For years I have had the honor of improving my writing under the guidance of Katerina Whitley…and have learned a thing or two about cooking along the way! My favorite Easter Sunday was when she joined me at the church I served and shared her monologue of Mary Magdalene recalling the events of Easter morning. I heard it three times that day and cried all three times.

She sent a group of us several prompts this week and the following is what came of it. She gave us the sentence below in italics and gave us free reign to react to it. I am so grateful to her for her guidance and inspiration. I hope you enjoy it!

And just like the turn of a familiar melody, the trills escaping the tiny bird’s throat lifted her to another dimension.

As a child, I would hear the call of a bird out my bedroom window on summer evenings and for all the world it sounded like the bird was saying my name. My name sang forth from its mouth so clearly that it would sing me to sleep with a song just for me. I never asked what bird would find me worthy of such a tune. I never researched it. Today I’m sure there is an app that could tell me within seconds of the song’s first notes…But I don’t want to know. I’m not interested. I don’t want to learn the proper name or the reasons for these particular vocalizations or that it makes this sound to attract a mate in the warm haze of a summer evening. I want to think, I choose to think, instead that this bird and its song forever are for me. For isn’t that what we all want? To believe that we are worthy of something as beautiful as a song whose lyrics are only our name? That the universe would see us and think we were so special that only a bird’s song could do us justice? I can’t tell you why the river runs or for whom the bell tolls…but that bird, that one on a tree in the forest outside my childhood bedroom, she waits for me. She sings for me. She knows my name, and that forever will be enough.