Words to soothe the pain of bereavement.
Photo by frank mckenna on Unsplash
I am not lost
I have not gone away.
I am, still.
Here, there is no time,
No past, no present, no future,
These, are man-made prisons, created from the blunt instrument of blind misunderstanding.
No, there is only time-lessness
Outside of time, in a place they used to call eternity
I am not ended, I am, still, always, whatever way you choose to understand it,
No longer caught in the limits of human comprehension,
I am not lost. I have not gone away.
When words fail to help us understand,
When the writings of the world’s great traditions fail to clarify,
When centuries of stories and metaphor fall short
Take comfort in their failure.
Words fail. They are human tools, and therefore small in the vastness of things.
The things of which we speak and strive to understand cannot be drawn down,
Nor their nature captured by human mind nor metaphor.
God, with an outline, positioned in the sky, or on a throne,
Goddesses, animals, mountains…
Symbols, all, like the quaint scribbles of a child,
Fail to capture the ultimate beauty of which we speak.
I am not lost. I have not gone away.
What we speak of is not a thing,
It is not in the sky, nor in any other place.
It is not an “It”
nor of no small design,
But all Existence Itself
And cannot be captured by that which is within it.
We have five senses, five tiny windows on to this world and the universe beyond
By which to understand it.
Five filters
That edit and select what we can know
And we are blind to all else.
Take comfort,
When you casually switch channel with the wave of an instrument,
When an onion hurts your eyes
Even though it has not touched,
When science tells us that energy cannot be created nor destroyed
When a dog delights in sounds and smells you cannot perceive,
When birds find their way to a foreign land they have never known
When love cannot be described.
Every day, this mysterious dimension shows itself to us
If we would pay attention.
I am there,
Just beyond the shutters of your human senses.
I am not lost. I have not gone away.
Let all these things remind you
Of the world beyond perception
The Unknowable,
Into which,
On the passing of our human mould,
When the walls that blocked our understanding fall away,
You will see me again, unhindered.
I am not lost. I have not gone away
I am here,
Safe in that place that you touch
When your mind stills.
But more than stillness
That place
Of Love, complete.
Some day
You will know
That Love is not fleeting
It is no passing emotion
Nor no human thing
Though as humans we may touch it.
No,
Love, is
the Great Healer
The Gentle Place
The Ultimate Balm
Far beyond the Earthly forces
Of tides
Of gravity
Or wind.
Stillness, yes
But Love
That Is The Final Explanation
Our Home Place
And I am here
No Longer limited by place nor time
Free to be with you
To surround you
To hold you.
I am here.
You are not lost.
~Susannah Healy
The Seven Day Soul.com