Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief
Book Review Submitted by Sister Meg Fleming
The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief by Francis Weller appeared in the midst of my “books to read” beside my chair. Seriously, I do not know where it came from, and I checked Amazon to see if I purchased it. I did! I picked it up, intrigued by the cover and the title!
Weller names five “gates” through which grief enters our lives.
- Everything we love, we will lose
- The places that have not known love
- The sorrows of the world
- What we expected and did not receive
- Ancestral grief
Grief is the loss of someone we love and so much more. Loss brings us to our God, who comforts us. Grief holds a depth that opens our hearts and brings us to a God who wants us to belong to community.
Prayer has helped me coin a phrase that opens my heart – the phrase is “Grief Catchers.” Some of the losses we experience daily are personal and bound together with others: transition from one convent to another, life not the way it used to be, changing relationships, and facing the thresholds to a new reality in community life. These are the “grief catchers” in our community. Look further and see the “grief catchers” in our world: the destruction of our natural resources, the division, the violence, the polarization of leaders, and starving children throughout the world. We are bound together in these losses because love and loss are a part of us.
The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief is not listed as a spiritual reading book, and I did not once read the word GOD, but GOD fills every page!
Weller, Francis. The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2015.