PURPOSEFUL GRIEF
I have never felt so bereft. And I have never felt more purposeful.
I do not recall the last time I sat down to compose a blog post. It would be easy enough to check. I just do not feel compelled to do so.
For those new to me and to my work, I am bereft because my beloved husband, Donald, passed away on November 8, 2025. At 10:49 p.m. I was holding his hand as he released his final exhalation. While he had been progressively ill for nine years, his death came as a shock. It was a shock that I am still grappling to internalize. To believe. To realize.
Donald died from complications of Lewy body dementia. In the last few years of his life, I provided almost total care. In early April of last year, I physically could no longer care for him. I made the excruciating decision to move him to a skilled nursing facility. From April until November, I lived alone in the home that had been ours. I trekked to his facility and watched as he continued his decline. His care was excellent. I went and I micro-managed that care. I was his loving husband and his fierce advocate. I personally participated in his care, and when I traveled, I spoke with him and to his providers with frequency.
And now he is gone. I have never felt so bereft.
I also am experiencing a deeper level of purpose than I have ever felt.
After two months of bereavement leave, I returned to my full-time position as a senior minister. I could not fathom how I was going to make it through the first Sunday service. And yet I did. And the second and the third. When the impulse to write began to move within me, I decided to give way to that impulse. As I type these words, I am uncertain as to whether this will ever be distributed.
And yet I continue to type. I listen to the movement in my heart and allow the movement to become words. I am imbuing every word with feeling. Feeling that is seeking expression. Grief. Sadness. Love. Loss. Purpose.
Purpose.
There were thirty years to the month between the deaths of my two spouses. I am a man who has been supremely blessed to have had not one but two incredible loves. Amazing love. Transformative love.
And agonizing loss.
I am a person who deeply believes that everything that happens has purpose and has meaning. I also deeply believe that it is fundamental to our evolution to discover and to embrace the purpose in what happens and to assign a meaning that serves our Soul and all who are involved.
Our pain uses us until we decide to use our pain.
And so, I am feeling the enormous pain in my heart, and I am also feeling the enormity of the equivalent love. I am intoning that love into words. I am processing the pain into pictures that I seek to share with you. I want you to read my words and feel my heart. I want you to taste the saltiness of my tears. I want you to hear the cessation of his final breath, and how it became a guttural howl that instinctively sounded through me.
I shared not quite seventeen years with the most delectably quirky, wise, loving, delightful man that I have ever known. No one has ever loved me like Donald loved me. No one will ever love me as Donald loved me. I am inexplicably changed due to that level of love.
And so, the impact of that love and of that loss is now an urgency to fulfill the purpose that is clear and passionate inside of me. The purpose is not new. The intensity has increased. Having once again faced death in an up-close and personal way, I am stunningly aware of my own mortality. I have lived far more years than I will accumulate in the future.
My time is now.
My heart is bruised. The grief is still new, and as the shock subsides, the waves are of tidal proportion.
And yet I am crystal clear that there is purpose in my grief. My non-negotiable commitment to emotional fluency and spiritual dedication makes my grief available to be used in service of a world ill-versed in feeling its pain.
Donald is no longer embodied. And yet my communion with his spirit is clear and comprehensive. As such, he will be a part of my creative expression for the remainder of my days. He will be in every sermon. Every class. Every podcast. Every blog.
Every blog.
I embrace that I will grieve Donald until I rejoin Donald with my final exhale. In the meantime, I will channel my grief into purposeful expression. Passionate expression. Full and free connection. I will hold you in your grief because I do not fear it.
For those who are the survivors of great love, there is great grief. It is the price we pay for being incredibly blessed. The love will always remain, and so shall the grief.
I do not lament that fact. I do not attempt to deny, suppress, or outrun the pain. Instead, I use it. I allow the grief to flow freely through my tears, my words, my counsel, my expression.
For you see, I have never felt so bereft. Or more purposeful.
Or more purposeful.
