The anthropologist, Margaret Mead, once said something about the United States that I believe also holds true about Canada. 

“Mourning has become unfashionable in the United States. The bereaved are supposed to pull themselves together as quickly as possible and to reweave the torn fabric of life. … we do not allow … for the weeks and months during which a loss is realized – a beautiful word that suggests the transmutation of the strange into something that is one’s own.”

Margaret Mead alludes to grief as something both personal and communal. 

Francis Weller, a wise elder in the field of grief work, has taught a much-needed antidote to the “memorialize and get back to work” process that Mead laments. I think she would appreciate Weller’s “FIVE (or SIX), GATES OF GRIEF transmutation process. 

These times call for a covenant, spoken, or written on our hearts, that says ‘in the best of times, and in the worst of times, we stand together in faith and action.’

• Service Leader – Sheila Laursen
• Musician – Kerry-Anne Kutz
• Zoom host – Christopher Thomson
• Refreshments – Sari Kelen
• In-church greeter – Nancy Graham
• On-line greeter – Nancy Schmidt

Topics: Community, Spirituality