If men had wings and bore black feathers, few of them would be clever enough to be crows. Rev. Henry Ward Beecher
Source: GRIEF IS THE THING WITH FEATHERS
Category Archives: GRIEF
The deceased is lamented seven days; the fool, a lifetime.
My grief lies all within, And these external manners of laments Are merely shadows to the unseen grief That swells with silence in the tortured soul. There lies the substance.
William Shakespeare
GRIEF IS THE THING WITH FEATHERS
If men had wings and bore black feathers, few of them would be clever enough to be crows.
Rev. Henry Ward Beecher
The temple of our purest thoughts is silence. Sarah J. Hale
How much of grief the heart must prove, That yields a sanctuary to love.
Zen Koan : What is your face before your mother and father were born?
The ‘gift’ of grief is that it presents us with the opportunity to heal and grow.
– Jewish Proverb
Say not in grief ‘he is no more’ but in thankfulness that he was.
– Hebrew Proverb
http://www.shiva.com/learning-center/resources/poems-of-comfort/
“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
The Dormouse attended, but cold and forlorn, And the Gnat slowly winded his shrill little horn
And the moth, who was grieved for the loss of a sister, Bent over the body and silently kissed her.
“BEAU BRUMMELL.” The Braidwood Dispatch and Mining Journal (NSW : 1888 – 1954) 30 Dec 1911: 4. Web. 31 Jan 2014 <http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article100643879>.
They were learning to draw,’ the Dormouse went on, yawning and rubbing its eyes, for it was getting very sleepy; `and they drew all manner of things–everything that begins with an M–‘
`Why with an M?’ said Alice.
`Why not?’ said the March Hare.
Alice was silent.
The Dormouse had closed its eyes by this time, and was going off into a doze; but, on being pinched by the Hatter, it woke up again with a little shriek, and went on: `–that begins with an M, such as mouse-traps, and the moon, and memory, and muchness– you know you say things are “much of a muchness”–did you ever see such a thing as a drawing of a muchness?’
`Really, now you ask me,’ said Alice, very much confused, `I don’t think–‘
`Then you shouldn’t talk,’ said the Hatter.
This piece of rudeness was more than Alice could bear: she got up in great disgust, and walked off; the Dormouse fell asleep instantly, and neither of the others took the least notice of her going, though she looked back once or twice, half hoping that they would call after her: the last time she saw them, they were trying to put the Dormouse into the teapot.
The Dresser Removes the Kimono of Mourning.
http://www.australianpoetry.org/event/vic-the-dresser-removes-the-kimono-of-mourning/
Jewish Blessing of the Mourners
Those who are worn out and crushed by this mourning, let your hearts consider this:
this is the path that has existed from the time of creation and will exist forever.
Many have drunk from it and many will yet drink.
As was the first meal, so shall be the last.
May the master of comfort comfort you.
Blessed are those who comforts the mourners.
http://www.shiva.com/learning-center/resources/poems-of-comfort/
Speak like a parrot; meditate like a swan; chew like a goat; and bathe like an elephant. Indian
Judith Bishop
Swan Lake
As music curves through the body, the swing of it
lifting mind’s invisible feet, so it happened
a ballet I’d gone to in the days after breaking up
with someone who had found me rather clumsy
left behind a troupe of swans in my heart.
Now the inner band played on, a waltz as searing
as a light too brightly shining in a room that should be dark,
and the swans, pirouetting through the dark
and joyful moments of the plot, took my heart
dancing, till the grief that remained
turned to a mood of gentle swanning
through the fine, vacated ballroom of the mind;
till the swans evaporated with a cry.
If old Kriss Kringle should forget To travel Christmas eve, I tell you now, I think next day The little folks would grieve.
A Catastrophe By Susie M. Best
“Each one of us who is fortunate not to have to deal with despair or lack of caring at Christmas can do much to help those who have so little. And, it doesn’t have to be a huge commitment either.”
Byron Pulsifer, Impact Of Christmas Shoes Song
Teams share the burden and divide the grief.
Doug Smith
http://www.heartquotes.net/teamwork-quotes.html
“Sometimes carrying the burden of an upsetting truth, and hiding it, is actually a gift you give to someone else. You bear that burden, so they don’t have to, in a situation where telling them will change nothing.”
― Cassandra Clare
You lament not the dead, but lament the trouble of making a grave; the way of the ghost is longer than the grave.
(Efik Proverb)
‘Lose this day loitering, ‘Twill be the same story Tomorrow — and the next more dilatory. Then indecision brings its own delays, and days are lost lamenting over days! Are you earnest? Seize this very minute! What you can do, or dream you can – begin it! Courage has genius, power and magic in it. Only engage, and the mind grows heated. Begin it, and the work will be completed.’
– Goethe
Only the debris of wreckage, and not much of that, was left behind by the sharks who fed on tragedy: the fishermen, too, mourned the death of a living child.”
― William Trevor, The Story of Lucy Gault
“A boxer is like a lion, the greatest predator on land. But you throw him in the shark tank and he’s just another meal.” Renzo Gracie
Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s needs, but not every man’s greed.”
