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[music]
What happens when we are facing the changes that are really challenging
- and our system is really tensed against it? How do we work with it then?
That'll be the last piece we'll explore tonight.
And one of the stories that has struck me over the years,
I was leading a weekend retreat - that's just probably about 10 years ago -
and a woman came and her husband was dying and
he had actually wanted her to come to the weekend just to kind of help her find some
support and resources and centering because
he had decided, they had decided together they weren't going to have a priest come
and that he really wanted her to accompany him...
So, towards the end of the weekend she pulled me aside and she said: "You know,
I am really afraid I'm gonna fail him
because you know it's just like the biggest thing I've been ever asked to do".
And then she asked me what she could read or study on how to accompany someone who was dying
- and, like, you know, dying 101, Buddhist dying 101...
And my basic response was really: "Just offer him your love, just love him".
And I did share with her, because they were Catholic,
because I had just recently done a weekend, a number of us from different faith traditions
presented on compassion, father Thomas Keating was there and he had
shared the words "I consent"; he said if you can face things on some level
say to the life that's presented "I consent", it's like "yes", you know,
it's like you're opening your cells and your heart and your being
to the life that's right there, you can find in the midst of things a beautiful presence ...
So I shared those words and that was what she brought home;
her intention was to try to open to what was going on and love him well,
and she described one evening that he was talking about dying with her
and she said: "Oh honey, today's been a really good day, let me make you some tea."
And as she went to make the tea everything in her went: "I blew it."
because she felt more distance in those moments from having cut him off,
like he wanted to talk about dying and she was making it all right, you know...
And it was in those moments making tea over the tea kettle that she prayed: "Please, please, may I truly
open with presence to what's happening, may I truly love him through this."
And that deepened awareness, she saw her
her vulnerability avoidance strategy, which was staying busy,
okay? Trying to make things okay, trying to do things; she was a doer...
And she saw it and she could feel in her body the distancing,
because when we create the walls to try to make ourselves safe,
we're a million miles from the other and from our own hearts, right?
So from that moment on it was like "I consent" went to a whole deeper level;
it's like the difference between mentally whispering "yes" to something
and having your whole being just truly open to the life that's here.
And she said that, in that, you know, she would in some very deep place,
she would consent to the fear she was feeling and to the utter feeling of not knowing and
uncertainty and how to be there for him and she'd be opening to the
you know, of course, to the movement of the grief that was there and
whatever came up. And she said in that consenting,
in that "yes" to the changing movement of life,
she said she found she did know how to respond to him,
she knew when to be quiet and when to sing softly to him
and went to climb into bed and hold him and when to just be kind of
the space around him that was very still...
She knew, intuitively, because
the reality is that, when we stop fighting the river,
and just become the river, the river knows how to move around rocks and how to be
in a spontaneous way.
And there's another knowing she had and this is what she wrote to me, she said
- and this was, you know, a week or so after he died -
she said: "He's gone,
but the field of loving who we really are is always with me."
What she discovered in that
letting her heart break open was that openness
that knew who they were beyond their forms.
And I think those that have lost dear ones
can sometimes sense how that is that there's a profound
sorrow of missing the form but also some deep truth
that we're in the field, in this field of love together.
That is the gift of opening to impermanence;
it's realizing who we are beyond the forms that are changing.
[music]