I saw a little bird flying today. “You can not fly forever,” I thought, “Without returning to the earth for sugar.” The bird was high up and seemed safe. I thought, “You probably would like to stay up above it all, above the threats of feral cats and snakes. And sometimes you can. But all of those little flaps of those little wings take energy. You need sugar. And you have to risk the earth with its threats for its sweetness.”
A couple of nights ago Emma took me to The Sinclair in Cambridge, to see The Lone Bellow perform. (Happy birthday week to me!) Stephen Wilson Jr. was their opener. Like me, he grew up in Indiana. We grew up having very different childhoods in very different corners of Indiana. I was really taken with his music, his mumble, his beat up guitar, his presentation. I saw him up there, and I thought, “You are a story teller, dipping bravely down into your own story for some sort of truth, some sort of balm.”
A storyteller being brave is a powerful thing. I felt inspired. One of the things that he said from the stage—while singing a song that he wrote after his father died—was that grief is only love that’s got no place to go.
I think that’s a beautiful image. Beautiful and sad and honoring to the things, the places, the people we grieve. Of course, grief does go places. We are the places that grief goes. It moves through us. It comes and it goes in waves in us. Some waves are the size of relationships, and some of them are as big as the earth.
I told a grieving friend recently: Your intuition is trustworthy. Your body knows how to grieve. The only way through is through. There aren’t any shortcuts. Grief work can feel aggressive. And you are worthy of relief.
Share this post (or some other encouraging word) with someone on your heart who is worthy of relief.
You know the French adage: Il faut souffrir pour être belle. One must suffer to be beautiful. I don’t believe that quite to be true. And it’s a mighty dangerous adage in the hands of a patriarchal god. But, as with many dangerous ideas, it’s not devoid of hints of truth. Resilience is at the heart of beauty. And what an abundance comes to a heart that remains supple in loss!
Though we fly in our own ways, we’re blessed to be earthbound creatures. Blessed even to risk the trouble of cats in the branches and snakes on the ground. We are brave souls, we who live with purpose and intent, because living, in general, with anything that might be called sweetness, requires the primal courage of a songbird dipping to the earth for sustenance.
PS - This post pairs well with Rilke’s poem Rise Up Rooted Like Trees.
PPS - And also, of course, with Grief is Only Love, by Stephen Wilson Jr.
