Prayer

           I don’t know how to pray. I only know to sit in a quiet place and listen.  - Mark

Listen

 In the morning, before you begin your activities, find a quiet place where you can listen to the day opening up. 

Listening Again

 Sackcloth and ashes. Do we really need this?

 

If you’re grieving, you’re already feeling low and depressed about life, and there’s probably some anger and loneliness mixed in.

 

But today is Ash Wednesday, and Christians use this day to think about all the ways that they have messed up over the last year, where they feel broken, and how they have hurt others. It’s a day that lends itself to dwelling in dark basements.

 

Cantus: The Silence of Grief

In Arvo Pärt’s Cantus, a composition for orchestra and Orthodox bells, silence is written into the music. There are times when no musicians are playing, yet in this silence we hear reverberations of the notes recently played. We hear them even though no one is playing.

So it is in grief after a loved one has died. We still hear their voices reverberating in our hearts. We see their shadows moving through our days, and feel brushes of their touch, even though their bodies are physically gone.

Have No Regrets

Book: On Living, Kerry Egan

“Hospice chaplain explodes in spontaneous combustion of laughter.”

            “Hospice chaplain explodes in spontaneous combustion of laughter.”

            Just kidding, but there is humor in Kerry’s book, On Living, which many would not expect in a book about dying. I‘ve been looking forward to reading about Kerry’s work as a hospice chaplain ever since I read one of her stories two years ago. The voice that I loved in her first book, Fumbling, is still here. This is a book on the beauty of the human heart.

Listening

People who are grieving

don’t need advice.

They need your presence

and a listening ear.

Mark Liebenow