Rev. Taylor E. Stevens • January 28, 2026
The one thing I never wanted was the life I already had. The one person I never wanted to be was me. As a child, I had a vivid and dynamic fantasy life. I spent much of my time pretending. Pretending that what was happening at home wasn’t. Pretending that I was someone other than who I suspected I was. Pretending that I lived in a whole different reality than I actually did. Many children have imaginary friends. I had an entirely imaginary reality. At the center of that reality was an imaginary me that I thought would be accepted, cared for, and loved. If I could just get the lines and the staging right. If I could just present in a way that I thought would be acceptable. If I could just keep the unwanted parts of me from being exposed. Then I would have a life I really wanted. A self that I wanted to be. This is where I want to tell you, readers, that as I emerged from childhood, this fantasy world fell away, and I began to live in a self and in a reality that was real and true and actual. Wanting to tell you that would be reengaging a reality that, in fact, took decades longer to transcend. Part of this dynamic I believe to be cultural. In this country, we seem to be prone to always longing for something we do not perceive we have. We always want a different body, personality, family, persona, financial status, etc. We seem to always want more. Never enoughism plagues us. Not enough propels our perspectives and behaviors. Not good enough. Not rich enough. Not successful enough. I wince when I reflect upon how much of the life I had I missed by always wanting something different. By always wanting to be someone smarter, more attractive, more spiritual. I didn’t enjoy relationships because I wanted those around me to treat me better. With more respect. More love. I wanted people to treat me as if I were special because I deeply feared I was ordinary. I deeply feared I was ordinary. I was right. A quantum shift occurred for me when I discovered that I was indeed ordinary. I am an ordinary man living an ordinary life doing ordinary things in my ordinary reality. And that was an extraordinary realization. It was extremely stressful, always wanting my life and myself to be different. While I still aspire to being more spiritually awake and actualized, I do so from a place that is mostly content with where I am today. With what I am being, doing, and expressing. Where I am living. In this body and this house. This neighborhood. This vocation. This marriage. These friends and acquaintances. I have grown to want the life I have rather than always wanting a life I want. I even want the aspects of my incarnation that are difficult and challenging. While I would prefer to live in a body that is not arthritic and painful, I use the experience to bless and compassion the struggle that I am having. While I would prefer my husband not to be ill and unable to live at home, I deepen into the feelings that this brings with it. I feel solidarity with the countless people in similar situations. Wanting to be who I am and wanting to have the life I currently have has become a cherished practice for me. I cultivate it. I look around me and thank the elements of my life circumstances. I notice when I am in resistance to what currently is. When I want things to be different from what they are. When I am applying pretense to elicit a positive response. I can honestly say that the days of fantasy and pretending are long gone for me. I have preferences, yet they rarely become demands. I admittedly have an imperfect life experience. Yet somehow it is perfect for me. The one thing I want is the life I already have. The one person I want to be is the person I already am. And grateful I am. I was and am willing to want the life I have, and I do. I truly do. A grateful me living a life I am grateful for.
“It’s all in Divine Order.”
Is it?
Just the other day, I heard someone say to someone else, “It’s all in Divine Order.”
