November 30 2020

By: Jackie Naginey Hook
Monday, November 30, 2020

To close this month’s posts about “After Death,” I’ll share this excerpt from John O’Donohue’s book, Beauty: The Invisible Embrace. Do these words ring true for you?

The dead are not distant or absent. They are alongside us. When we lose someone to death, we lose their physical image and presence, they slip out of visible form into invisible presence. This alteration of form is the reason we cannot see the dead. But because we cannot see them does not mean that they are not there. Transfigured into eternal form, the dead cannot reverse the journey and even for one second re-enter their old form to linger with us a while. Though they cannot reappear, they continue to be near us and part of the healing of grief is the refinement of our hearts whereby we come to sense their loving nearness. When we ourselves enter the eternal world and come to see our lives on earth in full view, we may be surprised at the immense assistance and support with which our departed loved ones have accompanied every moment of our lives. In their new, transfigured presence their compassion, understanding and love take on a divine depth, enabling them to become secret angels guiding and sheltering the unfolding of our destiny.

Leave a comment
Name*:
Email:
Comment*:

Comments

Please wait

Previous Posts

December 11 2023

I wasn’t always comfortable with the concept of, “Dare! Silence.” I grew up in a house with five kids and two parents, so silence was not something that happened often. When I began to practice a s...

December 4 2023

This month’s theme is “Dare! Silence.” Silence is very important throughout our lives, especially on our grief journeys. Silence can be intimidating, and we often try to fill it when we encounter i...

November 27 2023

To close this month, please read Anne Hillman’s poem, “We Look With Uncertainty” as you notice “something new is being born in” you while making new treasured memories. We look with uncertainty be...

November 20 2023

My favorite holidays is Thanksgiving. In terms of the meanings behind other holidays, I’m all in. But I can do without their hype and commercialization. So as we approach the Thanksgiving holiday, ...

November 13 2023

As I was writing this month’s posts about our theme of “Memories Become Treasures,” the song “Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac started to play. When our youngest child went off to college, this song mad...

November 6 2023

This month’s theme is “Memories Become Treasures.” In a recent grief education and support group I was leading we talked about looking at old photographs of deceased loved ones and how those pictur...

October 30 2023

To close out this month, read these words of poet John O'Donohue: The dead are not distant or absent. They are alongside us. When we lose someone to death, we lose their physical image and presenc...

October 23 2023

In the book, A Grief Observed, C.S. Lewis wrote: “And suddenly at the very moment when, so far, I mourned H. least, I remembered her best. Indeed it was something (almost) better than memory; an i...

October 16 2023

In connection with our theme, “I Am Gone but Very Near,” I’ve recently learned that in the Aramaic language, the word death means “existing elsewhere.” For some people, the death of a loved one mea...

October 9 2023

Nathasha Wagner once said, "I had to learn to have a relationship with someone who wasn’t there anymore." That can feel like an impossible feat, but grief shows us how. When listening to grief, mou...