CARRY THE SKY

This Sunday, we’re celebrating “Blue Christmas,” honoring the depth and complexity of our emotions during the holidays. It ain’t all just fa-la-la-la-la. And we don’t have to try or pretend to make it so.

I totally love Christmas — and — I’ve got a lot of mixed feelings around it.

Most of us are navigating a bunch of un-jolly stuff at the same time that we’re immersed in the relentlessly twinkling festivity. It can feel like something’s wrong, either with ourselves or with the world. But in actuality, I’m pretty sure it’s a universal thing to feel off-kilter like this, especially at this time of year. And if off-kilter is natural and normal, then I wonder what authentically on-kilter would even mean…

Even if we’re fortunate to be sailing through a smooth patch of life right now, still, to me, nostalgia and bittersweetness seem more and more like essential elements of the season. And this ambivalence, like anything else, can be an opportunity to share and connect. If we let it.

Henry David Thoreau wrote, “The bluebird carries the sky on his back.”

Gosh, this resonates. There’s something nonsensical but perfectly true about the whole idea of carrying the sky. Especially the idea of the sky carried by a totem of happiness. The bluebird of happiness carrying an infinitude of sky, heaven itself.

At first it sounds like an unimaginable burden. It may be. But perhaps it’s also the very thing that offers lift and flight.

I’ve mentioned before that the wintering geese soaring over our house often feel to me like encouraging messages from my folks. There’s a thing about birds and departed loved ones in my family. My niece Mary is pretty sure that red cardinals are visitations from her father, my brother-in-law, Steve Diffendale. “Diffendales turn into cardinals,” she says.

I think Groveses become bluebirds.

When I officiated my father’s burial a decade ago, a bluebird landed on a nearby gravestone during the ceremony. He listened attentively, and I hope approvingly, to the entire eulogy, flying away only when I was done. Since then, bluebirds have been spotted by my siblings and nieces at other key moments, often during times of transition.

Last October, we went for a couple of hikes in the Bisti/De-Na-Zin wilderness area in the northwestern part of the state. While driving out on the long washboard road, suddenly we found ourselves surrounded by dozens of mountain bluebirds. “Groveses!” exclaimed Mary. I’d never seen so many of them together like that. Back east, they’ve become a pretty rare sight, and are usually single. But this was a sizable flock, flitting around the car for miles until we hit the highway again.

The next day, in a store window in Farmington, I saw souvenir mugs featuring the logo for “Bluebird Flour.” The salesperson inside told me that Bluebird, milled in Cortez Colorado, is the only flour that Diné people will use to make fry bread. I bought those mugs for myself and for my brother and sister.

I don’t know that there was any special significance to the birds — those around us on the road or those on the mugs in the shop. I’m just noticing that I’ve been re-attuned to the bluebird lately, so when I read the Thoreau quote, it really popped.

I’m struck that it’s not the weight of the world the bluebird carries, but the sky. And I wonder what the sky weighs…? Everything or nothing. The unknown. Possibility.

Sadness, loss, and uncertainty can be crushing. Heavy circumstances seem to hold us down. Life’s accumulated ponderosity leaves us feeling ever more earthbound.

Perhaps the lesson of the bluebird — this message from my departed loved ones — is: rather than resisting such enormity of feeling, we embrace it. Even during the holidays, especially now.

Letting our broken hearts be open to the sky. Our weary backs lifting into all that we’re holding. Allowing that that which first seems a burden can, in actuality, be our healing connection to each other and to everything.

If we can carry the sky, it seems to me there’s not much we can’t do. Truly, we could fly.

We’ll have a sweet ritual at service this Sunday. With the divine Patty Stephens.

I can’t wait to be with the befuddling mess of all of us. Please bring your whole self — you are the reason for the season, my friends! XO, Drew