With all the world has experienced in the pandemic that began more than a year ago, coming face to face with bereavement is something I do not think anyone has escaped. We have not all lost a person to the pandemic but bereavement is about sorrow, tribulation, misfortune. It is about learning to let go of expectations and things imagined. I am not convinced that anyone set out at the beginning of 2020 thinking it would turn out the way it did. No one counted on having to let go of either people, customs, ideas, events, ways of being, relationships, physical connections, and many more nuanced things. It is not about a comparison that someone’s loss is bigger or less. With loss comes a felt sense of sorrow. Sorrow and grief that call upon us to pay attention. In the midst of a pandemic there was barely any time to adapt to one loss before another came. In some cases, there was a loss that was grieved and then whatever it was returned and then it was lost again. Given that the western culture as a whole does not deal well with deep emotions, is it really a surprise that most people are still feeling like they are trying to get their heads on straight? And we are not yet out of the pandemic. There were perhaps brief moments of hope at the start of 2021 that things would shift but no surprise, nature has no care or concern about human time clocks and dates. It moves in and out of cycles regardless of what numbers we place on it. With every misfortune there is an opportunity to show up for the deeper calling. It is the same calling that God extends to us each and every day when our breath comes in and when it goes out. We do not give much thought to each breath as being gained or lost. Yet I imagine there are many who have been grieved in this pandemic that would give anything to have one of the breaths that we don’t even notice. I don’t have any answers about how to handle these things and when I spend time with God on my daily date or anytime through the day the one message that continually comes through is to pay attention to what is right in front of me. God invites me to pay attention to the the things that are escaping the site of my eyes that my heart holds and releases with a knowing of what is most cherishing right now.
Are we open to paying attention to our heart’s calling to cycle through our breath and creatively ride the experience of bereavement today?
dailydatewithgod 
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