LIVING THROUGH DIFFICULT TIMES

• FALLING INTO GRACE
   The Terrible Beauty of Transformation

All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is borne.
– W.B. Yeats

Night Divers, Margie Sheppard www.margiesheppard.com

At the heart of any authentic, adult spirituality is the invitation to transformation. But the soul’s summons to transformation often comes as a “terrible beauty” instigated by difficult circumstances, unsettling experiences, or life-changing events. These happenings mock our expectations, ruin dreams, destroy plans, and wreak havoc on our lives. They call into question our easy assumptions and prized convictions about ourselves, others, God, and how life “ought” to be. What are we to make of experiences that break us open and what are they to make of us? Is it possible to understand them as holding sacred possibilities? How do we make sense of or accompany others going through the process of transformation when it is initiated by the painful experience of loss, grief, disappointment, failure, betrayal, tragedy, darkness, intense suffering, or being broken open by life?

• GRIEF & GRACE
The Sacred Possibilities of Loss and Anguish

The only things that are certain in life, the saying goes, are death and taxes, which is another way of saying loss. Life guarantees the experience of loss and loss triggers grief.

Not a grief workshop, this presentation will provide a spiritual paradigm that takes seriously the disruptive nature of loss, the anguish of grief, the importance of mourning, and the way toward the hope of new possibilities.

Using a dynamic pattern for structuring, entering into, and understanding loss and grief, we will explore the transformational potential inherent in these disorienting types of events.

In addition to the presentation we will take some time to reflect on our own history and experience of loss.

This presentation will benefit anyone who has ever or will ever experience loss and grief– which is everyone. It will be especially helpful to anyone trying to make sense of old hurts or a recent loss and grief, as well as to those working with the bereaved.