Life in a Broken Hallelujah

I wake early. Before the morning song of the birds while the sky is still black and full of stars that look like tiny pin-pricks on the top of a jar. I wonder if we are just tiny things that were caught and held in curiosity. These pin-prick stars, a constellation of promised breath.

I lie here in the stillness of the not-quite day thinking about a not-quite life. My heart stretched like a web across the cosmos, like a trampoline. I will catch you and help you bounce back. Pay me with the laughter that bubbles up from your belly. If that was our currency, we could flip the entire system on its head… tap dance along to the keys and loose change falling from the pockets of old, rich, white men.

This morning I am thinking about how independence sounds an awful lot like captivity. An awful lot like I don’t need you. Watching as a species that evolved in community burns bridges, builds walls, and refuses to walk across the street for a cup of sugar, a tender kiss, or a moment of kindness. Instead, we close ourselves off from happiness. Put up rules and barriers to pleasure and bliss. We robot our reality and call it progress. Caged inside emotions we cannot express. Chained to a system that would like us to believe that work is somehow tied to worthiness. Tucked in bed behind deadbolts to heart and hearth and home.

We have forgotten the holy. We see it in the mirror and try to war paint our way to acceptance. We dig our heels in on certain sides of the aisle, forgetting that we are made for dance and jubilee. Static is only meant to hold a brief moment in time while we turn the dial and find a new song. We aren’t meant to live there.

As the sun begins to rise, I offer you my hand. I invite you to sway. Invite you to two step or stomp. Invite you to shake awake, shake free… as we sing together, even if it’s off key. Becoming the music in the static. Adding our voices to infinity’s choir, the broken hallelujah… we must be willing to break to welcome life back home.