The following talk is given by Tara Brock, meditation teacher, psychologist, and author.

Last week I began sketching out a talk that I thought I'd offer tonight and I had

to completely trash it because it wasn't in the flow of my life and that

happens. As a number of you know, I think we're to spread some. My mom died last

Saturday and so what became very much the place to pay attention was this whole

realm of loving and losing which is what I'd like to have us have a kind of

shared reflection on tonight and with this understanding that being close

into birth and death and loss and change is what really is our entry into the

mystery. We're words kind of dissolve and we really enter what's most real

and alive and I'm curious to ask of those here how many of you are living with

either a recent loss or an impending loss. It's really it's a real alive place for

you in your heart. How many of you are in that? Thank you. For those that are

listening I would say that was about 30% maybe of you and I know that because

it's so universal even if it's not immediate or impending that each of us were

mortals. Everybody we love is mortal. You know this world is changing. Each of

us inevitably have seasons of our life where our hearts get really gripped by

the the ache of loss and I shared I've been pretty public actually with this

and I had a lot of people invited comments on Facebook and the shareings whether

it was losing a child or a best friend or a parent Alzheimer's the shareings the

depth of collective wisdom because I really said what what have you been

discovering in this world of loving and losing that was kind of the question.

So as I explore tonight I'll be drawn on on both the spirit of a lot of the themes they

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