What if life, beneath the surface, were composed of a series of transitions with the potential to break open our hearts? And what if our broken-open hearts could ease our approach to living? In my decades of hospital and hospice work, I have learned from those facing great challenge the importance of embracing pain. Whether the loss of a friend or loved one, a pet or long-held belief, a job or a marriage, home and community or physical capacity, pain breaks open the heart, catalyzing great courage, trust and creativity for living life joyfully. It also heightens our attunement to nature’s cycle of seasons, as well as our own, which moves us full tilt into our living and eventually into our own dying.
As a hospital and hospice chaplain, I have been amazed at how many people feel caught off guard when they realize they are dying. I believe this is because most of us have not learned how to consciously walk through the many changes in our lives that are the practice ground for the transition of dying.
Similarly, during the many memorial services I have officiated, I have often heard people comment on the unexpected nature of death and lament the deceased person’s short time on earth. What I have found, however, in working with people from all walks of life is for most people what is regrettable is not so much the lack of time they spend on earth but the lack of quality time.
My work and the work of the Compassionate Arts Project is teaching how to consciously use our everyday lives as the practice ground for living fully which will in turn move us into dying with peace, dignity and grace.
In 20 years of working in end-of-life care no one has ever said to me “I want to die a painful, agonizing, constricted death.” Most people if they are able to imagine their own death say they want to let go and trust the process, moving gracefully from this life into whatever comes next. Here is the catch: we die how we live. That means if I have lived a life of attempted control, hanging on and distrust, that is the way I will die. If I have lived trusting life, letting go and allowing, then that is how I will die.
There is a pattern that lays at the foundation of all change, whether personal change, the changes of nature or the transitions of loved ones. I call this pattern ‘the Cycle of Seasons.’ It is discussed in detail in my book The Power of a Broken-Open Heart; Life-Affirming Wisdom from the Dying. There is a natural cycle of life that knows what it is doing and we can learn to lean into it, trust it and allow it to change us. When we consciously take a look at this pattern, we come to see that the end of something, whether it is a job, a relationship or even a life, is always a doorway, which opens into expanded awareness and love.
It is the nature of life to shift, to change, to expand and to contract. The human heart is part of this cycle of change and it is good. We have a choice to tell ourselves and those around us it shouldn’t be this way or we can study it, work within it and allow it to break us open into new and expanded living. We are all on a journey of discovering the brilliance of the human heart and we are in good company.
