not for the faint of heart
One of the many challenging things I’ve found about Feri - for good or for ill - is the lack of liturgy and/or rituals that provide solace and comfort during times of grief. One might have a personal relationship with a Deity that will provide such solace, but otherwise AMFYOYO*.
This is another area where secular Buddhism dovetails into Feri for me, and provides support. Not solace, but support for the process of grief. You’re not going to get away from the grief (and if you try, not so healthy outcomes will occur), so here’s the tools to experience it, let it wash through you, letting the grief encroach and recede as it will. During this time of stress and grief, I give thanks to Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche for bringing these tools to those of us outside of the Buddhist lineages.
It’s been a day.
*Adios motherf*cker, you’re on your own.
The main thing I take away from Pema Chödrön is that the bad times are valuable, that they’re when the work is most productive.
That’s not exactly comforting, or not directly; but it does peel away one layer from the “It’s all WRONG” head I can get into. It never turns into “How wonderful — I’m miserable! Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to work I go!” But sometimes “Oh crap. Crap. CRAP CRAP CRAP CRAP CRAP. What, and do work TOO!? Oh, all right, let me sit with this for a while. CRAP CRAP CRAP! Sit with CRAP CRAP CRAP it. CRAP CRAP CRAP” Etc.
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I like what you said about peeling away the layer of “it’s all wrong”. It hurts, but it’s “yes, this hurts, yes this sucks, and it’s okay that it hurts and sucks”.
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