On an unexpected sunlit day

in the middle of a dreary month

wear a flowing skirt

walk with bare feet

and let joy bubble up.

Stop, smell the roses growing next to the street

stretch your arms high,

up toward white clouds in blue sky,

and know: this is what happiness feels like.

Look at the beautiful people who share this world, this life, with you

and wonder: does everyone see?

Or is this magic, in this moment, just for a few?

Is it just for me?

The buses don’t run on the weekend. So after the afternoon, spent at a friend’s house with sparkling wine, cake, warm smiles, and laughter, I took a roundabout way home. And found myself waiting for a train in the cold dark. I said a silent prayer of thanks when I saw that my train would arrive in just four minutes – but those four minutes were enough for the night to chill me through my lightweight coat. My posture was the same as everyone else’s on that unpleasant platform. Waiting, we hunched into ourselves. We spread out, apart from each other. We were silent.

Noise and fumes rose from the traffic on the road below. To the left was a high-rise building topped with a neon sign, to the right a parking garage. This was a place no one wanted to be.

And then: birdsong. Somewhere in the scrubby trees dimly outlined in front of the night sky, a bird perched. And it sang. Birds don’t sing at night. They don’t sing in places saturated with the ugly smells of gasoline and industry. But this one did. It sang a lovely song, on and on. And its song brought beauty to a place that had none, a place where no one wanted to be.

Sometimes my life is a place I do not want to be. So often, the places where others are break my heart. A friend – someone whose integrity and passion I admire – speaks of being defamed and attacked. An acquaintance – a precious, precious person, most certainly dearly loved by God – tells me he doesn’t understand why cancer has grown in his body. I walk past people – people just as important and valuable and deserving as I am – who will sleep on cold hard concrete while I lie in my bed.

These realities, dark and cold, can leave me silent. The hurt, whether it’s my own or that I see in others, can make me hunch into myself. After all, I can’t change anything. And I can’t handle it.

But perhaps in the midst of the darkness, pain, and confusion, not denying its reality and not seeking to escape it, I can sing.

Is it just me, or should there be a comma in there? “Hello, world!”? I’ve got a stack of reference books that could tell me for sure, from the Chicago Manual of Style to Strunk and White. But part of the purpose of this blog is to loosen up and let go of perfectionism, so I’ll leave the title of this first post the way WordPress gave it to me. Hello world!

More to come.