― Mahatma Gandhi
The golden age only comes to men when they have forgotten gold.
G. K. Chesterton
Then the mouth of the cavern faced me fair As I turned and fronted the rocks: So at last I had pressed the wolf to his lair! I had run to his earth the fox!
Adam Lindsay Gordon
1833 – 1870
“To man has been given the grief, often, of seeing his gods overthrown and his altars crumbling; but to the wolf and the wild dog that have come in to crouch at man’s feet, this grief has never come. Unlike man, whose gods are of the unseen and overguessed, vapors and mists of fancy eluding the garmenture of reality, wandering wraiths of desired goodness and power, intangible outcroppings of self into the realm of spirit – unlike man, the wolf and the wild dog that have come into their fire find the gods in the living flesh, solid to the touch, occupying earth-space and requiring time for the accomplishment of their ends and their existence. No effort of faith is necessary to believe in such a god; no effort of will can possibly induce disbelief in such a god. There is no getting away from it. There it stands, on its two hindlegs, club in hand, immensely potential, passionate and wrathful and loving, god and mystery and power all wrapped up and around by flesh that bleeds when it is torn and that is good to eat like any flesh.”
― Jack London, White Fang
Healing requires from us to stop struggling, but to enjoy life more and endure it less.”
– Darina Stoyanova
“Don’t be ashamed to weep; ’tis right to grieve. Tears are only water, and flowers, trees, and fruit cannot grow without water. But there must be sunlight also. A wounded heart will heal in time, and when it does, the memory and love of our lost ones is sealed inside to comfort us.”
― Brian Jacques, Taggerung
A great man is always willing to be little.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must of felt what it is to die, Morrel, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life.
” Live, then, and be happy, beloved children of my heart, and never forget, that until the day God will deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is contained in these two words, ‘Wait and Hope.”
― Alexandre Dumas
Grief. I don’t know how to describe it other than as a roller coaster that drops you into the pit of hell with the rats and the demons, and then lifts you up above the clouds to the place where heaven begins.”
― Jessica Thompson, This is a Love Story
“Depression is a painfully slow, crashing death. Mania is the other extreme, a wild roller coaster run off its tracks, an eight ball of coke cut with speed. It’s fun and it’s frightening as hell. Some patients – bipolar type I – experience both extremes; other – bipolar type II – suffer depression almost exclusively. But the “mixed state,” the mercurial churning of both high and low, is the most dangerous, the most deadly. Suicide too often results from the impulsive nature and physical speed of psychotic mania coupled with depression’s paranoid self-loathing.”
― David Lovelace, Scattershot: My Bipolar Family
You can’t stop your heart from loving, really – it’s like standing out there in the ocean yelling at the waves to stop.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, The Mermaid Chair
“I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” — Martin Luther King, Jr
You are the gull, Jo, strong and wild, fond of the storm and the wind, flying far out to sea, and happy all alone.”
― Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
“Today, Aaron decided, he would begin to grieve in earnest. He would walk the lonely beach, mocked by gulls, uncaring, his every step a stately rebuke to the malign forces that had blighted his fate. His was the tragedy of a man who couldn’t have his own way, and he intended to make known his anguish in the solemn solitude that only a stretch of sand, a suspiring sea, and a beetling cliff could provide.”
― Joseph Caldwell, The Pig Did It
To spare oneself from grief at all cost can be achieved only at the price of total detachment, which excludes the ability to experience happiness
– Erich Fromm
Real grief is not healed by time.
If time does anything, it deepens our grief.
The longer we live, the more fully we become aware of who she was for us,
and the more intimately we experience what her love meant to us.
Real, deep love is, as you know, very unobtrusive,
seemingly easy and obvious, and so present that we take it for granted.
Therefore, it is only in retrospect—or better, in memory—
that we fully realize its power and depth.
Yes, indeed, love often makes itself visible in pain.
~ Henri Nouwen
For serenity, always prefer the cottage to the palace!
― Mehmet Murat ildan
“It’s the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy. The mild serenity of age takes the place of the riotous blood of youth.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
Joy is what happens to us when we allow ourselves to recognize how good things really are.
Marianne Williamson
“Fairy tale does not deny the existence of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance. It denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat…giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy; Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien
Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining. ― Anne Lamott
“Grief does not expire like a candle or the beacon on a lighthouse. It simply changes temperature.”
― Anthony Rapp, Without You: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and the Musical Rent
“Children and dogs are the messengers of God some of us do not deserve them” Ginnetta Correli
“I feel about my dogs now, and all the dogs I had prior to this, the way I feel about children—they are that important to me. When I have lost a dog I have gone into a mourning period that lasted for months.”
Mary Tyler Moore
The most recent grief is the heaviest to bear.
Sit down. Breathe
in, breathe out.
Close your tired eyes.
Basho is sitting beside you—
a guest in his own house.
THE OLD PROVERBIAL RECOVERY 