One of my friend Joe’s favorite programs was “Morning Joe with Joe Scarborough” on MSNBC. He recorded it every day and listened to it off and on. So instead of “Morning Joe”, I am entitling this ” Mourning Joe”, and like “Morning Joe ” it will have many episodes.
After recounting the trauma that I went through, along with Joe’s wife and family, and friends, when we suffered the tragic, unexpected, sudden death of Joe, peacefully aqua-jogging in his pool, a friend sent me this beautiful meditation on mourning from Tara Brach:
“In the Lakota tradition, a person who is grieving is considered most waken, most holy.
There is a sense that when someone is struck by sudden loss, he or she stands on the threshold of the Spirit World.
“You might recall what it’s like to be with someone who has grieved deeply. The person has no layer of protection, nothing left to defend. The mystery is looking out through the person’s eyes. For the time being he or she has accepted the reality of loss and has stopped clinging to the past, or grasping at the future.
“In the groundless openness of sorrow, there is a wholeness of presence and a deep natural wisdom.”
Our American Indian brothers have a special insight into grief. They sense that when one has a sudden, unexpected loss, one suddenly leaves this present outward consciousness, and mysteriously, even mystically, enters into a deeper, inner consciousness. Is it in pursuit of the spirit of the lost loved one?
This morning, I heard that the German mystic, Meister Eckhardt, of the thirteenth century, says something along the same lines as the Lakota. He says that the experience of death, whether of a loved one, or even, mystically, our own death, is an experience so deep within ourselves that we mystically become one with God. He says it is a joy that death cannot destroy.
This is the joy, in the midst of pain, loss, grief, and sorrow, that I pray we all will know: the joy of life that death cannot destroy. May this be true of my friend Joe’s death, and true of our own death which we don’t have to die to experience. We can have it now if we listen to the silence within us.
Sal Umana 