Grief and Awe

"Dear friends,

What a time of change this has been.  The energy is strong right now, it's like a dragon; you can get on its back and fly to the top of the sky or be burned to ash by the fire.  Personally, I am in the ash state, at the moment.  I am still reeling from the deaths of two people I loved so very much and am trying to find my balance again.  I wander from grief to self-pity, to missing, missing, missing them.  Crying myself to sleep to my pillow, weeping in surrealistic, in-between moments when I least expect it with great pangs of wrenching loss - I miss him, I miss her so much.  I feel like the dust and ash that is left after the bomb hits . . . but before the phoenix rises.

In these last days as I have teetered between grief and routine, I have come to a surprising understanding.  While I was brought to my knees with loss - not this one, not this one, too - confused and adrift, trying to make sense out of the mystery, knowing that you can't make sense of the mystery, because it is one, I find myself asking 'why' about everything, 'why' in my meditations, 'why' in my wandering thoughts throughout the day, and through it all I keep being met with the same vision, smiles and heart, gentle smiles and heart.  There is no sadness, no loss on their part, just mine. 

And though the burn leaves a scar on my heart that feels like a brand, these so very loved ones that have so powerfully touched my life are not gone from my life, they are more a part of me now, an indelible part of me, like my breath, and part of the fabric of my heart and mind, and infused in this writing now.  This is part of the awe.

But the insight that has come out of this that surprises me in its magnitude and its rarity, is awe.  I don't know why awe is the word, but it is.  In all of my questioning of God and the universe during these last weeks and really my entire life, awe is the answer that grows out of my questions.  A bring-me-to-my-knees kind of awe, just as I was on my knees in despair, it has been transformed into a different kind of being on my knees – awe.

But it's more than that.  It's a realization of the mystery and the beauty of life, that our lives are beautiful, that your life is beautiful, that we are worthy.  

I have a growing, spiraling, deepening affection and compassion for us.  As one of my dearest hearts that just passed said to me so often, we are all doing the best that we can.  And all I know is how touched I am by us when I remember this.  How noble we are.  How brave we are.  How we aspire.

We are all doing the best we can. Our little walking through this wild, crazy, tumultuous, glorious, mysterious world is a privilege.  Our walk is a privilege.  Every step of it.  And if I could go to every single person I ever have known, family, friend and stranger, I would bloom my heart to them in awe, in appreciation, in humility in the understanding of the magnitude of a single life and of our collective life.  It is humbling beyond words.

~in the mystery and the soaring,
Diana Lang
THE WEATHER
©2006 by DIANA LANG

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Diana Lang
from the City of Angels
818/888-7319
www.DianaLang.com

"Everything you do right now ripples outward
and affects everyone." - David Deida"

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