Is any intelligence truly artificial? I will not pretend to personally understand this whole new world of artificial intelligence. The few examples of AI that I knew were AI seemed intelligent to me, even if they were deemed artificial. I think you must be smart to engineer all of that. It is baffling to me. I guess that is a demonstration of my level of intelligence. A few moments ago, when I clicked to bring up Word to author a blog post, the program offered me the opportunity to have AI write something for me. What? It gave me a few examples of things it could write about. A fishing expedition. A child's party. A plumbing how-to. By the time I sorted my way through the AI suggestions and my overall surprise at the new programming, I forgot what I had intended to write about. So here goes. A Writer's AI. I guess there would be applications for which the ease and convenience of AI would be appealing. If someone were stressed by an overload of work projects, having something that could produce something for you might well be beneficial. I am not sure how that would apply to a fishing exhibition or a child's party. But it is not difficult to comprehend how a program that can write reports or documents for you might be appealing. I am intelligent to know that I am not the best writer in the world, nor is it my goal to become that. I am not an expert at grammar, and without spell check, I am in deep trouble. I write because I love to write. I love to write about what I love most. And what I love most is Love Itself. And there is nothing artificial about love. Even from this novice's perspective, I do not believe that AI can capture into words the depth of love I feel when I tap into the Infinite Intelligence within my heart. Nothing Infinite is artificial. Infinity is the ultimate intelligence. And this infinite intelligence is also infinitely loving. It is loving because it is Love. It does not so much love. It IS love. It is this Love that prompts me to want to create. To write. To lecture. To draw. To sing. Infinite intelligent love moves within my heart and seeks to be known via my personal creative expression. It isn't artificial. It is organic. It is authentic. It is intrinsic. I do not seek or want shortcuts through my creative expression. And so, I do not love fishing, so I do not engage in a program to blog about fishing. I do not have children. I could care less about plumbing. I use whatever limited yet authentic intelligence I have been granted to write about what I actually love. Love. I suspect there will be other writers who will agree with me. I do not want a shortcut through a process that brings me joy and fulfillment to be engaged in. There is nothing artificial about my creative expression. I do not put it out there for accolades or approval. I put it out there only for the sake of sharing my love. If it touches one heart, then I am grateful. I will leave AI writing to someone else. Someone who wants to rapidly and easily produce a product. That is not my goal. I will continue to find AI pretty darn intelligent. I may find other applications for it that I find advantageous. This will not be one of them. I freely admit that AI might produce a more polished product that I am capable of. I also know that it will not be a reflection of my love or my need to share that love. And I know in my heart of hearts that my love is indeed my greatest intelligence. This is this writer's AI. And I assure you, I wrote it myself.
Influencer.
I guess I am one.
And so are you.
“Just don’t do something. Stand there.” And so goes a Buddhist axiom I have always appreciated. In a world of so much doing, busyness, and activity, perhaps it is more important than ever to apply that directive. “Don’t just do something. Stand there.” The fifth Unity principle that I am sure many of you are familiar with is “Inspired Activity.” It is the fifth of five, and very often the one that garners the most attention. There are, however, four preceding principles that have little to do with action. At least not in terms of physical action. I have touched upon these principles in previous blogs. I will reiterate them in my abbreviated form thusly: God Is. I Am. There is a Law. I pray the Law. And then I take inspired action. Without a deep realization and activation of the preceding four principles the action is rarely inspired. It falls into the category of doing, busyness, and action for the sake of action. When activity is FROM an internal knowing of our innate “Godness” then the action is permeated with inspiration, organic creativity, and transformative power. When I tap into my intuition before opening my mouth, deciding, or taking an action, I know that I am coming from my highest and most vital Self. I trust that what I put out will result in a non-dual Good. My life experience has been a laboratory for proving this is true. I have countless personal examples when I have mindlessly said or done something when I did not access my higher intelligence before making a choice. I acted for the sake of taking action. I did something without standing there first. It was reactive and uninspired. I got caught in the mind spin and then acted from the chaos. It almost never ended well. We have by virtue of our creation an Infinite Intelligence within us. It is Sourced by Source. It is All Knowing Allness. It is ever present and infallible. It always, however, must be accessed and consulted. When we are spinning out of control without an internal prayer for guidance, we end up acting out of programming and often unconsciousness. “Without prayer, action is futile.” “And without action, prayer is futile too.” I personally believe that prayer IS action. It is an activity in consciousness. It creates waves in the Unified Field. When sustained, those waves become form. Intention, attention, focus by Law become manifest. Many of the things we rush around trying to make happen are pointless for the most part. If we fuel our activities with prayer, those activities are inspired and innovative. We create waves and then surf those waves. We pay at least equal attention to the realm of the unmanifest as we do to what is already in form. I invite you to live this day Higher Powered. Understand in a deep and personal way that there is within you a Genius. An Intelligence that knows the best way for you to live, express, act. It is a pause, a breath, a prayer away. “Don’t just do something. Stand there.” I double-dog dare you to do less and be more. The way of ease is the way of genius. We take inspired action because we ARE an inspired activity within the One. Align with that by standing there. Then take the actions you are led to take.
