I am a new reader, and have found a treasure in your writing. Could anyone speak more directly to my heart right now? I don’t think so.
Birds and Death, intertwined. Last year, my 25-year-old daughter died. She was a force of joy and light in the world. She taught me to notice and love birds. We spent joyful hours volunteering at a bird rehab, talking about birds, laughing at their antics and personalities.
Your writing is beautiful, filled with power and insight.
This week’s essay resonates so deeply.
“…time and again, darkness serves as a womb for beauty”.
That line hit me hard. In the early months of my grief I would never have believed anything good could come from my daughter’s death. But over time grief has allowed me to see more beauty in the world, especially in nature. Grief has changed my heart. And I now see those changes as a testament to the power of her life.
Like you, I have never heard a blackbird sing in the dead of night, but I have heard a solitary mockingbird sing on series of balmy Florida midnights. The magic of that song in the quiet darkness, the mockingbird’s message, remain with me.
Thank you for creating this peaceful place of beautiful writing.
Tina, I am extremely grateful to have you here. Thank you for sharing about the joy and the light that your daughter brought to the world during her time here--and the wonderful gifts she gave you. It's quite a thing, to delight in the wonder of birds alongside someone with whom you share a cosmic and unbreakable bond.
Grieving deeply is such an extremely powerful and potent form of love, I suppose it makes sense that it can totally alter the heart...deep bow to you for accepting the invitation to do so; not everyone does.
Tina -- your comment moved me deeply, and I just came here to say how much I appreciate the wisdom shared within them, and how sorry I am for the loss of your daughter. "...over time grief has allowed me to see more beauty in the world, especially in nature. Grief has changed my heart." Yes, I have experienced the same.
We are not apart from Nature; we are deep inside it, as much as the blackbirds are.
The idea that humans are outside Nature comes from the scientific method, where scientists are supposed to act as objective observers. Well, quantum physics threw all that out the window, saying this was not possible.
Humans are neither objective nor neutral observers. We are the same as the birds, except the birds know more. Humans have much to learn.
I’m tingling with wonder for so many moments in this, I can’t choose a favorite. Yes to “darkness serves as a womb for beauty.” And yes to your insight about “let nature take its course.” And yes to unspoken, uncomplicated communication. (Could the shared language be love?) As I listened and read your passage about black-white, either-or thinking, I thought, that’s the left brain with its need to sort, name, judge. Fortunately we are blessed with a right brain to communicate with blackbirds while sitting contentedly in the grass. Thank you, as always, for this sweet dose of beauty.
Julie, thank you for getting into the weeds of it!! Yes, I think it might well be love, uncomplicated and unconditional, there purely in response to being siblings of the universe. And I think you're right, my left brain is trying to keep me safe from the constant stream of perceived threats, and my right brain is trying to remind me of the truth of the greater context (thank goodness for that, and thank goodness for you)
She delivers a beautiful rendition that brought a tear to my eye, tbh.
Paul specifically wrote the song for the black women of the US civil rights movement, so the "dark black night" that the blackbird is singing in can be understood as Jim Crow America.
I have a health condition that often makes me wake up in the middle of the night to adrenaline dumps that make my heart race, and I just woke up to an especially bad one. I started humming “Blackbird” (probably because I was listening to the new cover by Beyoncé yesterday) as humming can help your vagus nerve calm down, and opened my email to find your newsletter. Serendipity! I have been working on holding space for duality in my life and moving away from binary thinking, and I appreciate what you said about labeling things in your life as good or bad. It helped bring an awareness to the way I do that too. I definitely label adrenaline dumps as bad, when they’re actually unpleasant, but morally neutral. Thanks for giving me something to ponder.
Kelly, thank you. I'm sorry for the adrenaline wake up, but glad for the serendipity, and also very grateful to you for reminding me to label some things as morally neutral! Excellent hack. Thank you for being here, wishing your nervous system much peace.
My poetic bent often dumps adrenaline during a dream and then I resort to deep breathing and a mantra. Humming is a good choice. Whatever it takes to calm down.
"The belief that the Universe, the One Song, might use some binary classifier to sort things neatly into good and bad so that karmic tabs can be kept, seems ridiculous—and yet it is surprisingly hard to shake." This was beautiful, Chloe, and I love how you suggest the image of the One Song of the Universe and then turn us back with "the Blackbirds know well that with a new season must come a new song."
