I Am Like a Pelican of the Wilderness

This is one of the most obscure images in the Psalms. The writer compares himself to a pelican of the wilderness - lonely, isolated, strange. The pelican becomes a symbol of solitude and estrangement, someone who doesn't belong anywhere.

I've never been particularly poetic, but I needed to find a metaphor for how I felt during a dark period. I thought about this verse - the pelican. A bird, but isolated. Living, but cut off. Existing, but not really part of anything. That's how isolation feels. Not death, but not life either.

I shared this psalm with a friend who was struggling with loneliness, and they came back and said: the pelican of the wilderness. That's me. And I said: yes, but it's also in Scripture. Your isolation isn't outside God's knowledge or God's poetry. Even the weird, lonely things have a place in the sacred text. That shifted something for her.