SOLACE: Soul + Grief
This podcast is sponsored by SOULPLUSGRACE serving the San José area, offering grief support and grief journeying with spirituality. We hope to help you travel through grief with God at your side. Candee Lucas, your host, is a Jesuit-trained-and-inspired spiritual companion to the dying and their families, friends and caretakers.
"I am a trained Spiritual Director for those who seek to complete the 19th Annotation of St. Igantius’ spiritual exercises. I have also worked as a hospital/cemetery chaplain and grief doula. I believe all paths lead to God and that all traditions are due respect and honour. I take my sacred inspiration from all of my patients and companions–past, present and future; the Dalai Lama, James Tissot, St. John of the Cross, the Buddha, Saint Teresa of Ávila, and, of course, Íñigo who became known as St. Ignatius. I utilize art, poetry, music, aromatherapy, yoga, lectio divina, prayer and meditation in my self-work and work with others. I believe in creating a sacred space for listening; even in the most incongruous of surroundings."
BACKGROUND
Jesuit Retreat Center, Los Altos, CA -- Pierre Favre Program, 3 year training to give the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius/Centro de Espiritualidad de Loyola, Spain -- The Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius of Loyola -- 30 Day Silent Retreat/Center for Loss & Life Transition – Comprehensive Bereavement Skills Training (30 hrs) Ft. Collins, CO/California State University Institute for Palliative Care--Palliative Care Chaplaincy Specialty Cert. (90 hrs)/Sequoia Hospital, Redwood City, CA -- Clinical Pastoral Education/19th Annotation with Fumiaki Tosu, San Jose, CA, Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius/Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA M.A. – Pastoral Ministries
SOLACE: Soul + Grief
Divine Presence in Every Breath
Discover the early church's view of breath as the Holy Spirit and how this ancient wisdom can guide you through meditations in personal grief. By focusing on breath, we can calm our anxieties, open our hearts, and invite divine presence into our lives. This episode is a compassionate guide for anyone navigating loss, offering ways to find comfort and spiritual connection. Join our circle of healing love and support, and allow the Holy Spirit to accompany you in your journey towards solace and renewal.
Be sure to subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Spotify, or follow us on the Facebook pages of Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Los Altos, California, or Calvary Cemetery in San Jose, California.
SPIRITUAL DIRECTION WHILE GRIEVING IS AVAILABLE FREE OF CHARGE
You can reach us at: ccoutreach@dsj.org
To arrange personal spiritual direction: 408-359-5542
Our theme music is: Gentle Breeze by Yeti Music from the album "Uppbeat".
Additional Music and sound effects today by: via Pixabay
Welcome to Solace: Soul Plus Grief. We're brought to you by Catholic Cemeteries in San Jose, California. My name is Candy Lucas. The death of a loved one is a huge life transition and we are learning it creates and affects so many other losses in our lives. So we at Catholic Cemeteries want to offer you this place to grieve and find where God's moving in your life as you grieve. Each week we take a new scripture or reflection and seek to find a quiet place in our hearts, together to contemplate our losses, honor our loved ones, remember God's place in our hearts and seek to make a continuing connection with those we've lost. We want to find that space where God is moving with us in our grief, that space where mourning can be transformed to comfort, a place where our hearts might be reopened and begin to mend, a place where tears can flow. For it is when we open our hearts that we realize that we've made a new space for more love and more compassion and for more humanity and more space for God in our lives. This is a space that we hope solace will begin to fill for you. Please join us if you are suffering or just want to spend more time having God move with you in your grief. You are always welcome here in our circle of healing love and support.
Candee:I look back and realized how many times I had recommended breathing and I know I've talked a lot about it in these podcasts breathing and how we control not even control, but be one with our breath, Start noticing it. Breathe with it. Pay attention to it. Breathe with it. Pay attention to it. In a way, it's like being still enough to notice the Holy Spirit moving within us, being still enough to feel that Spirit within us and around us. And if we're sharing time with others between and amongst us. And I know I have said before that breathing was the most primitive and first type of prayer because it acknowledged our oneness with the vibrations of the earth, with the movement of the air, the movement of the oceans and the seas, the movement of the sun across the sky and the moon and the stars, the idea that nothing on earth is perpetually still.
Candee:When I was a child, when I was a little girl in Iowa, my elders would always speak about hearing the corn grow, Saying it was growing so fast that you could hear it in the middle of the night. So oftentimes I would go out near a cornfield, late in the evening and on a very still night, you could actually hear it grow. It makes this tiny, tiny explosion sound as if it's something breaking forth, breaking out, emerging, filling a new space. In fact, that's what growth is. So I was thinking about this breathing aspect and how I had come to fall back on that for people who were having special anxiety or an especially difficult patch of grieving or struggle of any kind.
Candee:I realized how I always went back to breath. We don't need to control it. All we need to do is sit quietly and notice it. I often used to breathe with my dying patients, measure my breath with theirs, keep that time as if I were reaching out and being able to hold them with that breath. In that breath and I think of the many grievers I've spoken with over the years to whom the first thing I have said is just breathe, Just breathe. It's a fact that when you pay attention to your breath, your heart slows down, your anxiety does abate and you feel like you are more in tune with what's going on around you.
Candee:I recently heard a Jesuit priest, Father Manley from JST in Berkeley, talk about the Holy Spirit and how the early church described the Holy Spirit as breath, as wind, using both the Hebrew and the Greek words for breath, so we can calm as we grieve and know that this is the Holy Spirit, accompanying us, is with us, is noticing us, breathe in and breathe out. And when we are with others, the spirit moves between us as we all breathe in and breathe out, and you'll notice, if you've ever been in a group meditation, that there is something powerful when the group is breathing together, Some kind of vibration in the room. Maybe we're only tuning into our own humanness, but maybe, just maybe, the Holy Spirit is giving us space to hold ourselves, our wounded selves, in a sacred embrace for a sacred, in a sacred embrace for a sacred time, in a sacred moment. She acknowledges our losses, knows how our hearts are broken and just wants to be with us as we heal. She wants to demonstrate the road to healing, the direction to healing. She wants to be with us on the road as we seek the presence of Jesus in our grief. She clears the air and clears the way and brings him straight to our side.
Candee:That concludes another episode. Please support us by subscribing on Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts or Google. We always welcome your comments and feedback. Remember, spiritual direction is always available through Catholic Cemeteries. I'm Candee Lucas, chaplain, aftercare coordinator and spiritual director at Catholic Cemeteries. You can reach us through the email or telephone number in the show notes. Be gentle with yourselves. Travel safely with God. Vaya con Dios.
