Krista Tippett: As you move through your days, notice when you let grief turn you away from pain. Take this into your contemplation. Practice, if just in moments, staying present. See what shifts in you. See if you can let your love, your underlying love and the muscular hope that supports it, hold and transmute your grief into mourning, into the possibility of a future. And take this poem of Rilke in Joanna Macy’s translation and voice as a loving companion in that. ?

Joanna Macy: “Quiet friend who has come so far,

“feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,

“what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.

“In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.

“And if the world shall cease to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.”