Welcome!

Welcome! This is a place to share how we celebrate & deepen our relationship to Nature. Here you will find stories, images, & ideas about wilderness, human nature, & soulfulness. Drawing from the experiences of everyday living, the topics on this blog include: forays into the natural world, the writing life, community service, meditation, creativity, grief & loss, inspiration, & whatever else emerges from these. I invite you on this exploration of the wild within & outside of us: the inner/outer landscape.



Friday, March 6, 2015

Hospice

I have within me a deep and fiery need to hold close, private, discreet, those precious moments in a person’s final earth journey; sometimes this has oozed out onto a private, confidential journal page.

Hospice is sacred work.
Hospice is intimate work.
Hospice is heartwrenching, achingly poignant work.
Hospice is beautiful work.

Being a hospice volunteer does not entail cleaning bedpans, administering medication, watching someone suffer, trying to fix anything, telling anyone how to be or what to believe or when…to…anything.

It requires quietude. It asks for an ability to reach into the cavernous depths of heart, of soul. It asks for connection, simple shared humanity. Simple shared breath. Simply the Nature of life, of Death, of Being and then Not-Being.

It is about presence. Deep, abiding presence.

It is ever-shifting work: a landscape that is fluid and bright, dark and murky, brand new and ancient.
There are no prescribed means for this other-focused compassionate attention.

It is a thing to behold.

It is a passionate calling.


All blog images created & photographed by Jennifer J. Wilhoit unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: "©2015 JenniferJWilhoit/TEALarbor stories. AllRightsReserved."
Posted by at