Every weekday morning, there is a woman who sings hymns on the packed bus of my morning commute. She is already singing when I get on the bus, and she steadily continues for the thirty plus minutes of the ride- one song ending only to be replaced by another, seamlessly.
She is not particularly loud or soft of voice.
No one ever tells her to shut up or to keep it down.
In fact, on a bus in which a person is standing or sitting on every inch of its metal and rubber, barely a word is spoken while she sings. The automated bus voice, that doesn't know any better, announces the next stop, and is the only one who speaks above her.
I have never seen the woman who sings.
The bus is so packed that all I know is the general direction in which the singing is coming from.
And although there have been times that I have put earphones on to drown her out, there have also been times that her songs have helped me along.
Almost brought me to tears, somehow, a few times.
A strange part of the process of waking up- of being delivered from the vulnerability of sleep, into the quickness and starkness of reality.
A part of the beginning of the day with a reflection on something larger than that- even if I am filtering out the more blatant of the religious blah blah blah.
In any case,
it is Saturday morning.
I won't be on that bus today.
I am certain that she will not be, either.
And as I'm pulling myself out of a pile of blankets for the second time today, I find myself appreciating her.
Appreciating the presence of this voice that floats above and beyond the mass of us sardine'd into the rumbling tube of the bus.
Quiet, on our morning commute.
There is a beauty in almost missing a voice coming from a person you have never actually seen.
A voice that offers and is
at times
annoying,
but never enough
to be asked to stop.
be well; be loved
k.
(image: Sacred and Profane Love, Giovanni Baglione, 1602.)
i love this
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