The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief

by Francis Weller

To be empty, to feel empty, is to live in the wasteland near the gates of death. This is intolerable to the soul. We were not meant to live such shallow lives. Our heritage and our psychic makeup are designed for an elaborate richness of imagination and creativity that allows us to feel intimately connected to the ongoing creation. We were meant to drop below the surface of things and to experience the depths of life in the same ways that our deep-time ancestors did. Their lives were filled with story, ritual, and circles of sharing. Their lives were not shamefully hidden away but known—losses, defeats, grief, pains, joys, births, deaths, dreams, sorrows; the communal draw of life was open and acknowledged. This is what the soul expected, what it is we need today.