I woke just before dawn and went out to the sunporch and opened the windows. It was dark and silent except for the rustle of leaves, but as I sat sipping coffee, the darkness out the window lightened just a shade, and I heard the first bird of the day singing. It was not a tentative song. It wasn’t experimental. It wasn’t timid or polite. It was a burst of bright song that poured out into the silence like a mighty river that had been damned up through hours of darkness in a fragile creature’s breast. When she opened her beak, it rushed out - this bright, naked, perfect music.
Her burst of song was greeted with an embarrassed silence that seemed even deeper than before – for about a minute. Then another, more tentative voice chirped and after that, another and soon there was a whole ensemble of hidden birds singing in the heavy, dark gray air.
After a while, though I listened intently, I found that I could not distinguish the voice of that first singer from the rest. She is just part of the choir now, lost somewhere in the music.
I send a mental note of gratitude out into the universe to her and hope that it finds her. And this morning, I would like to express my profound gratitude to all living beings who dared to be first – the first to sing, the first to dance, the first to smile, the first to speak, the first to act, the first to embrace, the first to forgive.
I hope you realize that your generous, courageous act, like the song of that wild bird, is much bigger than you are - that it will travel further than will ever go, and reach living beings you have never met or even imagined.
You may be lost in the crowd, but at this moment, one such being is thinking of
you and is grateful.
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