Sorrow is Not My Name
A Lenten Reflection based on the poetry of Gwendolyn Brooks and Ross Gay
Readings
To the Young Who Want to Die
By Gwendolyn Brooks
Sit down. Inhale. Exhale.
The gun will wait. The lake will wait.
The tall gall in the small seductive vial
will wait will wait:
will wait a week: will wait through April.
You do not have to die this certain day.
Death will abide, will pamper your postponement.
I assure you death will wait. Death has
a lot of time. Death can
attend to you tomorrow. Or next week. Death is
just down the street; is most obliging neighbor;
can meet you any moment.
You need not die today.
Stay here--through pout or pain or peskyness.
Stay here. See what the news is going to be tomorrow.
Graves grow no green that you can use.
Remember, green’s your color. You are Spring.
Sorrow is Not My Name
By Ross Gay
No matter the pull toward the brink. No
matter the florid, deep sleep awaits.
There is a time for everything. Look,
just this morning a vulture
nodded his red, grizzled head at me,
and I looked at him, admiring
the sickle of his beak.
Then the wind kicked up, and,
after arranging that good suit of feathers
he up and took off.
Just like that. And to boot,
there are, on this planet alone, something like two
million naturally occurring sweet things,
some with names so generous as to kick
the steel from my knees: agave, persimmon,
stick ball, the purple okra I bought for two bucks
at the market. Think of that. The long night,
the skeleton in the mirror, the man behind me
on the bus taking notes, yeah, yeah.
But look; my niece is running through a field
calling my name. My neighbor sings like an angel
and at the end of my block is a basketball court.
I remember. My color’s green. I’m spring.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born and a time to die;
a time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill and a time to heal;
a time to break down and a time to build up;
a time to weep and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn and a time to dance;
a time to throw away stones and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek and a time to lose;
a time to keep and a time to throw away;
a time to tear and a time to sew;
a time to keep silent and a time to speak;
a time to love and a time to hate;
a time for war and a time for peace.
Reflection
I have a child who is autistic. From a very young age, they have been hyper fixated on animals. Their first sentence, while carefully watching a stink bug maneuver its twig-like legs up our screen door, was, “What doing, bug?” If you were to ask my now 15-year-old what their favorite animal is, they’ll mention whatever they’ve been researching lately. This week, it’s ferrets. Last week, it was Atlas beetles. A few weeks ago, it was squid, the largest living invertebrates.
After I noticed that Ross Gay’s poem, “Sorrow is Not My Name,” featured a vulture, I knew just whom to ask about it. During a drive from our house toward Charlottesville’s downtown mall, at the stoplight where the John Warner Parkway crosses underneath Route 250, I casually asked my teenager, “Do you think vultures have any spiritual significance?”
“Oh, yeah, tons,” they replied. “Vultures do what no other animal wants or is willing to do - they clean up the dead. If they didn’t exist, the world would be overrun with anthrax, a deadly bacteria that breeds on dead animal carcasses. Vultures literally eat what’s dead so we can live.”
I nodded, as if I had known this all along.
“Wow,” I said nonchalantly. “Good point.”
In reality, it was the best point - far better than any argument I had attempted to make after reading Ross Gay’s poem, “Sorrow is Not My Name.” I had written several drafts of a reflection on the later part of the poem, which discusses sweet things: “on this planet alone, something like two/million naturally occurring sweet things … agave, persimmon …” I wanted to reflect on how the most beautiful things in life are delicate and ephemeral, accessible only to those who watch, wait, and listen patiently. Trust me, I tried to make that happen. I researched persimmons, delving into how the Rappahannock made beer from them and how the Osage used their bark for sore throats (I still managed to weave those intriguing tidbits of obscure information in here, so it wasn’t a waste of time!)
As often happens with God, I am turned toward the sweet things of life, drooling over the agave and persimmon, wishing for more. Then God gently touches my chin, turning my head and my gaze toward the vulture.
“Eww, God,” I say, echoing the tone Alexis Schitt says to her brother David. “Who even wants to look at a gross old vulture?”
“Me,” God replies. “I made the vulture too, not just the sweet things.”
It turns out Jesus actually mentions vultures in the books of Matthew and Luke. In both accounts he warns the disciples about false prophets that will arise after his death. He says, “wherever there is a carcass, there the vultures will gather.” There is an absurd amount of commentary on what Jesus meant by this, but my favorite comes from Anabaptist Pastor Greg Boyd: “when Jesus comes, it will be obvious, like vultures make obvious a dead body. You can’t hide a dead body with vultures around.”
Vultures not only clean up after us; they reveal the truth. They expose whatever ugliness we try to conceal. As Jesus also says in the Bible, “The truth shall set you free.” The truth, no matter how ugly, liberates us from deception and fear.
There is a time for everything. That’s how Ross Gay begins his poem. A skilled reader of poetry (which, I am not) would notice that Ross Gay describes the vulture before the sweet things. Death must come before life. Exposure of lies must come before the succulent taste of truth. Everything on earth has its counterbalance.
Turn. Turn. Turn. Turn your head toward the whole wide world, not just what seems advantageous or pleasant. See how even the vultures were made to save us.
Prayer
O mighty creator, weaver of souls, we see the echoes of your divine artistry in the turning of the seasons, the dance of light and shadow, and the ebb and flow of our own lives. Just as the earth embraces the cycles of growth and decay, so do our spirits embrace the rhythms of our journeys. May we stop today to thank the vultures, key to the quality of our lives. May we delight in the sweet things that make life worth living. May we pay attention each day and note how everything belongs. Amen.
Thanks to you both. Changing perspectives always brings new insights.