A WINTER OF MOURNING

Apprenticeship to Love: Meditations on this crooked path Feb 2, 2026)

TODAY'S MEDITATION

It’s 5am as I write this. There is more light in the sky, but it's still winter. Wet. Dark. Cold.

I'm in mourning. I’ve done a short practice to help move things — my body, yes, but also the feelings held in this body. I’m ready now, to meditate on death and grief, and love.

This dark, wet, cold time is a good time to sit with the things I too often leave in the dark. A lifetime of mourning unmourned, recently stirred. The garden is my teacher. Biding its time. Letting time and wet and rot reclaim so much that was vibrant in previous seasons.

This winter has brought difficult experiences to my body, my heart. Experiences of illness, dying, and death. They've come, some expected, others not so much, into my life and the lives of many near to me. I am, today and this season, choosing to pay attention. For this past month, early every morning, I am meditating on these things. On dying and illness, the loss of health and vibrancy, and on the recent deaths of loved ones.

Many things seem to matter in my life.

Death and illness and dying remind me that the only thing that really matters to me, the only thing that lasts, is the love I experience. I'm of an age where this is visceral. It's not just something to read on a card. I feel it in my knees and in my heart. Love.

I can —and I do!— create so many, many obstacles to this experience. Chief among these obstacles: my expectations. Death reminds me to get better at letting the obstacles, and especially the expectations I have of others, dissolve. Drift away. Leaving more of “nothing.” Leaving me more ready and more able to experience what's left: love.

-Rev. Hans

TODAY'S INSPIRATION

🌀The Conscious Warrior makes death an ally, using it to sharpen his present actions, future plans, and current state of being. (John Wineland)

🌀I like you. I like you more than I used to. (My beloved)