The weight of the world
I am on my knees and I am shuffling a bit closer still towards the big fire in the middle of the yurt. I want to feel its heat and pray it will give me courage. The grief ritual has been going for a while now; some people are crying, others are screaming or sitting silently staring in the flames, still others are sitting behind them or are dancing and singing. The past days I’ve grieved for different reasons but in this moment I feel swept away by an overwhelming grief for the general state of the world, that feeling for which the Germans have such a great word. Weltschmerz. The world’s pain.
As I am sitting flashes of news reports and images are unfolding in me. I remember a headline going ‘Das war es, oder?’ about the death of over 300 ton of fish and other wildlife in and around the river Oder after a man-made increase in salinity. It is as if the dam inside of me wants to break but I am terrified my heart will break too if I allow for it. Right in front of me is the abyss. This is dark terrain and I might never come back from it. I notice I am actually holding my hand on my heart as if I’m trying to cling to it. It is racing in my chest, I have difficulties breathing and I am seriously wondering if I’m about to get a heart attack. That was it, right?
That evening I retreat from the fire without actually grieving for the Earth. However, when sharing, I find out that others had similar experiences that evening when wanting to grieve for the same topic. At the core of the grief teaching we are working with, brought to Europe by Dagara teacher Sobonfu Somé from Burkina Faso, is the notion that we need each other to grieve. So we decide to approach the fire together with a handful of people who want to move the Earth grief the day after.
The moment I see one of these people at the fire the day after I don’t need to knock the door of my grief anymore. A wave is washing over me and I rush to the middle. This time my heart feels elastic and wide open. I am wailing and between the blur of the tears streaming down my cheeks I see more of the faces with whom we made the agreement. In this moment something feels incredibly right. To finally respond in a sane way to the immense losses that are going on non-stop. When we’ve collectively surfed the wave something has expanded in me. I feel I can actually breathe deeper and see more clearly. The grieving hasn’t fixed the world but it has made me capable of turning towards it instead of cutting off what’s too painful to witness. I feel ready to engage once again.