Ram Dass wrote a letter some years ago to a family who had lost their young daughter, Rachel. Although he wrote it to these two parents specifically, everything in this letter applies to anyone who has lost a child.
Dear Steve and Anita,
Rachel finished her work on earth, and left the stage in a manner that leaves those of us left behind with a cry of agony in our hearts, as the fragile thread of our faith is dealt with so violently. Is anyone strong enough to stay conscious through such teaching as you are receiving? Probably very few. And even they would only have a whisper of equanimity and peace amidst the screaming trumpets of their rage, grief, horror and desolation.
I can’t assuage your pain with any words, nor should I. For your pain is Rachel’s legacy to you. Not that she or I would inflict such pain by choice, but there it is. And it must burn its purifying way to completion. For something in you dies when you bear the unbearable, and it is only in that dark night of the soul that you are prepared to see as God sees, and to love as God loves.
Now is the time to let your grief find expression. No false strength. Now is the time to sit quietly and speak to Rachel, and thank her for being with you these few years, and encourage her to go on with whatever her work is, knowing that you will grow in compassion and wisdom from this experience. In my heart, I know that you and she will meet again and again, and recognize the many ways in which you have known each other. And when you meet you will know, in a flash, what now it is not given to you to know: Why this had to be the way it was.
Our rational minds can never understand what has happened, but our hearts – if we can keep them open to God – will find their own intuitive way. Rachel came through you to do her work on earth, which includes her manner of death. Now her soul is free, and the love that you can share with her is invulnerable to the winds of changing time and space.
The Gender Equity and Reconciliation process seeks to heal the profound wounds around gender, sexuality, and relational intimacy. It brings together people of all sexual orientations and genders to jointly confront gender disharmony to reach healing reconciliation. Will and Cynthia have developed the method over 28 years, introducing the practices in nine countries.
Gender reconciliation’s startling successes in South Africa have played a role in transforming that country’s AIDS and HIV policies, and exciting new academic research on the program is underway at two South African universities. Learn more about the work of Will Keepin and Cynthia Brix via their organization, Gender Reconciliation International.
Will Keepin and Cynthia Brix with Bishop Desmond Tutu
This powerful presentation is well worth pausing for.
Rod Haden, Producer of Caterpillar Goo, interviews men from the Men’s Fellowship Network: Circles of Men Project on various topics related to men, compassion and mindfulness, and the counter-intuitive approach Clay Boykin uses to create a safe space for men to learn trust and connect on a heart level.
Charles Barker MD, MPH is founder and president of Compassionate Dallas/Fort Worth, a non-profit organization that promotes the Charter for Compassion, the value of compassion and compassionate action in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex, using the Golden Rule as operating principle.
He is currently president of Compassionate DFW and moderator of the Board of Directors, a board representing all twelve sectors of the international Charter and encourages and coordinates the Community Campaigns, as well as partnerships in the DFW area. His background and experience is in the field of medicine, with emphasis in preventive medicine and biomedical ethics, frequently facilitating medical school ethics sessions at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. He is currently authoring a book centered on being and becoming excellent, a series of reflections.
Rod Haden, Producer of Caterpillar Goo, interviews men from the Men’s Fellowship Network: Circles of Men Project on various topics related to men, compassion and mindfulness, and the counter-intuitive approach Clay Boykin uses to create a safe space for men to learn trust and connect on a heart level.
It is better to speak the same language of the heart than speaking the same tongue. – Rumi
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According to Ethnologue, an online resource on world languages, there are more than 7,000 living languages. Some are spoken by hundreds of millions of people, some by much smaller communities. Twenty-three languages account for more than half of the world’s population. All of them have the same goal and function: To communicate thoughts, meanings and feelings between humans. In the extremely diverse world of languages, we express our ideas and feelings and say something to ourselves and other human beings. We state the meaning of our actions through words and sentences. Ideally, we resolve our differences through rational communication. But can speaking the same language always allow us to express our ideas properly?
There are instances where speaking the same language does not help overcome clashes and conflicts. This is where we need more than linguistic capability to reach the minds and hearts of our fellow human beings. This is where Mawlana Jalal al-Din Rumi enters in when he says, “It is better to speak the same language of the heart than speaking the same tongue.” Meaningful thoughts, expressed through language, make sense when they reach not just the minds but also the hearts of our interlocutors. They have an effect on our souls and minds when communicated through the language of the heart.
Words spoken through the language of the heart can be heard only when they come from another heart. This means that we have to train our hearts to speak to other hearts. Rumi believes that all human beings are endowed with the capacity to speak this language. As a matter of fact, the Islamic intellectual tradition holds that the heart is an epistemic organ as important as the mind and the intellect. The heart is not just the abode of feelings and emotions. It is also a depository of thoughts, ideas and meanings. One of the costly mistakes of modern philosophy was to turn the human heart, the seat of blissful and realized knowledge, into a purely sentimental and psychological faculty. cont’d
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