In today's rainy grayness, I glimpsed a rise of water as if from a beautiful, mysterious fountain from a largish puddle down in the meadow. Then I noticed a small flock of dark birds rising. There to be noticed, to give joy, or not. There, either noticed or unnoticed.

Me, too. I'm here, noticed or unnoticed. Here I sing my song, true and clear as I can manage, singing to myself and to anyone who wishes to hear and share in the singing.

I grew up in a tradition of a capella four-part-harmony hymn singing, every member of the congregation not exactly encourage but more like intrinsically expected to lift voice, to participate, to give back whatever gift one had been given. In the atmosphere where everyone was expected to participate in the song from the time before they were conscious of being conscious, the group had no totally tone deaf members that I remember. The choir of the full congregation became a worthy offering.

I do not remember a time when I have not loved to sing. When I was a girl, I grew into the responsibility for egg production on the farm. There were about a thousand chickens running loose in the straw on each of three stories of the chicken house. The nests where they (mostly) laid their eggs were along one wall, the roosts where they went to sleep at dark along another wall, free-standing wooden feeders in two long rows mid-house. I came into that space with an egg basket over my arm, the need to spend the time to gather all the eggs, and a young, imaginative energy. So I sang to the chickens. Each time, then would raise and cock their heads at me in unison, and you haven't truly lived until you have a thousand chickens gazing at you! Then they would begin a kind of crooning that chickens do when they're happy. Not exactly clucking, certainly not squawking. Just a kind of humming song. The chickens and I surely also made a worthy offering.

Lift up your voice and sing, mindless of critics, for critics there will always be. Do not stifel your song for such. Find your true voice, and let it be heard. Be yourself. Lift up your voice and sing-- it's in the Bible, isn't it?