Gregory Orr
DO I DARE TO SAY MY BROTHER'S DEATH WAS A BLESSING?
Who would recoil first from such a statement? A reader, unsure of
its context, but instinctively uneasy with the sentiment? Or me,
who knows more of the context than I sometimes think I can bear,
having spent most of my life struggling with that death because I
caused it? Can I keep my own nerve long enough to work my way
through the strangeness of that word?
In French, the verb blesser means "to wound." In English, "to
bless" is to confer spiritual power on someone or something by
words or gestures. When children are christened or baptized in some
Christian churches, the priest or minister blesses them by sprinkling
holy water on their faces. But the modern word has darker, stranger
roots. It comes from the Old English bletsian which meant "to
sprinkle with blood" and makes me think of ancient, grim forms of
religious sacrifice where blood not water was the liquid possessing
supernatural power---makes me remember standing as a boy so close
to a scene of violence that the blood of it baptized me.
To wound, to confer spiritual power, to sprinkle with blood. There is
something about the intersection of these three meanings that pen-
etrates to the heart of certain violent events of my childhood. I feel
as if life itself were trying to reveal some mystery to me by making
those three sources meet in my own life.
To wound. To cause blood to flow out of a mortal body. To
stand so near that I was spattered with the blood of it. And yet I did
not die. Why was I spared? Now that I am in my fifties, I am finally
brave enough to ask that aloud, although it is a question that has
moved like an underground river below my whole life since that
day, moved there with the steady, insistent rhythm of a heartbeat,
as if the words themselves made the earth pulse through my feet.
Why was I spared? I'm not sure there is any answer to my ques-
tion. I know I don't expect the answer to come from anyone else.
I don't even expect it to come from me. Maybe it's because I'm a
poet and I've spent my adult life believing words have the power to
reveal what is hidden, but I believe the answer to my question
emerges from this odd word itself, this "blessing" that conceals
within its history such terrible words as "wound" and "blood."
Please see "The Blessing: A Memoir," published by
Council Oak Books for the rest of this story.
DO I DARE TO SAY MY BROTHER'S DEATH WAS A BLESSING?
Who would recoil first from such a statement? A reader, unsure of
its context, but instinctively uneasy with the sentiment? Or me,
who knows more of the context than I sometimes think I can bear,
having spent most of my life struggling with that death because I
caused it? Can I keep my own nerve long enough to work my way
through the strangeness of that word?
In French, the verb blesser means "to wound." In English, "to
bless" is to confer spiritual power on someone or something by
words or gestures. When children are christened or baptized in some
Christian churches, the priest or minister blesses them by sprinkling
holy water on their faces. But the modern word has darker, stranger
roots. It comes from the Old English bletsian which meant "to
sprinkle with blood" and makes me think of ancient, grim forms of
religious sacrifice where blood not water was the liquid possessing
supernatural power---makes me remember standing as a boy so close
to a scene of violence that the blood of it baptized me.
To wound, to confer spiritual power, to sprinkle with blood. There is
something about the intersection of these three meanings that pen-
etrates to the heart of certain violent events of my childhood. I feel
as if life itself were trying to reveal some mystery to me by making
those three sources meet in my own life.
To wound. To cause blood to flow out of a mortal body. To
stand so near that I was spattered with the blood of it. And yet I did
not die. Why was I spared? Now that I am in my fifties, I am finally
brave enough to ask that aloud, although it is a question that has
moved like an underground river below my whole life since that
day, moved there with the steady, insistent rhythm of a heartbeat,
as if the words themselves made the earth pulse through my feet.
Why was I spared? I'm not sure there is any answer to my ques-
tion. I know I don't expect the answer to come from anyone else.
I don't even expect it to come from me. Maybe it's because I'm a
poet and I've spent my adult life believing words have the power to
reveal what is hidden, but I believe the answer to my question
emerges from this odd word itself, this "blessing" that conceals
within its history such terrible words as "wound" and "blood."
Please see "The Blessing: A Memoir," published by
Council Oak Books for the rest of this story.