Song of the Week - "Grief Is Only Love" - Stephen Wilson, Jr. [Ordinary Time]
No. 9 in the Song of the Week Series
The Ninth post in “The Song of the Week” series.
The previous post in this series:
(and you can link back to the previous ones from it)
8. Song of the Week - "Celebration" - Kool and the Gang
Music sits pretty close to the intersection of the key themes of this Substack: reading/writing, community, and formation. The songs we sing are deeply formative for us as persons and communities. So, I share a song here each week that has been formative for me, and offer a couple of brief thoughts that connect it with this particular week (in the church calendar and/or natural year) and explore why it is significant for me. Let me know what you think…
This post is made freely available to Substack readers, but if you appreciate The Conversational Life, please consider helping to sustain our work with a paid subscription ( $5/month or $50/year ).
I’m kinda swinging from one extreme to the other. Last week’s song was one of celebration, this week features a song of grief. Both ends of the spectrum are ordinary parts of life, and merit our consideration during Ordinary Time. Although last week’s song was chosen because I really felt like celebrating, I’m not grief-stricken this week. This song is just one that I’ve been playing a lot in recent months, and one I have intended to share here eventually.
If we’re linking songs to seasons of the church year, this song is probably more a Lenten song than one for Ordinary Time, but as I said above, all our emotions are ordinary human experiences, and deserve our reflection during Ordinary Time.
In fact, I discovered this song (and its artist) as a Lenten Song in the Songs of Lent series from Christ’s Community Church (My friend Nate Pyle is the pastor of this church in Fishers, Indiana). Do your future self a favor, and subscribe to their Substack now. By the time Lent rolls around next year, you will have forgotten that you subscribed, and their daily songs will be a pleasant surprise in your inbox!
Here’s a snippet from Cameron’s Engle’s post about “Grief is Only Love” on the Songs of Lent Substack:
And, grief is only love that's got no place to go
Yeah, grief is only love that's got no place to go
Yeah, grief is only love
Stephen Wilson Jr. artfully communicates this displacement of love in his song, Grief Is Only Love. His words and experiences teach me that grief is a signpost. The sinking ache in my stomach when I remember my dad, the lump in my throat causing choked-through sentences tell me that I have experienced the greatest of human realities: love. Yet, that love is now lost, not in the sense of being thrown away, but of being displaced. There was this real person where love would find its landing spot, its home. But in the wake of loss, that home is gone, and the love has nowhere to go. Displacement is painful but worth holding onto because it's a faithful reminder we have known love in actual, specific ways.
I’ve grieved many things in my half-century of life, but none has hit harder than the death of our daughter Hazel, who was born still in 2008. It still almost brings me to tears to think about holding her lifeless body in my arms and to realize that we would never get to see her grow up, to see her experience all the joys and frustrations of life in this wondrous creation. We would never know her, never love her in the same way that we love our other kids. “Grief is Only Love” offered me new language for reflecting on this experience. The love I have for Hazel couldn’t flow in the way that I anticipated, in the way that it had for my older children. And that is central to my grief related to her death. We are created to love and to know, other humans, other bodies, but when death takes someone away, there is a void where that person’s body had been, and our love — in a sense — has nowhere to go.
Here’s the full lyrics to the song:
Life is a battlefield
And it'll drag you right through hell
Bites like a rattlesnake
The kind that you just don't see on the trail
And I miss my father every day
The kinda pain I pray don't fade away
And the ones above guide me down the roadYeah, grief is only love that's got no place to go
From my great granddad in the ground
All the ghosts in my hometown
Yeah, they're the ones that find me down the road
Yeah, grief is only love that's got no place to go
Grief is only loveThe world is a cannonball
You deal with the feelings you can't hide
God gave us alcohol
When we need to leave 'em all inside
And I don't feel like crying
But I just keep crying
For the ones above to guide me down the roadYeah, grief is only love that's got no place to go
From my great-granddad in the ground
All the ghosts in my hometown
Yeah, they're the ones that find me down the road
Yeah, grief is only love that's got no place to go
Grief is only love
Grief is only love
Grief is only loveI don't feel like crying
But I just keep crying
For the ones above to guide me down the road
Yeah, grief is only love that's got no place to goSo hang onto the hurting
And let it grab a hold
Yeah, the only thing's for certain
Is it's out of my controlAnd, grief is only love that's got no place to go
Yeah, grief is only love that's got no place to go
Yeah, grief is only love
Grief is only love
Grief is only love
Grief is only love
Grief is only love
What songs do you associate with grief? What songs have helped you in times of grieving?
This post is made freely available to Substack readers, but if you appreciate The Conversational Life, please consider helping to sustain our work with a paid subscription ( $5/month or $50/year ).
Massive Springsteen vibes with that song. A Springsteen song that hit and held me in a grieving season was 'Moonlight Motel' from the Western Stars album. I think it's the 'Bills and kids and kids and bills' line that works so well. The having to get on with life and all the ordinary time with this big hole inside you.
I lost a son, husband, and brother all within six months last year. One song that brings me to tears is "Last thing on my mind." No matter how hard we try, we could always have loved better. And we can, with the living.
"Changed for Good," from Witches, is another great one.