I am the least religious minister that you will ever find.
While that is as bold a statement as it is impossible to prove, I believe it to be true.
I did not grow up with a user-friendly God. If you have read my two previous blog posts, you will know I have taken on the impossible task of putting into words what is far beyond words. It is the primary challenge of what I have done for the past thirty years. I use words, concepts, and images to describe the indescribable. I paint word pictures of what ultimately cannot be seen. I try to energetically convey what is essential and yet invisible. As challenging as it is it is also the dynamic that continues to deepen and to open me to a more mature and engaging spiritual life. I am grateful for the challenge regardless of how frustrating it can sometimes feel. It is within and from the Essential that I live and so express. I spend the largest part of my days opening to creative ways in which to share what I find so alluring and transformative. I grew up in a religious home with almost no spirituality. I was taught about an up and out God that had little felt relevance to my actual experience. It was conceptual without being personal. This religion gave me the impression that something or someone was always watching and judging me as less than good enough. I could never measure up. I was told that this super God loved me, yet I was also taught of a cruel and murderous God who savagely tormented “his” creations. I could not reconcile theology with a whispering of something bigger and greater in my heart. I felt as if I were being lied to. That these fear-based fables were far from the truth that I sensed in my heart and throughout creation. I suspected that it was ignorance that was being preached from the pulpit. An ignorance that wasn’t inherently evil but that carried devastating consequences. As I have said before I felt like the God being portrayed had a personality disorder. Confusion filled me as I felt drawn to and yet repelled away from this “God” of the church. The crosses that filled every space were accusatory. I shuttered at every glance. I took it personally, even as a young child. That “old rugged cross” was indeed an emblem of suffering and shame. I did not have a user-friendly God. And so, I again seek to capture with words my experience of going from what I described above to what I live in now. It was not an easy or comfortable journey. It was arduous. It was a rumble. I gave up many times, only to be drawn back into my own internal fray. It was a burning passion that I grew to know as my primary purpose. I discovered I was here to go from the torment of theology to the triumph of a transcendent spirituality. While there remain occasional wafts of the old thought system, I can honestly say that a delivery has occurred. A personal salvation. A quantum leap in consciousness. In simplistic terms: I have grown up. I have grown up experientially from a theological God to a reality I choose to call ALL. That was the topic of my first blog post. From God to ALL has been the most transformative experience of my lifetime. It has been an internal quantum leap that has changed everything. For me there is no God above except that is everywhere present. It is ALL of creation, which includes me. That was the topic of my second blog. To simply those two missives: ALL Is. I Am. I am a living expression of Allness, here to be the All in All. Everything that ALL is, I am. All is my Essence. It is what I am at the deepest level of my being. All is always becoming within and as me. I am evolving up and forward as All. It is my most authentic why. I think of it and feel it as an “All Call.” Why I am is to answer the All Call within me. That is my purpose. And my purpose is empowered by All. And so, once again I seek to capture in words what is so ethereal, contextual, ephemeral and yet is moving within me in very real ways. It is All Power made personal in my inner experience. It is Infinite, and yet intimate. It is “Almighty,” and yet already within my heart as every beat. Every breath. An image that feels vital and alive for me is that I am a personal wave in the Sea of All. Everything that is the Sea is also in the wave. In my fascination with myself as a wave I forget I am part of the Sea. I identify with being a wave. I look at other waves, seeing them as separate as I see myself. I experientially crash into them, losing touch with the Allness that is ever present in every wave. Stormy or still, the Sea will always be the Sea. When this lifetime of being a wave ends I will resolve back into my natural state of “Sea-ness.” Me-ness is in fact Sea-ness. All is. I Am. Sea is. Wave I am. I smile typing these words as I feel a realization that Divine oceanography is for me more valid that most theology. Right now, I have many high waves of experience in my experience. There are moments I admittedly feel pretty seasick. Yet I remain aware that everything that is happening is happening within the Sea of Allness. I remain aware that at my core I am that Allness. I know that my personal sea will calm once again. For me that is an unmistakable reality. It is for me to surf the waves that are ultimately me, finding calm in knowing that I will always be the Sea. I share these images and these meanderings as they are part of what has given me a now “user friendly God.” The fear-based fright inducing theology of the past is just that: the past. While I personally don’t call “God” “God,” I trust you will feel my heart. When I say “user” I trust you will understand that I mean practical, personal, intimate, internal, reliable. I have learned to use the Laws of Allness to co-create a more hospitable atmosphere in which to dwell. Those Laws are not to be feared. They are to be used. I will elaborate on that in a future missive. While I did not grow up with a user-friendly God I have grown into One. It has taken many trials and many seeming errors. And yet where I reside today is so very worth the effort. And I relish the chance to share my journey with all of you.
