All of us find ourselves in places of grief at various times in our life, and we might wonder if we will ever find hope again.
Recently, a friend posted a meme that read “To grieve and lament is an act of hope.”
This quote startles me. Maybe it does you, too.
After all, we often grieve and lament when we feel hopeless.
For instance, usually we grieve when we have lost something precious like a friend, or a dream, or a cherished possession.
Or we feel grief when we see problems in the world and we don’t know how to solve them.
“Statue of Grieving Woman”, picture courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
We feel full of grief, and we often feel hopeless in the face of such loss and such problems.
So how could grief lead to hope?
That is what I have been wondering lately.
And even now, as I write this, I wonder about the connection between grief and hope. Because I have felt a lot of grief lately about all the turmoil in our country.
Here is something that strikes me as important about grief.
Grief creates a space of emptiness inside of us because of the things we have lost.
That emptiness can often feel horrible or even unbearable at first. It feels like a big hole in our life.
The book When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron has been really helpful to me in the past during times of loss.
There is no doubt that this emptiness is painful. And we should acknowledge that pain.
But emptiness miraculously often leads to creation.
For example, an empty bowl can be filled. And an empty garden can grow things.
“Carved Wooden Feast Bowl”, picture courtesy of Wikimedia.
Emptiness can be painful, and it can also be generative space.
I’ve seen this in my own life.
For example, I remember a time when I was young and a meaningful friendship in my life ended abruptly and painfully.
The loss of that friendship created a space of emptiness that was deeply painful for a while.
I remember caring for myself, spending a lot of time in silence thinking and seeking wisdom. It was like a time of inner hibernation.
And looking back on it, I can now see that in my time of rest and reflection, better things than I could have imagine filled my emptiness.
More recently, I think of a career plan I had that came crashing to the ground. It made no sense to me, and I felt empty and lost.
I spent a lot of that time asking questions and exploring my values and priorities.
Once again, in retrospect, I can now see that the painful emptiness I experienced in that time is now filled with things more beautiful than I could have imagined.
It is very strange how emptiness can often bring such beauty.
The classic Chinese text, the Tao Te Ching speaks of this strange process.
The Tao Te Ching was one of Ursula Le Guinn’s favorite books, and she wrote a commentary on it.
For instance, in chapter 11, we read,
“Thirty spokes are joined together in a wheel, but it is the center hole that allows the wheel to function.
We mold clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that makes the vessel useful.
We fashion wood for a house, but it is the emptiness inside that makes it livable.
We work with the substantial, but the emptiness is what we use.”
“Wooden wheel with cat”, picture courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
The Tao reminds us that in nature, emptiness is one of the most productive things possible.
And I think this is why grief can be an act of hope.
When we grieve, we honor the emptiness we feel. Grief leads to a period of hibernation, reflection, and wisdom-seeking.
As such, our empty space becomes creative and generative.
Perhaps the most important thing we can do in times of grief and emptiness is two-fold.
First: We must take time to pause and honor our grief and emptiness. This is an act of self-compassion.
If we don’t stop and honor our emptiness, we don’t truly allow ourselves to be empty.
As such, we cannot truly let go of what we have lost, and so we can’t truly accept something new when we are ready.
Second: When we are ready, we must set an intention to fill the empty space with good and life-giving things.
How our emptiness becomes filled again is a bit of mystery, much like the mystery of an empty garden generating life again.
But, of course, we know that gardens aren’t such a mystery after all because we plant seeds, care for them, and then they burst to life when the time is right.
“Zen Garden”, picture courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
With the empty spaces of grief in our life, it may seem strange to talk about planting seeds in such emptiness.
But I think the seeds we plant are things like openness, curiosity, and the search for beauty.
I’m going to call such things spiritual seeds.
I call them spiritual seeds because they pertain to our dreams, hope, and imagination.
The weird and wonderful thing about spiritual seeds is that they are super-generative.
On the one hand, spiritual seeds are somewhat in our control because we can decide to practice things like openness, curiosity, and the search for beauty.
But on the other hand, these spiritual seeds often multiply rapidly in beautiful ways we can’t even imagine and that aren’t in our control.
It’s a little bit like having a party and inviting a few friends, who then invite more friends, and then suddenly a crowd of enthusiastic revelers fill your house and the party really kicks into gear.
Now, I’m about to mix metaphors most horribly, so stay with me.
In our grief, we are like an empty house. And when we are ready, planting spiritual seeds is like inviting a few guests to our house.
And somehow, those spiritual seeds bring a bunch of enthusiastic revelers, and the party kicks into high gear.
That’s how suddenly our empty space of grief becomes filled with beautiful things.
“Microimages of seeds of various plants”, picture courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
I don’t know about you, but right now I am going through a time of grief, and I feel an empty space in me.
I’ve decided I’m going to sit with myself in my emptiness and honor some things I have lost.
And when I am ready, I am going to think about planting spiritual seeds. And right now, it feels like the empty space inside me won’t be filled.
But I believe in the power of emptiness because I have seen it works its magical power before.
So today, my grief helps me to hope.
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If you are ready to plant spiritual seeds, you might like this free course I have created.
It contains some of the most helpful ideas that help me plant spiritual seeds: The Four Basic Truths
You might also like these posts:
How Embracing Vulnerability Changed My Life
Compassion, a Way Through Suffering
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