That time I thought I could not go any closer to grief without dying
I went closer, and I did not die. Surely God had his hand in this,
as well as friends. Still, I was bent, and my laughter, as the poet said,
was nowhere to be found. Then said my friend Daniel, (brave even among lions), “It’s not the weight you carry
but how you carry it – books, bricks, grief – it’s all in the way you embrace it, balance it, carry it
when you cannot, and would not, put it down.” So I went practicing. Have you noticed?
Have you heard the laughter that comes, now and again, out of my startled mouth?
How I linger to admire, admire, admire the things of this world that are kind, and maybe
also troubled – roses in the wind, the sea geese on the steep waves, a love to which there is no reply?
‘Heavy’ by Mary Oliver
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Image: Nepali porter, Annapurna Circuit, Nepal
Photo: Sergey Ashmarin, 2011, edited and used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported licence.
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In St Mary’s prayer cycle for this month, today we pray for all who work for the RNLI – the Royal National Lifeboat Institution - keeping people safe on the Thames and around our shores.
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Please donate if you can!
In these unprecedented times, St Mary’s is reaching out and supporting our community in many ways, especially online. But with Services in church cancelled, we no longer receive income from collections, nor from hiring out the church and hall buildings.
If you can help us financially to continue to offer Christ's love to our community in these difficult times, as those before us have done down the centuries, please consider making a donation by debit/credit card and to Gift Aid it if possible, by clicking this link to 'givealittle':
Thank you!
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If you would like to contribute to these reflections, please do email Katherine Cox at kvcox-therapy@gmail.com