly seems joyful.In this way, we may be able to honor the losses and live our lives as carriers of their unfinished stories. Paradigm shift means creating uplifting alternatives to capitalism and the consumer culture in every way possible. Rashani and Francis are skilled toolmakers who masterfully guide us through the raw vulnerability of grief to a place of reverence for the journey, offering a balm to the nomads of this harsh terrain. Their grief is bound together with shame, making it more difficult to talk with others and get the support they need. When the deeper rhythms of grief are allowed to emerge, we becomeaware of the intimate connection we share with all things.

The Wild Edge of Sorrow Quotes - Goodreads The Wild Edge of Sorrow Quotes - Goodreads

The Wild Edge of Sorrow marries uncommon compassion with clear-eyed discernment in its invitation to the reader to become a soul activist in a soul-devouring culture. Francis Weller knows that beyond sorrow is new possibility that can be discovered in our encounter with soul loss and renewal. As Francis Weller notes, “Grief helps us stay closely related to the other face of this mystery which is gratitude. That man is psychotherapist and author, Francis Weller, in his new book The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and The Sacred Work of Grief. For many tribes, community grieving was a way of maintaining “soul hygiene” because the community knew that when people do not grieve, they become toxic to the rest of the community.By default, we become the container ourselves, and when this happens, we cannot drop into the well of grief in which we can fully let go of the sorrows we carry. Similarly, many of us found ourselves isolated in times of loss, shamed by the absence of someone who cared. When we sat down, Clarke reached to his left, placed his hand on a large rock lying on a table, and said, “This is my clock. As we come to the end of the sharing, there is a dawning recognition that this is our shared sorrow, the communal cup from which we all drink.

The Wild Edge of Sorrow Quotes by Francis Weller - Goodreads The Wild Edge of Sorrow Quotes by Francis Weller - Goodreads

What has become clear to me is how difficult it is for us to attend to our grief in the absence of community. Weller has also taught at Sonoma State University, the Sophia Center in Oakland, California, and the Minnesota Men’s Conference.Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book. Here we are asked to hold an extended vigil with loss in the well of silence, slowly ripening our sorrow into something dense and gifting to the world. Francis sees the importance of ritual as alanguage that speaks to the deepest layers of being human.