Grief, and the idea of generational tasks.

Dear Friends,

In Duvall, WA a small group of us are working on a grief ritual in the Dagara tradition from Malidoma and Sobonfu Some, passed down to Francis Weller and Kim Scanlon of WisdomBridge. We are finding that big, deceptively simple questions are being raised by this process, such as:

What do we do with grief? What are appropriate and dignified ways to express it? What is it's purpose?

It seems likely that our ancestors had cultural technologies for dealing with grief, that they invited it as a sacred part of life and living. In America it seems that we have diminished knowledge of the questions above, and that is a problem.

The problem is bigger than that, though. It is that we haven't had a clue what to do with grief for many generations now, and consequently, I'd suggest that we are all carrying a burden of grief from our human and non-human ancestors. In England, where I am from, there is a cultural greyness, the "stiff-upper lip" that is a stalwart but limited response to (amongst other things) the losses of two world wars.

Perhaps grief is not something to be rid of, but to be metabolized. Perhaps grief is supposed to be lived, enacted with sacrality instead of swept under some heaving about-to-burst cultural and psychological carpet.

I'd like to invite the idea that as living generations we have a responsibility to grieve in a good way, and that this is a task that connects us to our ancestry, and those not yet born. I'd also like to suggest that grief isn't a dead-end road, but an invitation to a fuller life.

Good day, blessings to all.

Phil Bennett