From the Meaning of Death — Stephen Jenkinson:
Grief is the human angel in the world. Grief is not in the order of despair, depression, you know, “I give up.” Grief is the deep getting of it, and the deep being gotten by it. Grief is the willingness to be claimed by a story bigger than the one you wish for. So in that sense grief is a willingness to know. That’s what it is. Grief is the human angel in the world.
What a revolutionary proposition to realize that your heartbrokenness turns out to be the key to your willingness to remember what it takes to be a human being. That’s the beginning of how we can say, we’re in an impoverished time. That poverty marks our opportunity to have it be otherwise. Not getting out of poverty, not solving poverty, but understanding that all our instincts about poverty are themselves impoverished. But poverty’s not nothing, it’s not zero, it’s not a recipe for another iteration of self-hatred.
No, all the cultures that are really cultures, all of them are deep and skilled practitioners of grief. They are. And that grief is a willingness to see things. And that willingness is the beginning of your chance to have it otherwise, and by your grief you can be recognized as a fellow human being by people who are past masters at it, and you become trustworthy to them. Your refusal to grieve or your illiteracy where grief is concerned might be the thing that causes the most uneasiness in the people for whom, who are not afflicted that way.(read more)
The short film in it’s entirety:
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“What if the meaning of life isn’t hidden? What if it’s not something to find? What if the meaning is made?” Spiritual activist Stephen Jenkinson, and founder of the Orphan Wisdom school, asks us to consider different questions when approaching the nature of existence.
More with Stephen Jenkinson: Griefwalker
More posts featuring Stephen Jenkinson and grief.
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