4 Soul Practices for Grieving the World

An Excerpt from "In the Absence of the Ordinary"

“Grief will be the keynote for the foreseeable future.” Soul-centered psychotherapist Francis Weller shares wisdom teachings—and hope—for our times.

I have spent the last four decades tracking the movements of soul, most especially through the lairs of grief. In my practice as a psychotherapist and in many workshops, I have seen the wide range of sorrows that we carry in our hearts. From early traumas, deaths, divorces, suicides of beloved family or friends, addictions, illnesses, and more . . . the “size of the cloth” has become painfully apparent. More and more frequently, I hear in the laments of individuals, not so much grief for their personal losses but for the wider, wilder world that is being diminished minute by minute. They are registering in their souls the sorrows of the world. Strangely, this gives me hope.

We have clearly entered the Long Dark. It may be decades or more likely a few generations before we see the farther shore of this crisis, if we make it. I say this not with a note of despair, or with an attitude of hopelessness, but, instead, recognizing and valuing the necessary work that takes place in the dark. It is the realm of soul—of whispers and dreams, mystery and imagination, death and ancestors. It is an essential territory, both inevitable and required, offering a form of soul gestation that may gradually give shape to our deeper lives, personally and communally. Certain things can happen only in this grotto of darkness. Think of the wild network of roots and microbes, mycelia, and minerals, making possible all that we see in the day world, or the extensive networks within our own bodies, bringing blood, nutrients, oxygen, and thought to our corporeal lives. All of it happening in the darkness.

Strengthening Our Soul Skills

We must become fluent in the manners and ways of soul. In addition to the disciplines of soul, we are required to develop a potent set of skills as we descend ever farther into the collective unknown. We are being asked to hone the faculties of soul that will enable us to navigate through the Long Dark. Skills such as ritual literacy, initiation practices to support our youth in their movements toward adulthood, the shaping of elders, maintaining relations with the invisible world of ancestors and the sacred, all contribute to a vital and robust ground of living culture.

Primary among the skills we will need to cultivate is our capacity to grieve. My previous writings have focused on the way grief and loss touch our personal lives. From the deaths of loved ones to the loss of homes or relationships to the shattering experience of trauma, we are visited by sorrow in many ways. In these current times, we have entered a new constellation in which our grief is often collective. Grief will be the keynote for the foreseeable future. We are in a deep dive into the unknown, riddled with pockets of loss. Homes, health, security, community, and even our basic trust in the future are now in question. COVID-19 forced this into our consciousness, but this truth has been there for some time now, embedded in the emerging climate crisis and the eroding of the social fabric of culture. We have been quickened by the cumulative changes to realize a vital truth: We are in a rough initiation.

Compassionately Hosting Our Worries

Fear and anxiety readily appear in times like these when the ground of the ordinary is unsettled. Our work is to turn toward these jittery guests and make a place at the table to offer tea and soup, a warm place to rest. Grief will also come knocking as our plans and expectations of normalcy fade into shadows, and we are left with our faith in the world being shaken. This is a loss worthy of our attention and kindness. Our times remind us of something inevitable but strangely denied: We are vulnerable, interdependent animals, clinging delicately to our little thread of life. The old Zen phrase “Not knowing is most intimate” rings true. We do not know what will happen today or tomorrow, and this brings us to the intimate truth of our mutual tender existence.

We are tumbling through a rough initiation. Radical alterations are occurring in our inner and outer landscapes. It is simultaneously deeply personal and wildly collective, binding us to one another. Everyone we meet in the grocery store, in line at the gas station, walking their dog, is tangled up in this liminal space betwixt and between the familiar world and the strange, emergent one. Hang on!

Embracing Radical Change

Much is asked of us during threshold times like these. In my work with the Commonweal Cancer Help Program, I often hear how lost someone feels once they receive the diagnosis, undergo treatment, and become a part of the medical machinery that often consumes much of their daily routine. The frequent lament is “I don’t know who I am anymore.” This is the deep work of initiation. It is meant to dislodge our old identity, the sediment of self that we affix to our sense of who we are. We are meant to be radically changed by these encounters. We do not want to come out of these turbulent times the same as we went in. That is the invitation in this moment of history: radical change that nourishes the life force of the commons.

So now what? How do we navigate this tidal surge of uncertainty? How do we engage the world in the absence of the ordinary? Our first move could be to reimagine our times as necessary. I like to imagine that the immune response of the world is being activated by the various threats and harm stirring in the field. And what if you and I are cells within the immune system, adding our voice, our actions, our affection to the situation? What if this is true? What if this matters?

What else? Can we coax a few words of praise from our lips? Perhaps recite a poem to the birds, plant seeds, call a friend, pray, read the great myths that tell us, again and again, how we might find our way through the impossible. This is a season of remembering the ancient rhythms of soul. It is a time to become immense.

Becoming Immense

To become immense means to recall how embedded we are in an animate world—a world that dreams and enchants, a world that excites our imaginations and conjures our affections through its stunning beauty. Everything we need is here. We only need to remember the wider embrace of our belonging to woodlands and prairies, marshlands, and neighborhoods, to the old stories and the tender gestures of a friend. To become immense also includes the radical act of welcoming all of who we are into the story. Nothing excluded. We become large through accepting all aspects of our being—weakness and need, loneliness and sorrow, shame and fear—everything seen as essential to our wholeness, our immensity.

Fear can rattle us and activate strategic patterns of survival when the ground of the ordinary crumbles. These patterns enabled us to endure in our lifetimes, but they cannot help us across this tremulous initiatory threshold we face as a wider community. For that, we need to amplify the potency of the adult. As is true of any genuine initiation, it requires the ripening of our being and stepping more fully into our robust identity rooted in soul. We become immense, not in some grandiose, “I’ve got this” kind of way, but in a way where we become flexible like a willow, taking it all into our open arms and offering shelter to all that is frightened and vulnerable.

James Hillman, the brilliant archetypal psychologist, wrote, “The world and the gods are dead or alive according to the condition of our souls.” In other words, the vitality of the animate, sensuous world and our encounter with the sacred depend on our souls being fully alive! A soul that is awake is entangled with the living world—its beauty, allure, and wonder, its sorrows, rips, and tears. The condition of our soul matters!

Returning to Simplicity

So, let us return to simple things: stillness, story, beauty, compassion, and patience. This will not resolve quickly. The Long Dark will be with us for some time. Ritual, prayer, meditation, and creativity are ways to foster an intimacy with the world of soul and the soul of the world.

Many of the great myths began in a time such as this. The land has become barren; the king, corrupted; the ways of peace, lost. It is in these conditions that a ripeness arises in the soul for deep-rooted change. Soul responds to crisis by awakening to a deeper sense of purpose, leaning into how it can contribute to the repair and renewal of the world.

When the ordinary fades, when the familiar rhythms and patterns of shared living erode, something is activated within the soul. Hidden invitations and initiations arise in a time of uncertainty. The soul recognizes the markers of descent—darkness, sorrow, anxiety—as requiring radical change. The conditions of trouble and uncertainty activate some profound movement toward alterations in the psychic landscape. These are the precise times when the possibility for shifts in the collective field occurs. We are in such a threshold time. We are being called to embody courage and humility. Every one of us will be affected by the changes wrought by this difficult visitation.

Carl Jung said that each of us is a makeweight in the affairs of the world. Never think that you have nothing to contribute to the shaping of our future. You are needed. You are necessary. It is time to become immense.

by Francis Weller.