Flight And Flame And Melody

When Grandpa was diagnosed with cancer a week or two ago, I asked my mother how Grandma was dealing with it all.
"She seems to be holding together pretty well," Mama replied. "But this is a bittersweet time in her life. Having him with her now- not knowing how much longer she will."
I was struck then, because, had I been describing someone's emotions upon realizing that the person they love most is terminally ill, I think I would have said only bitter, and left out the sweet. And then I thought about it more, and realized, especially as things were shifting wildly about in my own life, that she was right. These are bittersweet times. Not only for Grandma, but for us all.
Of course, when a person is sick, we are immediately reminded of the transience and fragility of life, but the truth is, that element was always there, whether we were noticing or not. Grandma has Grandpa now, but doesn't know how long she will. My family is together now- but a year from now, who can say? Tomorrow isn't a promise, and today, even, is a strange and solemn mystery. So, the times are always, always bittersweet. It is why Shelley wrote:

'...We look before and after
And pine for what is naught
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.',

why Francis Thompson, in describing a chance encounter with a girl commented:

'She went her unremembering way,
She went, and left in me
The pang of all the partings gone,
And partings yet to be.

She left me marvelling why my soul
Could mourn that she was glad.
At all the sadness in the sweet,
The sweetness in the sad.'

Springtime, too, is a bittersweet season- perfectly attuned to the bittersweetness of this season in life. I spent about three hours today hiking around outside (in SHORTS and a T-SHIRT!!! :-) ), and all the world was dim, and fresh, and maddeningly new, but clouded with uncertainty. The sodden turf, dark and rich as an oil painting, the trees bursting and swelling with the very beginnings of leaves.
Geese swung out across the cloud-mottled sky, their lines and formations endlessly crossing and recrossing, stragglers winging in to join the keen heraldry of hoarse, wisful bell-cries. And all I wanted was to join them, and go somewhere, anywhere but here, with the work to be done, and the decisions to be faced. I felt a wrenching hunger for that grace, that beauty, that adventure which geese are on their migrations. To be able to FLY! I ran along the ridge of the hill as far as I could follow, but they were gone, with new flocks sweeping into sight, like a dark, smooth-feathered armada, long necks curved out in purposeful expectancy, black wings beating the air. And then, I could have wept with the frustration of it! Only imagine- to race forever into the long grayness of the sky today- to leave melting snow and muddied earth below like a distant tapestry- questions and confusion and indecision miles beneath, and feel only the sure guidance of an inner compass, and the wind-currents bearing one up! How can one stand to be always earth-bound and ground-crawling?
But as I perched on the log known as the Thinking Place, and watched flock after flock vanishing into the distant cloud-walls of the horizon, awash with the unbearable longing for impossibility which characterizes Springtime, I recalled (and I realize this is an impressive source) a scene from 'The Sound of Music', in which Maria, overwhelmed by confusion has fled back into the Convent. The Mother Superior says to her (and I had always thought this was painfully trite- as it probably is):

"You can't just run away from your problems... You have to face them."

It strikes me now as stingingly true. I can't run away from my problems. Nor can I fly away from them. Somehow, they have to be faced, in spite of my indecision, and second-guessing, and irrational terror of commitment to any course. I am beginning to realize just what terrible responsibility it is to be a woman, rather than a little girl- though I still can't understand which category I fall into.
This is such a transitional, 'middleish' time.
It seems now that even at my most serious I was merely a child playing games- and I shudder to think of what damage that child's happy carelessness might have done.
So, bittersweet.
But even in these mad, yearning Spring moments when I am only a bird without wings, terribly earth confined; a fire without burning- no quick, hot, dancing loveliness of light; a song with no tune, no notes to rise and fall and soar on, in all these times- in the strange, incomprehensible bittersweetness of life, HE is flight, and flame, and melody to me! He, and He alone! Could a God who made Springtime and the burgeoning mysteries of cool wind and reviving life be any less?

"My faith burns low, my hope burns low;
Only my heart's desire cries out in me
By the deep thunder of its want and woe,
Cries out to Thee.

Lord, Thou art life, though I be dead;
Love's fire Thou art, however cold I be:
Nor heaven have I, nor place to lay my head,
Nor home, but Thee." - Christina Rossetti

"In the shadow of His wings
I will sing for joy;
What a God, who out of shade
Nest for singing bird hath made;
Lord, my Might and Melody,
I will sing to Thee.

If the shadow of Thy wings
Be so full of song,
What must be the lighted place
Where Thy bird can see Thy face?
Lord, my Might and Melody,
I will sing to Thee." -Amy Carmichael