Jeffrey, I am always so grateful for your considered and generous comments. I always learn something from you! This, poem...thank you. The line, "And he the first of insects to have earth / And sun together and to know their worth" was so deeply moving. I read it as the Blackbirds et al are beginning their evensong. I'm sending my thanks skyward to Thomas, and East, to you.
"Death is not coming to get us, Death comes to transform us"
and
"The belief that the Universe, the One Song, might use some binary classifier to sort things neatly into good and bad so that karmic tabs can be kept, seems ridiculous—and yet it is surprisingly hard to shake."
These are the two things that reached out to me here. (Obviously everything reached out to me, finding its way from your spring down to our autumn, but those are the two things with the longest arms).
Some day someone will assemble a book called "All the things Chloe said" and it will be full of rich quotes that make you nod and settle into the deep acceptance of life and nature. Thank you for enriching my morning, Chloe 🤗
PS yesterday we did a Forest Therapy walk around the Royal Botanical Gardens here in Melbourne. It was good, drawing on the Japanese tradition of Shinrin-yoku (forest bathing), which I must admit is a most romantic feeling to think that being beneath the leaves you are being constantly showered with the exhalations of trees.
So glad the arms were long enough to find you over there in Autumn-land, Nathan, thank you. That book is a terrifying prospect as, if it were true to its title, it would also contain a lot of absolute nonsense (eg. from the weekend, "Aren't screws and nails the same thing?"--David was mortified). Thank you for letting me join your morning, though, and I love that you did botanical bathing! It is a dreamy fact, indeed. It's all pretty dreamy, when you let you it in 🤗
With unsurpassed beauty she offers a truth to ponder. I could cease tearing at it during my time alive .Then I could neatly cut away the ingrained darkness . I could breathe the word without trepidation. Death would not need a label of ‘the end’. And maybe my last sigh will be sung fearless, in the light. I would add my “Swan song” to the Universe. A worthy goal.
I will try, as I am a never ending ‘work in progress’.
Well, let’s just say I never did find a chocolate egg in my garden. Maybe a little bird took it.
Fortunately I found a lovely little box of Lake Champlain chocolate truffles, hidden carefully, for just this occasion . Tucked deep within my kitchen cabinet behind a set of dishes never used. I can not imagine who put them there.
…and there it is, the perfect phrase to encapsulate what I was very clumsily communicating in our email exchange this morning: “darkness serves as a womb for beauty.” 🖤
That binary--good-bad, us-them, dark-light--is so much a part of the human psyche that we rarely tease it out. Thank you for this thoughtful look at how it cuts us off from the actual world and from an understanding of ourselves.
Your essay reminds me of my mom, who was completely colorblind, meaning she saw life in shades of gray, plus black and white. Helping her navigate a world where color is used in so many kinds of signaling--for good or ill--gave me an enduring understanding of how much of life is gradations, not either-or opposites. She was considered legally blind because of her color vision challenges and serious nearsightedness, but she graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of California-Berkeley and later, magna cum laude with a masters in library science, and flourished as a school librarian. I am grateful for her example of seeing the world in complex ways and refusing to be daunted by her challenges.
Thank you for reading, Susan, and thank you so much for sharing about your Mom, she sounds like an extraordinary woman. It's no small thing to have someone who allows themselves to see the complexity of the world in one's life!
She was extraordinary, and I credit her for my connection to the living world. She grew up hiking and camping in California with her dad in the 1930s and 1940s, and she gave that connection to the outdoors to our family. A gift that shaped my life in the best possible ways!
I too have a hard time keeping myself from making value judgments, and often, upon spontaneous introspection, discover that I treat myself as apart from everything around me, instead of a part of it. Listening to Sam Harris and Alan Watts has helped somewhat, in that I have a better theoretical understanding of the state of mind I’m looking for. In practice, though, it’s very hard to reach consistently. Thank you for this lovely piece, Chloe.
Thank you, Andrei. Alan Watts is such a brilliant teacher, but yes, there's the lesson and then there's the integration of the lesson, and boy are they two different things!! Slowly, slowly... Thanks again for reading, Andrei
Wow! What a surprise! I am a new reader too and was really taken off guard by your writing - it is amazing! Your choice or words and the way it is all put together seems like it must have taken a lot of thought and effort and soul searching thinking pondering but yet this essay just flows so smoothly. I love it and everything you said in here resonates with me so clearly nothing I bristle at or can think to add but Bravo my friend. You are lovely! Looking forward to reading more from you!
Thank you so much for sharing your beautiful heart and reflections.
The sparrow is the second most populous bird in the world, but only just. They are also native to the lands Jesus walked. They live side by side with humans, so we have all seen one species or another. They even eat whatever they find, preferring seed and insects.
Sparrows are truly common birds. Yet, we have the word of Jesus saying that each is cared for and noted by God. His creation is all special to him and he knows when his creation is hungry, in trouble, sleeping or thirsty. He knows each of these thousands of birds and cares. Even the death of one his creatures does not go unnoticed by him. Isn't that amazing?!
Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.
areyoutheZeitgeist? the boundaries of life and death are disappearing more and more for me these days - death is a mystery, life seems ever more strange, huge, incomprehensible
your words are a warmth in the coldness of interstellar space
I am a new reader, and have found a treasure in your writing. Could anyone speak more directly to my heart right now? I don’t think so.
Birds and Death, intertwined. Last year, my 25-year-old daughter died. She was a force of joy and light in the world. She taught me to notice and love birds. We spent joyful hours volunteering at a bird rehab, talking about birds, laughing at their antics and personalities.
Your writing is beautiful, filled with power and insight.
This week’s essay resonates so deeply.
“…time and again, darkness serves as a womb for beauty”.
That line hit me hard. In the early months of my grief I would never have believed anything good could come from my daughter’s death. But over time grief has allowed me to see more beauty in the world, especially in nature. Grief has changed my heart. And I now see those changes as a testament to the power of her life.
Like you, I have never heard a blackbird sing in the dead of night, but I have heard a solitary mockingbird sing on series of balmy Florida midnights. The magic of that song in the quiet darkness, the mockingbird’s message, remain with me.
Thank you for creating this peaceful place of beautiful writing.
Tina, I am extremely grateful to have you here. Thank you for sharing about the joy and the light that your daughter brought to the world during her time here--and the wonderful gifts she gave you. It's quite a thing, to delight in the wonder of birds alongside someone with whom you share a cosmic and unbreakable bond.
Grieving deeply is such an extremely powerful and potent form of love, I suppose it makes sense that it can totally alter the heart...deep bow to you for accepting the invitation to do so; not everyone does.
Thank you, again, Tina, for being here.
Tina -- your comment moved me deeply, and I just came here to say how much I appreciate the wisdom shared within them, and how sorry I am for the loss of your daughter. "...over time grief has allowed me to see more beauty in the world, especially in nature. Grief has changed my heart." Yes, I have experienced the same.
We are not apart from Nature; we are deep inside it, as much as the blackbirds are.
The idea that humans are outside Nature comes from the scientific method, where scientists are supposed to act as objective observers. Well, quantum physics threw all that out the window, saying this was not possible.
Humans are neither objective nor neutral observers. We are the same as the birds, except the birds know more. Humans have much to learn.
"We are the same as the birds, except the birds know more." Perry, you are my people. Thank you.
Hear hear!
However, I would think scientists should be accurate observers.
I’m tingling with wonder for so many moments in this, I can’t choose a favorite. Yes to “darkness serves as a womb for beauty.” And yes to your insight about “let nature take its course.” And yes to unspoken, uncomplicated communication. (Could the shared language be love?) As I listened and read your passage about black-white, either-or thinking, I thought, that’s the left brain with its need to sort, name, judge. Fortunately we are blessed with a right brain to communicate with blackbirds while sitting contentedly in the grass. Thank you, as always, for this sweet dose of beauty.
Julie, thank you for getting into the weeds of it!! Yes, I think it might well be love, uncomplicated and unconditional, there purely in response to being siblings of the universe. And I think you're right, my left brain is trying to keep me safe from the constant stream of perceived threats, and my right brain is trying to remind me of the truth of the greater context (thank goodness for that, and thank goodness for you)
And thank goodness for you! 💜
Coincidentally, I already had this song on my mind, as a good friend had just sent me this link of
Beyoncé covering the song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhempeEjGUA
She delivers a beautiful rendition that brought a tear to my eye, tbh.
Paul specifically wrote the song for the black women of the US civil rights movement, so the "dark black night" that the blackbird is singing in can be understood as Jim Crow America.
First time hearing her version today and it is just so beautiful. Thank you.
Alicia Keys has a lovely live performance as well
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrTbf_ws9Is
(I'm a big fan of female covers of Beatles songs)
Ah, thank you. Not bird related, but I loved Billie Eilish covering I Will.
Ooh thanks, I went and found it. It's really nice!
I just heard Beyoncé's interpretation. As beautiful as a blackbird. Thank you for the link.
I have a health condition that often makes me wake up in the middle of the night to adrenaline dumps that make my heart race, and I just woke up to an especially bad one. I started humming “Blackbird” (probably because I was listening to the new cover by Beyoncé yesterday) as humming can help your vagus nerve calm down, and opened my email to find your newsletter. Serendipity! I have been working on holding space for duality in my life and moving away from binary thinking, and I appreciate what you said about labeling things in your life as good or bad. It helped bring an awareness to the way I do that too. I definitely label adrenaline dumps as bad, when they’re actually unpleasant, but morally neutral. Thanks for giving me something to ponder.
Kelly, thank you. I'm sorry for the adrenaline wake up, but glad for the serendipity, and also very grateful to you for reminding me to label some things as morally neutral! Excellent hack. Thank you for being here, wishing your nervous system much peace.
My poetic bent often dumps adrenaline during a dream and then I resort to deep breathing and a mantra. Humming is a good choice. Whatever it takes to calm down.
"The belief that the Universe, the One Song, might use some binary classifier to sort things neatly into good and bad so that karmic tabs can be kept, seems ridiculous—and yet it is surprisingly hard to shake." This was beautiful, Chloe, and I love how you suggest the image of the One Song of the Universe and then turn us back with "the Blackbirds know well that with a new season must come a new song."
This piece made me think of Edward Thomas, that great poet of the countryside, who so often wrote about birds. In his poem The Brook, the blackbird is part of a moment out of time: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53749/the-brook-56d2335518e67?locale=en
I also recall that Thomas died in April 1917, a victim of the slaughter of war, just as the blackbirds were singing the spring into being.
Jeffrey, I am always so grateful for your considered and generous comments. I always learn something from you! This, poem...thank you. The line, "And he the first of insects to have earth / And sun together and to know their worth" was so deeply moving. I read it as the Blackbirds et al are beginning their evensong. I'm sending my thanks skyward to Thomas, and East, to you.
Edward Thomas. 💜
"Death is not coming to get us, Death comes to transform us"
and
"The belief that the Universe, the One Song, might use some binary classifier to sort things neatly into good and bad so that karmic tabs can be kept, seems ridiculous—and yet it is surprisingly hard to shake."
These are the two things that reached out to me here. (Obviously everything reached out to me, finding its way from your spring down to our autumn, but those are the two things with the longest arms).
Some day someone will assemble a book called "All the things Chloe said" and it will be full of rich quotes that make you nod and settle into the deep acceptance of life and nature. Thank you for enriching my morning, Chloe 🤗
PS yesterday we did a Forest Therapy walk around the Royal Botanical Gardens here in Melbourne. It was good, drawing on the Japanese tradition of Shinrin-yoku (forest bathing), which I must admit is a most romantic feeling to think that being beneath the leaves you are being constantly showered with the exhalations of trees.
So glad the arms were long enough to find you over there in Autumn-land, Nathan, thank you. That book is a terrifying prospect as, if it were true to its title, it would also contain a lot of absolute nonsense (eg. from the weekend, "Aren't screws and nails the same thing?"--David was mortified). Thank you for letting me join your morning, though, and I love that you did botanical bathing! It is a dreamy fact, indeed. It's all pretty dreamy, when you let you it in 🤗
Hehe, that's OK, it can be interspersed with nonsense ;)
All very dreamy 😊
With unsurpassed beauty she offers a truth to ponder. I could cease tearing at it during my time alive .Then I could neatly cut away the ingrained darkness . I could breathe the word without trepidation. Death would not need a label of ‘the end’. And maybe my last sigh will be sung fearless, in the light. I would add my “Swan song” to the Universe. A worthy goal.
