Facing Death
I died a mineral and became a plant.
I died a plant and rose an animal.
I died an animal and I was a man.
Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?
Yet once more I shall die as a man, to soar
With the blessed angels; but even from angelhood
I must pass on. All except God perishes.
When I have sacrificed my angel soul,
I shall become that which no mind ever conceived.
O, let me not exist! For Non-Existence proclaims,
“To Him we shall return.”
- Jalal Al-Din Rumi (1207-1273) - Muslim poet and mystic
Death has been prevalent for me and my family this past year. My mom was diagnosed with cancer at the end of 2022 and my grandmother passed away at the end of 2023. I have had to contend with the glaring Truth that death is a fundamental part of life. We cannot escape it, it will happen. Historically, it used to be a foundational part of culture and a ritual of our daily lives. Harvesting food involved death, people lived in tight-knit communities and death was shared amongst tribe. Spirit and sacredness were woven throughout the tapestry of the way people lived and ate and breathed and died.
Now, it’s all but hidden away. It’s something over there that happens. We don’t want to face it, we don’t want to participate, we act like if we don’t look maybe it will go away. Luckily, I have had some practice in facing death and participating in its ritual. Working close to nature, with farmers and hunters and participating in indigenous ceremonies, I have journeyed deeper into understanding the cycles of life and death.
If we are to reconnect with the Source of Life and live in right relation to all of Earth and Mother Nature, we must reconnect with the sacredness of Death. Because it is only through death that regeneration can happen, it is only through dying that new life can be born.
To survive love and loss, that is the essence of the human dilemma.
At some point or another, we all will take an apprenticeship with sorrow. To learn the art and craft of grief, discover the ways it ripens us and deepens us. While grief is an intense emotion, it is also a skill that we can develop to navigate the trials of life and live with more presence, purpose, and joy. - Francis Weller
My Apprenticeship with Sorrow
I have been called to my own apprenticeship with death and sorrow. I’m not sure when it first began, but I first became aware of it when I started to participate in the harvesting of animals for food and nourishment.
Witnessing, and then participating in, the act of killing something in order to nurture and feed ourselves and others, is the essence of how every single creature on the planet survives. Whether you are eating animals, or plants, or insects, or algae, life is dying for new life to live. Death is the essence of Life. I have a visceral Gnosis of that.
I was initiated further when my spiritual mentor Parker Sherry passed away in a tragic accident in 2022. An entire community was vastly affected by his passing. Because of the role that he played in this community, his death was the first tangible example of an alternate way to handle that transformation. We all grieved together, we celebrated his life together. He faced death without fear. We knew that he was still with us, guiding us and accompanying God on his next call to serve. I had spent the previous 7 months in deep transformational work with him and others with the help of the land, communion with food, and working with the Spirit of San Pedro. The concept of death and suffering came up often, and we held space and navigated that terrain in a more intimate way than I had ever experienced before.
I didn’t know what Spirit was really preparing me for. The curriculum so divinely laid out in preparation, that it scared me. I wrote this poem about 2 weeks before I found out that my mom was diagnosed with cancer…
It was Halloween night when I wrote it, the full moon, during a Scorpio Eclipse portal, and I was in the secluded woods of Virginia with my 2 girlfriends. I had been talking to a friend on the phone via voice memos and the last one I sent was that I was about to embark on a journey and I had a weird feeling about it…something was coming, “A big part of me is dying, there’s a lot of grief and uncertainty” were my exact words…
Death as a teacher is poignant and profound. Like a dark cloud, Or a snake slithering slowly It slides in calmly, But all-emcompassing. You cannot miss its presence. Death teaches many lessons: We grapple with our own limitations Of being finite in this body, in this experience. Nothing matters. And yet everything does. Death is clarifying, When you really get close… Confusion stops, questioning ceases, you have pierced the veil. Death frees us from ego and the illusion of separation. There’s only one thing that matters… Love. When you get close to death, You start to understand the power of the Breath of Life. Our birthright. Our unique expression and sacred essence that breathes life into the very beings around us. Death forces you to choose. I embrace the mess my heart makes. It chooses to love. It chooses to feel. It chooses to wander far beyond the bounds of logical decisions. It risks being broken in order to stretch. It risks rejection in order to know the rush of being honest. It risks being wrong just to see what might be right. It chooses to love.
