Lifetimes

I was at my Buddhist center tonight and a friend asked me, “Adam, how are you doing?” And genuinely wanted an answer. I found myself saying, I am feeling grief. It comes in waves. Often I don’t even know what I’m crying about now – often there’s no story anymore. It is contact with sorrow that goes beyond me, beyond my lifetime, sorrow that’s connected to something larger.

Naomi Shihab Nye says,

You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

I have been trying to welcome the grief in, like Rumi says to. I have been praying for it to transform me. Tonight I realized this is one way that it has.