Vulnerability — Blessing Our Grief
A Lent of Grief and Glory
For this season of lent, we are inviting our ICN community to embrace a time of grief and glory.
Sometimes, our grief remains in the shadows. It can be hard to find a place for it in community, and we shy away from sharing. Or we keep it in small doses, not wanting to be a burden. We may have old or buried grief we still carry in the dark. Perhaps we find ourselves swept into the cultural denial of death and loss, feeling like we must “get on with life” and get over it.
Do not surrender your grief so quickly
Let it cut more deeply
Let it ferment and season you
As few human or divine ingredients can
Something is missing in my heart tonight
That has made my eyes so soft
And my voice so tender
And my need of God so absolutely clear.
— Hafiz
Sometimes, our glory remains veiled. We go about our conversations and interactions forgetting that we are swimming in the substance of God, which is always shimmering around and through us with resplendance. We fall into small things, forgetting our ever-present divine participation and the astonishing light of our own being—and the world around us.
“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship…There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.”
— C.S. Lewis
Our grief and glory are not separate things, held apart like oppositions. They are interwoven and interconnected. We live every day holding griefs personal and global, felt on the surface or deep in the substratum. And we live in the divine wholeness that permeates and radiates through every fiber of being.
How do we live in the embrace of integration with grief and glory?
Each week throughout this lenten season, we’ll share brief reflections and meditations on grief, glory, and our integration process with both.
Our hope is that this container of lent—held in an integral and evolving way—may be our own wombful portal of emergence and new life.
We hold in the divine womb our personal struggles and fears alongside our dreams and unique soul calling. We hold our collective pain and loss alongside our communal nurturing and creativity. And we hold our global crises and suffering alongside our deep courage and ultimate faith.
We invite you into this collective womb space of painful lament and generative possibility. We invite you to embark on your own personal process and engaged practice with grief and glory.
May we walk with grace together in this time of grief and glory, through the Mystery and portal of death and resurrection.
“Hagar’s Prayer” by Dalmo Mendonça
Vulnerability
Our word and primary invitation for this week is vulnerability.
I invite you to pause and speak the word aloud several times. As you hear it spoken with your own voice, where does it land in your body? Where do you feel the word vulnerability touch you within?
Remain in that felt sense.
Let it deepen into your body, not thinking about it, but first receiving it in your heart, your spiritual womb, your feet, or any other part of you where you sense it touching.
Open to the energy it is bringing awareness to in you.
Stay with your inner process as long as you need.
Vulnerability invites us to let down our defenses and walls that keep others and ourselves from the embrace of grief.
And grief is not just about death.
We can welcome grief related to any kind of loss we have experienced.
It could be a loss of a relationship or friendship.
It could be the loss of a way of perception, an understanding or certainty that used to serve as an anchor, now unmoored.
It could be the loss of a community or tradition.
It could even be the loss of who you used to be, even if that change has brought about positive change and growth.
Can we embrace our vulnerability in our experiences of loss and the fragility of life?
Can we breathe through with spirit into the pain and sorrow?
Can we welcome deaths of any kind into the fermentation of our wombful gestation?
Jesus by Paul Fryer
Blessed are the poor in spirit
Jesus was a man of sorrow and a man of glory.
Throughout this season, we will use his teachings, often referred to as “The Beatitudes,” as pathways to help us walk with grief and glory.
We invite you to receive these various translations as a meditative practice. Let your whole body receive them, slowly, absorbing them deeply. This might include thoughts about the words or phrases heard in a new way, but as those come, integrate them in your whole being, into the deeper spaces of your soul and embodied receiving.
This practice can also be done with a partner, reading aloud to each other. One person can read all of them, pausing between each for at least 30 seconds, and then the other does the same. Or you can each say the phrase aloud to one another, pausing to receive before going on to the next.
A Practice of Blessing
Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
(King James)
Whole and complete are those who live with a sense of dependence and vulnerability; the will of God is present in their lives.
(Greek literal)
Ripe are those who reside in breath; to them belongs the reign of unity
Blessed are those who realize that breath is their first and last possession—theirs is the “I can” of the cosmos.
Happy and aligned with the One are those who find their home in the breathing; to them belong the inner kingdom and queendom of heaven.
Resisting corruption, possessing integrity are those whose breath forms a luminous sphere; they hear the universal Word and feel the earth’s power to accomplish it through their own hands.
Healed are those who devote themselves to the link of spirit; the design of the universe is rendered through their form.
(Aramaic)
Greek literal translations by Dave Brisbin
Aramaic translations by Neil Douglas-Klotz
We invite you into your own deep process with this season, engaging in reflection and practice with these themes and experiences.
Questions for Reflection
Where do you feel the call to vulnerability in your life in this season now? Where do you experience the word “vulnerability” residing in your body?
What did you experience in the practice of blessing?
What has been your experience with the season of lent in your life? Where do you feel the invitation to evolution and new ways of engaging in this season?