Joseph Harriott

“When we are in the grips of illness, a major focus in our mind is the hope of getting back to where we were before this sickness began. But we are not meant to go back. Like the man above, who resisted hearing what his heart was saying, we must recognize that we have been uprooted by our cancer, our heart attack, or our depression, and we have been set down on some new shore. Like any true ritual process, we are meant to come out of the experience deeply changed.”
― Francis Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief

“One of my most memorable teachings about slowing down came from my mentor, Clarke Berry, a Jungian analyst with whom I apprenticed, following licensure. I was young, and I knew I was in need of a mentor, someone who could teach me the art of sitting with others in therapy. The Jung Institute in San Francisco referred me to Clarke along with other analysts, but when I met him, I knew I was in the right place. Our first meeting, over thirty years ago, was unforgettable. When we sat down, Clarke reached to his left, placed his hand on a large rock lying on a table, and said, “This is my clock. I operate at geologic speed. And if you are going to work with the soul, you need to learn this rhythm, because this is how the soul moves.”
― Francis Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief

“Illness strips away all excess, winnowing us down to the bare essentials. When the choice of denial has been stripped away, as it is in illness, we are brought face to face with our own mortal lives, our tender vulnerabilities, the old wounds that linger in our hearts, the fragility of flesh, and the immensity of soul. We are ushered into a darker night that sheds an astonishing light on our deeper and more genuine shape. The old stories, crafted in a mixture of childhood wounds and societal fictions, slowly yield to something more generous, elastic, and responsive to the life of the soul. We begin to experience a more vivid complexity that takes us out of the either/or world of adolescence and into the alchemy of our adult selves. Here, in this more ripened place, we can see how much more we can hold, tasting both the sweet and the bitter, the beautiful and the painful, all in the same moment. Everything we avoided for the sake of living in safety yields to a desire to encounter it all. We slowly recognize that no emotion is foreign to the soul, and every one of them can be welcomed as they arrive at the door. We gradually become able to embrace the full terrain of living.”
― Francis Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief

“So much in this world needs our attention. So much is threatened and clinging perilously to the edge of existence. We know this is true. Grief is our witness to these painful realities. Grief is also our response that confirms our intimate bond with all creation. When we leave here, it is essential that we feel that we did all we could for the generations to come, for this sweet earth, for all we loved. When we leave here, let us pray that life will continue after we are gone. Let us hope that whales will continue the migrations they have made for millions of years. Snow geese will still follow their instincts from the arctic to their winter grounds and back again. Monarch butterflies will swarm and fill the sky with their beauty. And whether we are in this world or have entered the vast realm of the ancestors, there will still be much for us to care for. As Rumi said, “This night will pass, then we have work to do.”95”
― Francis Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief