A few years back, I presided at a wedding where the bride did something unusual: she asked her great aunt to do one of the readings, the famous words from Paul to the Corinthians about love. “Love is patient, loves is kind…” We all know how it goes.

But I’d never heard it like this.

The great aunt was in her late 70s and had some trouble climbing the stairs into the pulpit. But once she got there, what she had to say sounded as if it was something she had written in her diary that morning. These were words of heart-wrenching wisdom — a gift to a young bride and her groom, spoken by someone who had lived them.  By the time she got to the end, “Love never fails,” all of us in that church were blinking back tears. I’ll never forget it.

I had a similar sensation Sunday night watching the legendary 80-year-old Joni Mitchell at the Grammys. Her rendition of “Both Sides Now” was more than a beautiful, bittersweet folk tune. It was autobiography. It was confession. It was a kind of poetic epistle as full of lived wisdom as Paul’s, telling the story of her life with candor, heartbreak, affection and a considerable amount of grace.

What many may not have realized is that the Grammy performance was, in a way, an encore. Mitchell had performed the song in a similar setting two years earlier at the Newport Jazz Festival, and the response was sensational. All the same emotions were there. It’s a remarkable elegy to life and love. See below.

Finally, for comparison, check out Joni Mitchell in 1969, appearing on a TV show hosted by Mama Cass. She was barely 26 years old.

She wrote the song when she was 21.