SOLACE: Soul + Grief
This podcast is sponsored by SOULPLUSGRACE serving the San José area, offering grief support and grief journeying with spirituality. I hope to help you travel through grief with God at your side.
"I am a trained Spiritual Director for those who seek to complete the 19th Annotation of St. Igantius’ spiritual exercises OR seek spiritual direction while grieving. 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
CONTACT ME: candeelucas@soulplusgrace.com with questions to be answered in future episodes.
SOLACE: Soul + Grief
Intimate Loss: Grieving a Lover
The loss of a lover represents the most intimate and personal of all losses, one that people rarely discuss even in grief groups or therapy sessions. Through Pablo Neruda's powerful love poems, we explore how poetry can give voice to the unique grief of losing a romantic partner and provide comfort for those experiencing this particular type of loss.
• Grief differs across various types of losses, requiring different approaches beyond a one-size-fits-all solution
• The intimate nature of losing a lover creates unique challenges in sharing and processing this grief
• Pablo Neruda's Nobel Prize-winning poetry offers powerful language that captures the experience of mourning a lost love
• Poetry provides a way to express complex feelings of absence, continuing bonds, and the contradictory emotions that characterize romantic grief
Remember I'm always available for spiritual direction by Zoom to those who are grieving.
Listen every Friday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Amazon Music for spiritual direction, art, and workshops shared through Santa Clara University, https://events.scu.edu/markey-center/event/344943-spiritual-accompaniment
You can reach us at: candeelucas@soulplusgrace.com.
SPIRITUAL DIRECTION WHILE GRIEVING IS AVAILABLE
Art: https://www.etsy.com/shop/vasonaArts?ref=seller-platform-mcnav
and https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/candee-lucas
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F2SFH4Z6
Music and sound effects today by: via Pixabay
Welcome back to Solace: Soul Plus + Grief. I'm Candee Lucas, your host. I'm a grief chaplain. When we started this ministry almost five years ago, we hoped to help those who are grieving in various ways, various different losses, understanding that a one-size-fits-all is not always the best routine. So these podcasts offer different themes, different techniques, different ways of grieving, different ways of mourning and sharing the intimacy, the immediacy of your loss as you continue on your own grief journey and weave that loss into the fabric of your life. You're always welcome in our circle of healing, love and support.
CANDEE:The loss of a lover is the most intimate and personal of all losses, one that we rarely speak about, even in our grief groups, even to our therapists, even to those who help us grieve, because it's so intimate, so personal. So today I offer these poems from Pablo Neruda to address the loss of a lover.
CANDEE:The following is a series of love poems from Pablo Neruda, a 20th century Chilean poet who won the Nobel Prize in the 70s. These poems are particularly poignant and are in memory of a lost love, things which many of us struggle with, sometimes immediately, sometimes in anticipation of death and throughout the years after we've lost our loved one.
CANDEE:It's called Tonight I. I Can Write--Tonight Tonight, I Can Write the saddest lines. Write, for example the night is starry and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance. The night wind revolves in the sky and sings. Tonight I can write the saddest lines. I loved you and sometimes you loved me too. Through nights like this one, I held you in my arms, I kissed you again and again under the endless sky. You loved me. Sometimes I loved you too. How could one not have loved your great still eyes? Tonight I can write the saddest lines To think that I do not have you, to feel that I have lost you, to hear the immense night, still more immense without you, and the verse falls to the soul like dew in the pasture. What does it matter that my love could not keep you? The night is starry and you are not with me. This is all In the distance. Someone is singing In the distance.
CANDEE:soul is not satisfied that it has lost you. My sight tries to find you, as though to bring you closer. My heart looks for you and you are not with me. The same night, whitening the same trees. We of that time are no longer the same. I no longer love you, that's certain. But how I loved you. My voice tried to find the wind, to touch your hearing. Another's, you will be another's, and you were as you were before my kisses, your voice, your body, your infinite eyes. I no longer love you, that's certain. But maybe I love you. Love is so short, forgetting is so long. Though this be the last pain that you make me suffer and these the last verses that I write for you.
CANDEE:These poems are in memory of a lost love, things which many of us struggle with, sometimes immediately, sometimes in anticipation of death, and throughout the years after we've lost our loved one. --The light wraps you in its mortal flame, abstracted, pale mourner, standing that way against the old propellers of the twilight that revolves around you, speechless, my friend, alone in the loneliness of this hour of the dead and filled with the lives of fire, pure air of the ruined day. The bough of fruit falls from the sun on your dark garment, the great roots of night grow suddenly from your soul and the things that hide in you come out again, so that a blue and pallid people, your newly born, takes nourishment. O, magnificent and fecund and magnetic slave of the circle that moves in turn through black and gold, rise, lead and possess a creation so rich in life that its flowers perish and is full of sadness--. This one is called White Bee. --White bee, you buzz in my soul, drunk with honey, and your flight winds in slow spirals of smoke. I am the one without hope, the word without echoes, he who lost everything and he who had everything Lost. hauser, in your creeks, my last longing in my barren land. You are the final rose, o you who are silent that the night flutters. Your body, a frightened statue. You have deep eyes in which the night flails, cool arms of flowers and lap of rose. A butterfly of shadow has come to sleep on you. Ah, you who are silent. Here is the solitude from which you are absent. It is raining, the sea wind is hunting stray gulls, the water walks barefoot in the wet streets. From that tree, the leaves complain as though they were sick. White bee, even when you are gone, you buzz in my soul. You live again in time, slender and silent. Ah, you who are silent--.
CANDEE:The next one is called "we have Lost Even. We have lost even this twilight. No one saw us this evening, hand in hand, when the blue night dropped on the world. I have seen from my window the fiesta of sunset in the distant mountaintops, sometimes a piece of sun burned like a coin between my hands, I remembered you with my soul clenched in that sadness of mine that you know. Where were you then? Who else was there Saying what? Why will the hole of love come on me suddenly when I am sad and feel you are far away? The book fell. That has always turned to at twilight, and my cape rolled like a hurt dog at my feet. Always, always, you recede through the evenings towards where the twilight goes, erasing statues.
CANDEE:This one is called " I Like for you to Be Still. I like for you to be still. It is though you were absent and you hear me from far away and my voice does not touch you. No-transcript, as all things are filled with my soul. You emerge from things filled with my soul. You are, like my soul, a butterfly of dream, and you are like the word melancholy. I like for you to be still and you seem far away. It sounds as though you were lamenting a butterfly cooing like a dove, and you hear me from far away and my voice does not reach you. Let me come to be still in your silence and let me talk to you with your silence that is bright as a lamp, simple as a ring. You are like the night, with its stillness and constellations. Your silence is that of a star, as remote and candid I like for you to be still. It is though you were absent, distant and full of sorrow. It is though you were absent, distant and full of sorrow, as though you had died. One word, then, one smile, is enough. I am happy. Happy that it's not true.
CANDEE:concludes another episode. A new one drops every Friday. I hope you'll join us on Spotify, amazon Amazon or Apple Podcasts. Please contact me through my email in the show notes if you're interested in spiritual direction. While while grieving over Zoom,. take Take care of yourselves and your broken hearts. Travel safely with God. Vaya con Dios.
