The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief

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The authors grant us – through stunning collages, sutras and more extended passages that reach down into the heart of our soul – entrance into what it means to be human: from the flickering, tender heart to the indestructible eternal soul. He would feel he had to restrain these parts of himself in the future if he was to receive my love once again. We fear it is irreparable because we think it is not something we have done wrong—it is simply who we are.

The Wild Edge of Sorrow - Booktopia The Wild Edge of Sorrow - Booktopia

This realization broke him open to the great well of grief he was carrying in his heart from all the times he had abandoned himself for the sake of fitting in and getting approval. Whereas our culture assumes that public grieving is somewhat childish, Francis Weller passionately asserts that “Grief is the work of mature men and women. Most people today might get a week of bereavement leave, at best, and then everything should be fine. In The Wild Edge of Sorrow, Francis Weller offers his readers a breath-taking and dramatic journey of inner discovery into personal pain resolution, plane-tary healing and Soul development.The Wild Edge of Sorrow is a powerful book, tender,vulnerable and beautifully written, with superb examples of the potency ofritual. Instead, both are true, and it requires a familiarity with both sorrow and joy to fully encompass the full range of being human. Too often in modern times our grief becomes private, carrying an invisible mantle of shame forcing our sorrow underground, hidden from the eyes that would offer healing.

The Wild Edge of Sorrow - Penguin Random House

Wellerworks this magic not only through the wisdom he offers about how to honor our grief — at both personal and planetary levels — but also through the warmth andmusic of his language, which is in itself a healing medicine for the soul. The icing on the cake is the way he draws on indigenous wisdom and soul-tenders like Pema Chodron and John O’Donohue. What I have come to see is that much of the grief we carry is not personal; it doesn’t arise from our histories or experiences. We feel estranged from the world and only marginally able to navigate the necessities of eating, sleeping, and self-care. A master of synthesizing diverse streams of thought from psychology, anthropology, mythology, alchemy, indigenous cultures, and poetic traditions, he has introduced the healing work of ritual to thousands of people.In the Absence of the Ordinary is filled with treasures of insight from the heart of a wise, poetic, and fearless guide for exploring the shadowy terrain of the soul. We are no longer rigid islands of self sufficiency, but open to the soulful wonders that the animate world offers.

The Wild Edge of Sorrow - North Atlantic Books The Wild Edge of Sorrow - North Atlantic Books

Once the ritual began, people spent time weeping at the water shrine and shouting their outrage to the fire. Our profound feelings of lacking something are not reflection of personal failure, but the reflection of a society that has failed to offer us what we were designed to expect. It seems that our wholesale abandonment of this core emotion has cost us dearly, pressed us toward the surface of our lives. The organ of receiving is the human heart, and it is here that we feel the deep ache of loss, the bittersweet reminders of all that we loved, the piercing artifacts of betrayal, and the sheer truth of impermanence. The Wild Edge of Sorrow reads like poetry and isboth a prayer and an invitation: a prayer of soul healing and an invitation tothe mystery of becoming fully human.This book is a work of beauty: beauty in its language, its poetic sensibility, in its deepinsights intothe nature of loss and its effect on the human soul. We may cry at a wedding or when we watch a movie, but the full-throated expression of emotion is off-limits. For Jenkinson, conscious grieving is a skill that we must develop at this moment of loss and demise. This collection of fifteen essays and reflections were written over the years, often in response to local or cultural experiences. Subconsciously, we are awaiting the presence of others, before we can feel safe enough to drop to our knees on the holy ground of sorrow.