Devotion to What Is Dying

Mirabai devoted herself to an image—a statue, a memory, an impossible beloved. Her devotion did not change the beloved's nature but transformed her relationship to longing itself. In civilizational anticipatory grief, we are called to devotion to what is dying: a species, a language, a way of knowing, a climate now departed. This devotion is not grief-stricken clinging but sacred attention. We sit with the bee, the glacier, the apprenticeship tradition. We learn its nature. We create beauty in response. We pass on what we have learned. This practice prevents the dissociation that allows destruction to continue unwitnessed. When we devote ourselves to what is passing, we restore it to the realm of the sacred and ensure that its departure is marked, mourned, and integrated into the story we tell about ourselves.