I will try, as I am a never ending ‘work in progress’.
Thank you with all my heart, as always.♥️🪽
(I am off to see if anyone hid a chocolate
egg in my garden…)
You're a never ending work of art, and an exquisite one at that.
We saved an egg for you ♥️
Lor, now you've done it. I will spend hours pondering " chocolate egg in my garden."
Well, let’s just say I never did find a chocolate egg in my garden. Maybe a little bird took it.
Fortunately I found a lovely little box of Lake Champlain chocolate truffles, hidden carefully, for just this occasion . Tucked deep within my kitchen cabinet behind a set of dishes never used. I can not imagine who put them there.
Just keep guessing.
…and there it is, the perfect phrase to encapsulate what I was very clumsily communicating in our email exchange this morning: “darkness serves as a womb for beauty.” 🖤
Oh, we're on Warner-non-linear time, now...🌀
...ah! my emoji signature!
That binary--good-bad, us-them, dark-light--is so much a part of the human psyche that we rarely tease it out. Thank you for this thoughtful look at how it cuts us off from the actual world and from an understanding of ourselves.
Your essay reminds me of my mom, who was completely colorblind, meaning she saw life in shades of gray, plus black and white. Helping her navigate a world where color is used in so many kinds of signaling--for good or ill--gave me an enduring understanding of how much of life is gradations, not either-or opposites. She was considered legally blind because of her color vision challenges and serious nearsightedness, but she graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of California-Berkeley and later, magna cum laude with a masters in library science, and flourished as a school librarian. I am grateful for her example of seeing the world in complex ways and refusing to be daunted by her challenges.
Thank you for reading, Susan, and thank you so much for sharing about your Mom, she sounds like an extraordinary woman. It's no small thing to have someone who allows themselves to see the complexity of the world in one's life!
She was extraordinary, and I credit her for my connection to the living world. She grew up hiking and camping in California with her dad in the 1930s and 1940s, and she gave that connection to the outdoors to our family. A gift that shaped my life in the best possible ways!
I too have a hard time keeping myself from making value judgments, and often, upon spontaneous introspection, discover that I treat myself as apart from everything around me, instead of a part of it. Listening to Sam Harris and Alan Watts has helped somewhat, in that I have a better theoretical understanding of the state of mind I’m looking for. In practice, though, it’s very hard to reach consistently. Thank you for this lovely piece, Chloe.
Thank you, Andrei. Alan Watts is such a brilliant teacher, but yes, there's the lesson and then there's the integration of the lesson, and boy are they two different things!! Slowly, slowly... Thanks again for reading, Andrei
Wow! What a surprise! I am a new reader too and was really taken off guard by your writing - it is amazing! Your choice or words and the way it is all put together seems like it must have taken a lot of thought and effort and soul searching thinking pondering but yet this essay just flows so smoothly. I love it and everything you said in here resonates with me so clearly nothing I bristle at or can think to add but Bravo my friend. You are lovely! Looking forward to reading more from you!
Thank you so much, Holly!
Thank you so much for sharing your beautiful heart and reflections.
The sparrow is the second most populous bird in the world, but only just. They are also native to the lands Jesus walked. They live side by side with humans, so we have all seen one species or another. They even eat whatever they find, preferring seed and insects.
Sparrows are truly common birds. Yet, we have the word of Jesus saying that each is cared for and noted by God. His creation is all special to him and he knows when his creation is hungry, in trouble, sleeping or thirsty. He knows each of these thousands of birds and cares. Even the death of one his creatures does not go unnoticed by him. Isn't that amazing?!
Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.
Matthew 10:29~31 🤗
areyoutheZeitgeist? the boundaries of life and death are disappearing more and more for me these days - death is a mystery, life seems ever more strange, huge, incomprehensible
your words are a warmth in the coldness of interstellar space
ever and ever more strange...thank you
‘darkness serves as a womb for beauty’ gaahhh! Gorgeous and true as always Chloe 🐦⬛🤍🌿
serves and beauty and our playground 🖤🙌
Thank you for the wonderful correction on "letting nature take its course."🙏🦤🙏🦖🙏
Paul, thank you!! Very strong emoji game you have, there!