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Focus
In the approach and the wake of death, we are presented with grief. A word too small to encompass the extent of what it carries in meaning, grief is a masterkey to an entire warehouse of complex emotions, memories, and depth in understanding the world. Because our modern culture largely fails to integrate death into our understanding of life, many of us have a misconstrued concepts of and strained or guarded relationships to grief. In the absence of an abiding cultural reverence for grief, and with a lack of practices and norms that make space for its sonorous, unfurling expressions, grief is often hidden or minimized. It is viewed as an obstacle we must overcome at a pace compatible with faith in progress. Grief is also viewed as private -- some thing we must experiences in solitude. By treating grief as something private, we miss the opportunity to collectively harness the transformative power of inevitable change in a world that is simultaneously living and dying all around us, all the time. If metabolism promises to transform life through death, grief is the guiding force that allows us to remain connected to that living energy.
Following the full moon in this lunar cycle, we gather together to honor grief as a great gift which allows our love for life to metabolize into other shapes and forms after death. As the scale of loss and mass death we collectively witness expands – be it by genocide, pandemic, wildfire, flood, or other ecological/cultural events of collapse – so, too, must our practice of grief. Through discussion and ritual, we will dive into the depths of grief to shape our practice of collective grieving and deepen our understanding of its power in cultural transformation.
Recommended resources for this EcoGathering: