JOIN IN THE MELODY

By Rev. Michelle Wiltshire-Clement

Today, where we live influences how we respond to this certain situation, nation by nation, state by state, city by city, borough by borough, and even on either side of a park. Are you brave enough to answer your heart! You want things to return to normal, but what is normal? Years ago, we may have pondered, if we would wear silk or cotton, red or blue, slender-shaped fitting or loose and comfortable fashion statements. It took time to ponder, and before you knew it, your bed was piled high with the contents of your wardrobe. For First Responders, the truth is piled high before them. For those that are on the front line, my continued prayers are with you as well as my vote for more equipment, safer environmental conditions, and additional, competent personnel aid. For those of us at home unburdened by financial concerns and us the growing unemployed, together, we are experiencing our mandated stay-cations. What do we do?

Worrying about things that we cannot control doesn’t change our circumstances. Do we take the time to don ourselves as attentively as we did in years past or has our preoccupation with daily statistics draped us with numbers that feel coarse against or skin? Have we allowed ourselves to make an indentation in the couch or bed? What was that book you wanted to read and that series you wanted to watch? What was that bread you wanted to bake…yes, sourdough! Why not take the time to begin your bread making starter? During this challenging time, that seems like a poor facsimile of the movie, Groundhog Day starring Bill Murray as Phil Conners, will we choose to live only the start of the movie’s mishaps? Do you really want to loose this chance to improve yourself? What can you do to improve who and where you are? This is our borough, city, state, nation, and world. Through many intersections, we are one global community that is at the crossroads? What will we choose, now, that many of us have the time to safely ponder?

We have the beautify of technology to keep us in contact with together. Let us live our best life now, safe and sound, inside on our stay vacation, and not stagnant in a boring imaginary life! Let us dare to view things from another perspective as we spend these cherished moments together virtually.

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Choosing Melody over Cacophony

by Rev. Michelle Wiltshire-Clement 

Pure, tonal echoing cheeps, chirps, and coos 

from sparrows, starlings, and pigeons, 

are joined by the instrumental hums of car engines 

and the idling grumbles of delivery trucks. 

Buses halted, 

revving up their engines till their green lights appears, are  

vrooming forward,  

while somewhere emergency vehicles clangor then clash the air 

as they whoosh onward. 

Passersby, chattering front line Responders are still silently absent, 

but eagerly anticipated. 

Instead Harleys, Hondas, Ducatis, and Triumphs, sing rumbling solos.

Sounds heard, on a Spring morning before the Sun rises, 

equip us 

with hopeful, possible beginnings.

Each morning, 

we are faced with the decision 

to see the world 

with our own eyes 

and feel it 

in our own bodies. 

With the lives we have been Divinely given,

let us choose to join in the chorus, with this gratefully, prepared melody, 

ready for us to virtually engage our voices any way that we are able!

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