Grief and Praise, Martin Pretchel

YouTube Video

From New Mexico, he traveled to Guatemala in 1970. There he moved into a Tz’utujil community near Lake Atitlán. He learned their Mayan language and studied with a shaman. He settled into village life, married a Tz’utujil woman and had a family with her. During the extended Guatemalan civil war, Prechtel and his family fled to the United States for safety. The couple separated, and their two sons joined their father in the United States. He began teaching, based on his understanding of Maya spirituality and contributed to workshops sponsored by poet Robert Bly, a leader in the Men’s Movement. Prechtel has published several nonfiction books drawing from his time in Santiago Atitlán, Guatemala; the first was published in 1998, and the most recent in 2015. Prechtel moved back to New Mexico near Ojo Caliente, where he operates a school. He also lectures and gives workshops on spirituality.

In this talk, Prechtel talks about how the ability to grieve and the ability to laugh are intertwined in the Maya worldview. Our mortality raises the stakes, dying is built into living. Praise is a form of celebration that honours being alive, but if praise does not contain an element of grief it is not praise in the true sense. You have to love the thing you lost just as you have to love the thing you have. In that sense praise is loving the thing we have, while the grief in praise acknowledges how tenuous the having and living is.

This resource is related to Course II: Who Are You? Self and Other. If you are interested in purchasing this course from our on-demand library of courses click here.

[Immune System. Adaptive Immunity. Grief. Praise.]