Duets of Wonder and Grief

There is a poem by Mark Nepo entitled “Adrift.” (Google search it and you can read the whole thing!) One line in particular stuck out for me:

“This is how the heart makes a duet of wonder and grief.”

These times certainly feel like a duet of wonder and grief.

It’s as if these times are a round, wonder and grief singing over one another. Which one will complete the song?

With these two emotions singing through our lives, singing through these days… we kinda just want to know how it will end. Will wonder or grief win the day?

The grief…

How much we took for granted.

The ability to go out and linger at a restaurant, celebrating a birthday, gathered around a table with those you love.

The ability to go to a concert, or a live performance, or cheer on your favorite team at the ballpark.

The ability to visit with relatives worry-free. Who knows when we’ll be able to do that again.

Thanksgiving, then Christmas will pass - without all the usual festivities and gatherings.

We’ll still celebrate somehow. But it won’t feel right. Apart from the boisterous cousins, three different kinds of pie, cooking so much that you’d have leftovers for days. The turkeys will be smaller, and there will be no “Friendsgiving.”

Wonder and grief comingled, swirling around us like oil and water.

The wonder...

The wonders of fall foliage.

The joy of kids biking around the neighborhood with their friends.

The deliciousness of pumpkin-spiced things, and candy corn. (Don’t like these?! Pick your favorite treat!)

Wonder and grief, swirling around, singing their duet. But they are a bit out of tune. They can’t make the harmony work. Which one will finish the song?

“Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul,

And sings the tune without the words

And never stops at all” 

wrote Emily Dickinson.

In these times we have to keep singing, without knowing all the words.

We have to keep singing, but what is our song?

What is my song? I don’t yet know all the words…

Maybe I’ll just have to hum along for a while, until the words of the song come to me.

Wonder and grief comingled, and I am caught adrift.

Adrift. Maybe we are always there.

But it's hard being tossed around between wonder and grief.

I want to be on some sort of solid ground,

Some sandbar that rises up out of a tumultuous river.

Wonder and grief, all mixed together.

Singing their high and low notes, the major and the minor chords.

I am still looking for the song to sing.

And maybe that's the thing, the crucial thing...

To keep looking.