Most of us quietly carry a daily mix of anxiety, guilt, frustration, anger, and despair about our disappearing winters and terrifying storms, and the loss of plant, animal, and human life weighs mightily on our consciences. Without ways to connect to one another and the sacred in the intensity of our emotional distress, we lack the healing and clarity of mind that true grieving offers us.

Without grieving, our very human need for catharsis overshadows every other action we take. We sign petitions or argue with strangers in order to feel like we've "done something," not because we have a strategy or a working theory of change. Panic, not wisdom, ends up driving us - and often it drives us out of relationship, not into it. Our ungrieved grief makes us sick, isolates us, and brings us closer to giving up hope.

Artist, activist, and Florence Congregational Church pastor Rev. Dr. Marisa Egerstrom will lead an opportunity for healing grief in the Bombyx backyard. Her large sculpture, The Great Stump, will be on view from July 27th  to August 17th. On July 27th, we'll gather at the stump to acknowledge the immensity of our feelings, support one another, and allow the Mystery to cleanse us with good grief so that we may think more clearly and engage our whole hearts in the work we can only do together to heal our ailing planet.