This is a gift the priest/ess brings before the Beautiful Mourner, Isis the Weeper Who Transforms: an invocation offering of mourning.

I offer You, Isis, my mourning for there is nothing else I can do with it. How is it that something so empty can be called pain-full? I am abandoned in an ocean of pain so deep that there is nothing else. My tears are nothing but more salt for that bitter sea. My grief is nothing but a hole in my belly. I cannot breathe. I have no breath. There is no air. My mind is blank, unable to receive the words that are pushed at me. My heart? I have no heart.

Mourning is what we do when the loss is so great that we can do nothing else. Each of us who mourns has her or his own share of this hollow pain. But it is the pain of one human being at one time, in one place. You, Isis, You hear the cries of the world. You feel each heart breaking, You know every human cruelty.

The sorrows of a Goddess are deep. What then is my mourning compared to Yours?

Listen, O Isis, to the words of Mourning: “I am offered unto Isis for She is the Well of Mourning. She absorbs me and takes me into Her vastness. I am dissolved in infinity. I am mixed with all things. I am reborn as a child. I am the mystery of suffering. I am Mourning.”

Unto You, Isis, I offer my mourning and all things beautiful and pure. M’den, Iset. Accept it, Isis.

Thalia Took’s newest image of Isis mourning. You can get prints of this work here.

Right now, like so many of us, I mourn.

Right now, like so many, I am angry. I fear.

And right now, our Goddess hears us. She knows our hearts. She, too, has mourned. She, too, has raged. She, too, has feared. She understands us when we bring our hollow hearts and roiling bellies to Her.

She will hear us, hold us, advise us. In time, She may even heal us.

But before that healing, we must feel what we feel. The God has died and He must be mourned. We can share the burden of our feelings with others who mourn with us. We can share them with our Deities, with Her. Yet at some point, the mourning time will pass. And what will we do then?

If we would follow Her, then what we must do is rear the fatherless Child. We must take action. We must continue our Work. And perhaps we will find that we need to take up new work. There are rights that we thought we had won that will have to be defended—or even won back. If we join together we can do this. Let us not despair.

Instead, let us renew our dedication to our Deities and our spiritual work for this will strengthen our souls. Let us support progressive institutions with our dollars. Let us join with others in progressive organizations to work for the change we want to see.

Our Goddess is strong and practical; let us follow Her in this wisdom.

And on a final and yes, practical, note, here are some suggestions from Slate for some very specific things we can do once our mourning period has passed.