To be honest, death is something that I have come to accept. Working with the rhythms of nature, it is just a part of it, and a majorly important and beautiful part at that. But watching someone you love suffer, the long drawn-out process of living in the uncertainty, witnessing pain, struggling to keep the flickering light shining in the depths of darkness…that is the most challenging thing I have ever had to endure.
A reality fading away, like a Polaroid developing in reverse.
But there is also another Polaroid developing, a new reality forming. As God wraps more and more of my mother’s body into a warm embrace, and her time becomes more limited, I struggle to maintain the faith. I grasp at teachings and wisdom traditions and rituals that will help me understand the Great Mystery. But that’s just it, we can’t understand. We might catch glimpses, and often more depths of understanding unfold after death, and we see how the divine plan continues to play out. But during, it’s impossible to know. That is the exact definition of Faith. When it comes to Faith, it’s either all for you or it’s all against you. Will you feed self-pity and victimhood, or courage and gratitude? Don’t get me wrong, I am human and I have been angry, depressed, outraged, exhausted, distraught, confused. And I have been hopeful, enlightened, awe-struck, bestowed with grace and courage. Leaning so fully into the present moment, working to alchemize pain into love. I choose to believe in the Mystery and the great teachings of Death, the alchemy that comes from underworld journeys and the foundational and everlasting principle that there are no boundaries, only cycles. I know my mother will always be with me, and likely on an even deeper and more intimate level than the boundaries that this physical plane will allow. My prayer is that my mother can connect in some way to this Faith. I am devoted to doing what I can to bring peace, beauty and acceptance to this process for her.
Creating Sacred Space
I have made plans to be at home with my mother as much as possible for the near future. But while I was away and she was in the hospital for several nights, I asked my dad if we would bring this butterfly art piece that I had gotten from Peru and had gifted to my mom last year to hang up in her room at the hospital. She has since commented several times how beautiful it is in the window, how it changes colors depending on how the sunlight hits it, and how many of the nurses and visiting friends have commented on it.
Ohh the simple things. What beauty can do. I am devoted to bringing meaning to the forefront, to bringing beauty and spirituality to the physical act of living and dying. I am reading a book called Sacred Dying by Megory Anderson and it has helped me understand what my role can be in this process. I can create a sacred container and stay present through the pain. Attend to my mother’s needs and know that my time for grieving and tending to my emotions will come, later and in the in-between moments. But right now, the focus is on her and God. Rituals help heal the pain of letting go and at the same time connect us with the Divine. Something to help us deal with the mysteries. There are many things that can be added to enhance the container, but the only real things needed are intention, attention, and love.
An Ongoing Conversation
How do we learn to carry our grief and not collapse or turn away in denial? How do we come to see grief as vital and necessary and not only as something to be endured? It requires a re-envisioning of grief, not as an event in our lives - a period of mourning - but as an ongoing conversation that accompanies us throughout life. Grief and loss are with us continually, determining how fully we engage our lives.
Shaolin Temple teachings - pain and loss are a guarantee in life. “You will lose your mother, your father, people and animals that you love. The suffering will not end, but you can overcome it. And once you do you never have to experience that same level again. Waiting for the world to be at peace will never come. All you can do is prepare yourself, learning the right ways to be able to walk in this lifetime. That’s possible, get rid of the fantasies.”
An apprenticeship with sorrow offers us the chance to build our capacity to stay present when the intense feelings of grief arise.
Grief is here to reshape us in some fundamental ways, help us become our mature selves, capable of living in the creative tension of grief and gratitude.
- Francis Weller
Because I have had to face grief and death, contemplate what it means to die and to kill in order to survive, where we go when we die…Because I have participated in the natural process that death is, experienced the Truth that it feeds all life and allows for new growth and is the very foundation of regeneration…Because I have learned these ways, I can feel my capacity to handle this moment and stay present to support my mom and my family is so much greater than if I had not had these previous experiences. Life truly has a curriculum laid out for us. It does involve pain. It does involve joy. It won’t be easy, and that is the gift.
I am transforming, my mom is transforming, and as we go into the chrysalis, I will see her on the other side.
A new reality coming into view, like a Polaroid developing.
❤️