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Grief, loss, or rejection, is what we experience in a lifetime -- be it in the death of a spouse, divorce, or losing a job – whether or not we are prepared. How willing we are to address these overwhelming challenges determines how soon we return to emotional and spiritual harmony. In time and much work, we may even discover – as I did -- a deeper stillness that manifests a peacefulness and joy that I had not experienced earlier, before my journey was interrupted without warning.

The sudden loss of my spouse of almost forty years prompted me to plumb the depth of this experience. I can remember thinking I must clear the decks to determine what this loss means. Like the opening lines of the Divine Comedy recount, I realized that with the loss of my wife it was as if I had woken in middle age, in a dark wood, and without a path to follow.

My intention with this website is to share that journey and offer resources that sustained me as I made my way out of the dark forest. You will discover that I am grounded in Christianity, much influenced by my education and the Christian mystics that flavor Christianity over the centuries – to name just a few -- Meister Eckhart, the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing, St. John of The Cross, Thomas Merton, and Bede Griffith. I am quick to add that I have also been privileged to experience in my travels the spirituality of Sufism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Sikhism. As appropriate I will offer insights from these traditions as well.

I am in the process of publishing my book, Rules for Engaging Grief: A Journey To Further Still. You will note that I will refer to the Rules in some of the postings. I encourage visitors to this site to experience what I applied to recover a deep peace in the midst of the chaos in which I and probably most of you operate. I invite your participation in this journey and welcome your insights.

Rule #1 -- Grief releases – if we allow – the restraints of the past and the anxieties about a future. And in their place, we experience the eternal in the present moment.

Reflection -- Your experience with time and its irrelevance in matters of the heart and in the grieving process are hints of the eternity that awaits you as the clouds lift in your journey across the ocean. In this time simply suspend anxiety about what you could have done in the past or should do in the future, and remain in the present. Focus intently on the words that you receive and experience gently the parting of the veil.

Many years ago I hurried along the footpath beside the Rhine River near Bad Godesburg, Germany. At that time the U.S. Embassy was located there, before it was transferred to Berlin. I was in Germany to “handle” -- in the jargon of espionage -- an agent, who was providing intelligence on the emerging international terrorist threat. My rush along the Rhine though had nothing to do with espionage. I was hoping to hear Corrie Ten Boom’s presentation at a local church. Corrie was then in her eighties. Her book, The Hiding Place[1], is a remarkable spiritual journal describing how her family hid a Jewish family from the Nazis who occupied her native Holland during World War II.

Having walked this path many times, I knew that there was no way that I would reach the lecture in time, so I settled into an easy, almost altered pace, letting go of any anxiety about entering the hall late. To my surprise, I arrived with minutes to spare and Corrie began her talk on time. Until this day that memory has stayed with me. It was then I first recall experiencing linear time evaporating into timeless-ness.

Nine months after D.’s passing I first realized that if someone had asked if she died last week, or three years ago, it would have been difficult to explain how it did not matter, and in not mattering was puzzled by the question. Time had lost its significance. Her death had passed into another dimension, free of time’s boundaries, like the xronos and kairos of classical Greek.[2]

Though the loss is not now as acute or raw, it is still vivid. As I reflected on this phenomenon, I began to see that the veil to eternity was parting. No longer was time a factor to forgetting something from the past or an asset to achieving something in the distant future. Instead I found that I could part the curtain, could see through the glass, and experience the joy of eternity. Indeed, God was helping me to see in the mirror and on the other side of the mirror more clearly, as he had promised in the referenced scripture above. Simply stated, I was growing in my grief.

Exercise #1 – A Sufi asks the student, "Who were you before your mother and father were born?" What better question to plumb the timeless and space-less dimension of eternity. This was the question that I asked a dear friend who was dying of cancer and sought a consolation, a confidence, for which a successful career did not provide or prepare him.

Describe below an experience where time seemed to lose its hold on your attention. It might have been when an incident was unfolding that you had anticipated, a moment of fear that seemed to last an eternity, or was over in an instant. The purpose of this exercise is to break the bounds of time, the control the watch on your wrist holds, by demonstrating its insignificance in the wake of the truly memorable moments -- good, frightening, or deliriously joyful – in your life. Think, remember, and express yourself now

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