Sing Like A Hobbit

 

 

     

“These Hobbits Will Sit on the Edge of Ruin and Discuss the Pleasures of the Table.”

 A sob sticks in my throat. Images raging on Instagram fill my mind. Winds roar and fires blaze in Los Angeles. Flames flare up on the Getty museum, burning down Moonshadows in Malibu. I took a girl there once. Scorched memories. Seeing the smoke and the ruins reminds me of Mordor and darkness, of Hobbits and hope, of Merry and Pippin enjoying Long-Bottom leaf and the smoke of a pipe at the ruin of Isengard.

When my first marriage burned to the ground I cried with friends. I turned Spotify up loud while singing along with Third Day; ”There’s a light at the end of the tunnel”. Psalmodies of passion, lament and praise kept me going. The Creator has set it up so that these crack open your heart and infuse hope. The act of singing is an act of defiance. Eating and drinking too.

If you’ve never sung from a place of heart-ache and desperate loss take a lesson from Hobbit Sam Gamgee.  Believing the quest to be at an end, he sings, “above all shadows rides the Sun, and Stars for ever dwell: I will not say the Day is done, nor bid the Stars farewell.” When dark pervades, I cry to God in hope. Somehow singing grounds me. As do friends, bread and good ale. Hence the attitude of the Hobbit. May we have the same!

Photo by Sergio García on Unsplash

Louder Than The Cicadas

 I hear the voices. Jabbering louder than the Cicadas do, a thousand little men shaking baby rattles. So much messaging, so many messengers. I’m more aware of them in my life. Stories as pervasive as the cicada in summer.

I hope and wait for the caffeine to flush the sludge of melatonin out from my veins and my brain. I read a couple chapters to remind myself who God is; and try to remember who I am. My coffee mug and I move to my desktop turning on the computer. Sit down to scan today’s news feed; chaos, murder, memes, Hitler, Trump.

 Other voices unbidden whisper negative comparisons; not good enough, not productive enough, not gifted enough. Critical of self, critical of others. It’s an effort to not put others down sometimes. Put ourselves down. Hard to let joy bubble up. Be okay with the losses. They must be a normal thing; cause that’s what every singer sings.

The blanket of summer heat presses down and the Cicadas screech. In the right frame of mind they settle into the background; a symphony of white noise. A strong wind, a passing semi, jars them into a discordant chattering.

There’s a place I go where water cascades over grey sandstone, dripping and bubbling in summer, falling and crashing in spring. Ducks and water drown out the cicada to a low buzz. If I’m intentional, the waterfall speaks to me in its’ own voice, reminding me of who created the stars, and calls them all by name. The voice that knows me by name and called me from the beginning. And the one who, I’m guessing, has a name for each Cicada.