Just typing the title words gives me a shame shiver up my spine.
The question always came with a glare and a dare.
This thing called God stopped working for me a few decades ago. I realize for some that may sound blasphemous. If I were referring to the theological God of my upbringing it would indeed be just that. I would likely be struck down before completing another sentence. Which is part of the reason this thing called God ceased to work for me. I grew up hearing that “God” is love, and that God is a Big Guy in the sky that seemed to have anger issues and a major personality disorder. “He” was always smiting something or someone. “He” sent plagues, drowned Egyptians, and ordered a blood sacrifice in the person of “his” only begotten. From an early age this felt bizarre, savage, confusing, and just plain wrong. I was taught that we were made in the image and likeness of “God.” That only made sense in that many people are bizarre, savage, confusing, and behave in ways that are just plain wrong. And that perceptual shift was the beginning of freedom for me. The problem isn’t so much that “God” made us in “his” image. The problem is that we made “God” in OUR image. Humans throughout the centuries invented theologies composed of misperception, projections, and shadow beliefs. The Big Guy in the sky was comprised of all the parts we little people here on earth could not account for or tolerate. We could not reconcile human incongruities, so we cast them toward the heavens and made up a lower place called hell to counterbalance it. It was when this thing called “God” stopped working for me that I felt called to start working for something bigger than “God.” From “God” to Allness has been the greatest adventure and deepest fulfillment of my lifetime. It was a quantum leap in consciousness. It feels as if it took a lifetime and yet happened in a nanosecond. Allness is what I choose to now call Source. Source Essence All is the Infinite SEA in which everything lives and has its Being. It is only up and out because it is Absolute and everywhere present. “All” is in that sense both up and out and down and in. I am comprised of non-dual Absolute All which is Law, and which is Love. It is Infinite Intelligence. It has no personality and so no disorder. People who are out of touch with All will project out a God that is more human malfunction than what the Allness actually is. God is objective and All is subjective. God is an object, albeit a Super-object. It is a huge He that generations have sought to appease, please, get to, ward off, satisfy, sanctify. It is outside of humanity, mostly looking down upon. Subjective Allness is the permeating Essence of literally All that is. It is All intelligence begetting Itself as creation ever creating. It is within us and all around us. It is relational flow. In this realm It is All that is, yet somehow also more. It is Allness somehow always seeking to be more via Its creations. The best thing that ever happened to me spiritually is when “God” stopped working for me. The concept of God was too ill fitting. It was unattainable as an object. It was a big man figure that I could never get or feel close to. As a felt-sense experience of Allness began to move within and through me I realized I was already within what I had been seeking. My breath was the breath of All. The animating presence in my body was All. There was no big man to appease or please. All is Life. All of Life. My life. My living. My love. All love. So, I pray you can feel below and above my words. Feel the Allness that already contains you, me, everyone and everything. Breathe it. Feel it. Let it be free within you. When the concept of God stopped working for me a far greater reality opened for and in me. It is what I term All. It is filling my heart as I type these words. It is a felt-relating that moves as a mobius from my heart to you the reader. It is bigger than God. It is All that is.
