Rituals of Grief

People are kneeling in the darkness of a cathedral as a candle is processed by a dancer through the middle of the group to the center where a circle of candles is lit. A cello plays a meditative melody. A loaf of bread is broken and passed among the people. A bell rings, and we open ourselves to the mystery of this moment, not knowing what we will discover tonight.

No words have been spoken, but the gathering is filled with symbols. It is ritual, and we feel something rise within us, something we had forgotten was there, something that quickens our pulse and draws us in.

The holidays are filled with rituals. Which ones affected you the most? Which ones were comforting? Which ones disturbed your focus on what you thought was important?

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For this post I gathered two pages of background material on rituals, but I’m not going to use them because they have too many words. In our rituals we find a great symbol, but then we feel the need to explain the symbol in words, diluting the power of the symbol to speak in its own way.

Unexpected

This holiday season, I am not looking at the decorations on the houses in my neighborhood. I am looking beyond them to the trees and woods, to the sky and birds, I need the transcendence of nature.

Maybe it will be a sparkling, crystalline dawn

            with the rays of the rising sun glinting off ice-covered trees.

Maybe a herd of deer will meander down my street at midnight,

            with no one but me seeing them.

Maybe a cardinal will sit stoically on a branch

            as snow drifts down and collects on his back.

These I have seen in past years; they won’t likely be repeated. But I won’t know what the transcendent will be this year until it appears in the corner of my eye and surprises me. I can’t make awe happen. I can only stay alert and wait.

Grace of Community

Perhaps in no other season are people as aware of what is missing in their lives. In December we look for signs of hope, renewal, faith, and affirmation that the struggles we are in are worth the trouble.

In the midst of celebrating, we see people who are suffering, who are poorly dressed for winter, who are hungry, who are alone, and we try to help, because something reminds us that we are members of the same community.

December is also when much of the natural world in the northern hemisphere goes into hibernation. There is grace in this, in the letting go of what is past, in the retreating from active life and preparing for spring, and grace in the slower movements of the season. We think of people we had to let go, and in this holiday season we are reminded again and again of how much we miss them. We think of our own mortality. We think of the sources of energy for our life, what inspires us, and we feel the pull to live what we believe in everything we do.

December Evening

This evening in December is quiet, and the hills and fields are shaded in the sky’s pastel colors. Light has traveled beyond the earth’s edge and shadows will soon darken and lengthen into night. Nature begins to settle down into the blues and grays of winter.

I stand on my deck and listen to the woods — the creaking of the trees in the light wind, the light clack of empty black sunflower shells landing on each other, dropped by wrens and finches at the feeder. My thoughts move among the trees as I halfway watch the squirrels chase each other. Dusk fills the woods with shadows and I open to the mystery of what is here.