The Long Devotion: Sustaining Care Across Seasons

Mirabai devoted her entire life to her practice, through periods of ecstasy and periods of abandonment, through social approval and exile, through youth and old age. She did not expect one breakthrough to resolve her longing; she lived the long devotion. Anticipatory grief can be destabilizing precisely because it feels permanent—the crisis never fully resolves. Mirabai's model shows how to maintain practice and commitment across seasons, without requiring constant breakthrough or progress. This involves building rhythms and practices that can be sustained through fatigue, doubt, and changing circumstances. It means finding the spiritual equivalents of daily bread—regular practices (meditation, time in nature, creative work, service, community) that don't depend on external conditions or emotional states. The long devotion asks us to commit not to a specific outcome but to a way of showing up, again and again, to what matters. This sustained practice, more than any single realization, is what transforms both the griever and the world.