Holy Offerings

Second in a series exploring how writing helps us navigate grief.

Photo by Dinara Guseinova on Unsplash

There are many of us writers, especially those who aren’t famous in any way, making deeply felt offerings with every post. Our stories, poems, even our blowhard rants are made whole cloth out of the stuff going on inside of us. We pull at our intestinal taffy, gather ghosts from the past along with the riff-raff laying around in the darker corners of ourselves, spinning it all into threads that might shine, hopefully worthy of gathering up in some way.

We make these offerings not only to be noticed and appreciated, that’s nice to be sure, but also to give to a world that is desperate for nourishment and deep healing.

For many of our ancestors, poems and stories were also sacred offerings—sources of great healing. A tribe could be made right by the telling of the perfect story at the right moment, as in the ancient tale The Settling of the Manor at Tara. Through the retelling of how the king’s land was first organized, the people’s hearts are healed. The power of words to wound or cure was woven into daily life.

My Irish ancestors were fond of speaking poems as offerings at the holy places of the land. These could be the earthen mounds of the Sidhe, Fairy Forts, natural springs, or trees known to be especially loved by the spirits of a place. Springs were not only sources of life but places where the Sidhe, people of the Otherworld, traveled from their lands into ours. It was always wise, when passing such a place, to have something good to offer. It could be a small amount of milk, honey, some whiskey or bread, or perhaps a story or poem. It’s clear that the spirits of places regarded poetry and stories as sacred gifts, quite satisfying as offerings go.

I’ve been aware, as I’ve made offerings at different times in my life, how I’m changed by the practice. When I stop at a sacred place, or in the presence of spirits I wish to acknowledge, I come into relationship with the essence of those beings. I slow myself down, center, become aware of where I am and who I am. It’s from that very quiet place I give thanks and my offering. I am making a connection, awakening a relationship.

Remembering our relatedness lies at the heart of making any kind of holy offering.

It's common in many cultures to make offerings to those who have passed on - the well-departed ancestors. Ancestor altars are part of the rich fabric of too many cultures to mention. They can be as constant as a family altar in the home or as wildly festooned as a densely populated Mexican graveyard on Dios De Los Muertos. When we make offerings to the departed we acknowledge our relationship with the dead, even through our grief, even across the unfathomable terrain that separates us.

These offerings connect us to the dead while not diminishing the boundary that separates us.

In both my work as a shamanic practitioner and as a widower and griever, it’s clear that those who have moved on need us to have good boundaries in order to be in our lives. The dead know we need to get on with the work of living, following our own path, not clinging to them. I say this as a husband who clung to his wife with a mad hunger well after she had passed. Having spent so much time studying death & dying, volunteering at hospices, caring for the ill, practicing shamanic arts related to death, I assumed I’d have her spirit on speed dial. Definitely not the case.

I learned over time, through my many offerings of writing, to develop the boundaries I needed to have to feel her presence with clarity and ease. That doesn’t mean I was giving up my relationship with her, but I had to let go enough to see the new relationship being offered.

And it is a relationship, renewed in its own unique way. More and more people involved in therapeutic grief work acknowledge and support the relationships people have with those who have died. It’s become clear we have a deep need to honor and receive the presence of our beloveds after they’ve died. They can be a part of our daily lives. Writing is one way we can create more room for that relationship to develop and thrive.

I’ve written many poems that are offerings to my late wife, speaking directly to her spirit. “How Swans Grieve” is one of my favorites. It allows me a little denial along with acceptance.

How Swans Grieve

I didn't let you go
when I stopped searching for you.
I just settled in,
watching loneliness
tint my feathers.

Stroking the water with my legs,
I comb your hair with my fingers,
tasting forage,
tasting you,
intoxicating.

In your absence
I decided you are part of this marsh.

When I whisper to the Cattails
I am telling you secrets
about other people's Cygnets,
and laughing at the way
bugs chatter in the mud.

You are beside me,
as I drift across our home
with hungry children.

I love how Swans embody both seriousness and profound grace, but can also be ridiculously petulant. I identify whole heartedly with that. I also love the feeling of how the presence of those we’ve loved and lost can infuse everything in our lives, from the sunrise to the smell of food in the kitchen to the feeling of sliding beneath a heavy comforter and squeezing the other, unused pillow.

There were of course days when I still struggled, but those struggles are a necessary part of the shifting relationship. Like picking apart a painful knot, it has to be worked through if the string is going to unravel.

New Patience

These burrs,
matted into us
when we first fell together
have become the company
I can’t let go of.

Maybe I’ll pull one of our worried knots apart today
because you would want me to
let go a little more.

This tiny hurt is nothing like
losing you.

The process of unknotting, accepting, and then receiving continued for many months. Here I’m finding her in the world around me again, as she enchants forests and joins the chorus’s of birds near our home.

Braided Nests

She only cut her hair in March,
throwing it out the back door
so the birds would weave it
into their nests.

She clapped in delight
as each new lock was lifted
to the branches of the Oak forest.

After she died
she spent more time with nesting birds
in the many groves
she called home.

Now she is known
by every tree
and bird,
braided into every nest.

When I share these poems I’m also making offerings to her, and enabling them to be witnessed by the world. People may say I’m keeping her memory alive, but I’m doing much more than that. I’m greeting her soul across the great terrain I too will cross some day. I send her the gifts of my poems, that we may both still feel each other, and feel our place in the many dimensions of Spirit.

Look for more posts about writing and grief. I’ll be posting about keening, and transformation over the coming weeks. Find the previous post Cairns here.