There's a story... a legend, about a bird that sings just once in its life. From the moment it leaves its nest, it searches for a thorn tree... and never rests until it's found one. And then it sings... more sweetly than any other creature on the face of the earth. And singing, it impales itself on the longest, sharpest thorn. But, as it dies, it rises above its own agony, to out sing the lark and the nightingale. The thorn bird pays its life for just one song, but the whole world stills to listen, and God in his heaven smiles.
As a child the concept is a bit hard to wrap your head around but I always thought it beautiful, even though it was mysterious and seemed paradoxical. Now I am an adult and I still have never seen a thorn bird but I have seen the most beautiful song come out of the most excruciating of pain.
This video of David Cook singing “Permanent,” the song he wrote about his brother Adam’s fight with brain cancer, was taken not long before Adam lost his battle. The visible pain he has is extraordinary but his voice is even more so.
I to have lost someone I love, my aunt Eileen, to this horrible disease and it is time we need to do something about it. On May 2nd there is a national Brain Cancer Run/Walk where Cook and I, and countless others, will be trying to raise awareness and money to stop the senseless loss and so that one beautiful day there will be no disease left to walk against.
For information: http://www.braintumorcommunity.org/site/PageServer?pagename=RFH_DC_AboutTheRace
To Donate to David Cook’s team (which I’ve joined): http://www.braintumorcommunity.org/site/TR/Events/RFH-DC?px=1754121&pg=personal&fr_id=1490
I have always been facinated by that story. It is like a morbid facination I'd love to see it so I can hear the song but I don't want to watch a bird die. Anyway I'm getting off track, what I wanted to say was I'll be there supporting you, David, and everyone who has lost someone or knows someone fighting this disease.
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