So it’s raining all the time now. I worked in two brief walks between showers, but now there is thunder. I need to collect my neighbor’s mail, but not until the next storm passes.
Leonard Cohen wrote about lamenting in the right way. I know what he meant. I have made lamenting in the right way my life’s work. I know it helps people get through various and sundry dark nights of the soul. I can’t tell you why; maybe you have some ideas to share about that.
I was listening to a Patch Adams talk on YouTube in which he rails against the nuclear family. I so agree! Bob told me there was no work for him at home and work was his priority. So I gave up extended family, and not happily. Since the loss of my child and my husband’s death, Rob and I are left very much alone here. Rob had to be my caregiver this week. I know how hard that is. Caregivers worry. I took him out for dinner last night.
We thought the restaurant was closed until dinner time, but a lone server poked her head out and offered to take care of us. When I told her I would like a fried chicken sandwich, she said, “I can make that happen.” I struck up a conversation with her and she was immediately involved. “I just had cataract surgery,” I told her.
“Oh, my dad and sister had that done,” she said. Her name is Elizabeth and she made us feel for a moment like we had family everywhere. I just keep forgetting that. Some of you are like family for me. After all, I have been dishing out my emotional life in essay form for many years. I will close with the quote from Leonard Cohen. He is speaking of song, but that is okay. My song just happens in paragraphs. I found this quote on www.cohencentric.com
“If the song is authentically an expression of the person’s suffering, then the suffering is transcended and you don’t get the whine, you don’t get the complaint, even though it may be all about a whine and a complaint. It’s experienced as relief, as comfort, as pleasure.” ~ Leonard Cohen
Vicki Woodyard
As often happens, I get miraculous affirmation that I am indeed on the right path. I just saw that a new review had been posted about my book, Bigger Than The Sky. I don’t know who wrote it, but here it is as it appeared on amazon.
“This book made me weep and I don’t even know why. Unlike any other ‘spiritual’ book I’ve encountered, the author shares herself in a way like none other. Seemingly a tribute to her friend Peter, someone she never met, but only knew through his letters written as she struggled with the tragedy of losing first her young daughter, and then her husband, to cancer. Yet it all adds up to a most rare and pure exposition, in such beautiful, simple language, of the Eternal Truth we all wonder about, and wish for when the darkness is upon us. If for any reason you are overwhelmed by life’s vicissitudes, and the surfeit of gurus, teachers, and spiritual icons, along with their millions of words, reading this book is probably the kindest thing you can do for yourself. ; The author says: “Life is hard. Death is hard. Love is the gift” and truly this book is a gift of love to the world. Thank you Vicki, for sharing yourself with us.”
If you have not ordered it yet, I would love it if you do. Just go to amazon and type in my name, Vicki Woodyard.
Vicki…On the Leonard quote about the song being an authentic expression of a person’s suffering,
I see this as an allowing of the expression to be, without attempting to manipulate it, and then to see
it (the expression) as made of the Awareness which is our true Identity….Thanks! Charlie
Yes, he is a shining light on the inner Self.