Realisations and revelations: “Come to me all who are burdened and heavy laden … I will give you rest. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light!” (Jesus of Nazareth).

 Realisations and revelations: “Come to me all who are burdened and heavy laden … I will give you rest. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light!” (Jesus of Nazareth).

 

Can a soul be burdened?

Can a heart heal on the overlap between joyous remembering and breaking in sorrow:

where joy is not our sorrow unmasked (Gibran), but is crushed in a rising tempest of pain?

 

Watchers see our journey of introspection and reflection …

of quietly re-forming priorities and perceptions … 

and offer their inaccurate …

and disconnected assumptions …

out of their own bewilderment at a journey and experiences that fit no design or plan.

 

They seek to name what does not exist … 

for grieving is a journey of ‘now you see it, now you don’t!’ … 

a journey which only emerges … 

like shadows in winters’ fog-like mists … 

and pieces for a complex jigsaw …

for which there is no image or picture to guide its building.

 

Do not dare to tell us what you see, 

or what our words or actions mean, 

or that we are in or out of character …

As if there is no grace at work here transforming and renewing … 

opening eyes and life … 

heart and spirit … 

to healing and rebuilding what was crushed under the weight of coping and caring …

of giving until empty … 

 

And then … 

having learned all that and lived all of that … 

suddenly … 

expected or unexpected …

it is gone …

and our heart and spirit, 

our body and very being has to relearn 

who and what and how we are fully human …

with life and love, and joy and hurt, and gifts and ministries, to rediscover and relearn … 

without that unspeakable gift of a life-partner. 

 

Don’t you dare expect us to abandon this journey which has all the characteristics of having lost something

precious and seeking, seeking, seeking to find it. 

That mysterious parable of the woman seeking desperately for her lost coin, speaks truth-to-my-heart! 

 

We … have lost treasure … 

our hearts and spirits know this to be so …

and grace draws us gently into this journeying of discovery. 

 

You cannot know, as we cannot know, what those precious treasures are that wait to be revealed. 

But we know that they are there! 

When they emerge they surprise, even shock us! 

 

They change us, those unexpected realities … 

transforming, amazing grace … 

known only in the experience …

and named in reflection and story-listening. 

 

So strangely, for these, and all, we give thanks!

                                                                                                © amf-20200703

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