The Invitation

Inviting joy through the divine sound of songs; while singing them for solace.

BY CHRISTI KRUG

“I’ve got a home in Glory Land that outshines the sun
Look away beyond the blue (blue, blue, blue)”

—African American spiritual

THIS IS A LOVE SONG about singing love songs, especially to the Divine. I used to sing myself home from school, walking weedy sidewalks, trilling “My Favorite Things.” I’d ride my bike and belt into the wind, “Top of the World.” I would sandwich Olivia Newton John’s “Please Mister Please” with Grizzly Adams’ theme and sprinkle in “Michael, Row the Boat Ashore.” God was listening. And that listening made me happy, despite a childhood fragmented by mental illness and poverty.

I’d sing like a bird. Why do birds sing? Through the years I’ve heard biologists’ explanations about our feathered friends claiming territory and attracting mates. Still, you and I sense something more. There are lessons in birdsong that have the potential to heal and change us.

Birds acquire their songs the way humans learn to speak, by listening and mimicking. With this discovery, scientists are studying zebra finches, and what they can teach us about human speech development.

Young zebra finches take in songs they have copied from their fathers; when mature, they sing them out. We humans babble as babies, learning to speak by trial and error until we can duplicate the sounds of our parents.

In my case, I had two articulate parents: Peter, known for his beautiful singing voice, and Marilyn, who loved to read to me. These are comforting truths, despite what followed. But let us return to the zebra finch.

When kept in isolation, young birds won’t sing the songs of other zebra finches, as they haven’t a tutor. However, when these same finches have offspring, and teach them their broken songs, a strange thing happens. Over the generations, the song of the wild zebra finch emerges, even though it was never taught. In other words, this perfect natural song is imprinted on the bird, genetically. Over time, it finds its way into the world.

One day when I was an infant, Peter flew into an alcoholic rage, and smashed all the records he had made of his singing. He fell deeper and deeper into addiction. One morning, Marilyn wheeled me in the stroller to the grocery store, and came home to find him dead of alcohol poisoning.

Her mental illness escalated, and within a few years, self-care had all but disappeared, not to mention parenting. Normal things went missing: baths, lunch money, and regular meals. But it was the loneliness which hurt the most.

These times were errant notes, broken pieces, the wrong songs in a life for me.

But as I study the zebra finch, I marvel that despite the mistakes along the way, this miracle can occur. It takes a few generations. But the bird will intuit its true song, despite never having heard it.

Through the decades, I stumbled on healing notes. They flowed from me, when I was in a forest, temple, or summer camp or on a beach. A deeply personal song emerged, that has worn many faith guises, yet has comforted and quieted and delighted.

There is something within us that kens our song; deeply knowing and understanding, even if we don’t have the teachers we hoped for. Even if circumstances haven’t been ideal. Even if our parents didn’t learn the whole, pure song of wildness to teach us . Our deepest nature allows us to commune with the Divine.

The first time I walked into this song, I was seven. A school mate, not someone I would consider a friend, (I was so terribly shy, I only had one friend) invited me to Vacation Bible School, just down the block at the First Presbyterian Church. I didn’t know what it was, but the word “vacation” meant adventure. While Marilyn slept off another night of mania, I got up, dressed, and made my way to the arched double doors and into a room full of square-backed cream plastic chairs.

Listening and watching, words beaming from the projector, I felt the blue sky, robin’s egg blue, rolling out like an endless magic carpet; deep blue water with snow-white waves. “Glory Land” and “Put Your Hand in the Hand.” I sang these blues songs. Words unfurled in my mind, mouth, and ears. Jesus was walking out on the ocean, and holding my hand. The round smiling lady up front looked out over the rows of chairs. Jesus wanted my invitation, she was saying.

I knew about invitations. Despite my misgivings, at my grandmother’s insistence, I had written the date and time on a card that said, Come to My Party. I had spelled out each of my would-be friends’ names with a green Bic felt pen. I had tiptoed to their doorsteps and bit my lip and punched the doorbell and handed the cards to their mothers. Strangely enough, on my birthday, they came.

Now the lady at Vacation Bible School said this loving being wanted me to invite him into my heart. Inside my own self. And this would only happen if I asked. It was mysterious and compelling.

“Come on in,” I whispered. I’d repeat those words when I felt alone. And bursts like poems and prayers, would ride out from my heart into things greater.

The mystic Meister Eckhart wrote, “The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me.” So that the invitation I hold out to God is the same one being delivered to me.

We’re singing the song to each other. Sometimes a mythic ballad or bewitching lullaby, other times a flashy showtune, dusty folk ditty, sacred hymn, or a yoga chant. I mostly hear and sing that inward song when solitary. Walking in the woods last fall, as owls were hooting. Journeys to a desert, mountains, or a river. The last time I invited the Divine was last night, singing in my bathtub. Often, the song brims with silence.

I’ve spent fifty years inviting the Divine into my heart. And there have been teachers, each playing some small note in the song I was to learn. Heroes—from Mowgli in The Jungle Book, which my mother read to me, to Meg of A Wrinkle in Time. Poets Mary Oliver, William Stafford, Rilke. Objects like the down vest I’ve carried hiking for twenty years, and a lipstick named “Windy Rose” that I wore when giving birth. Mentors like Mrs. Posey, the fifth grade teacher who introduced me to haiku, and Terry and Gordean, the beautiful parents of my teen years through to this day.

So much could take me, and still does, to songs beyond the blue, to a place where I am deeply companioned, where I can sing.

Christi Krug’s fiction and nonfiction have recently appeared in Dappled Things, GRIFFEL, Kerning, and The Saturday Evening Post. She is a Pushcart-nominated poet and storyteller who has been honored with writing residencies in beautiful places. The author of Burn Wild: A Writer’s Guide to Creative Breakthrough, she coaches writers independently and serves as a community educator at Clark College and Lane Community College. She blends her passions for words, nature, yoga, travel, and hiking to create retreats for writers at the Oregon Coast and across the globe.

Website: christikrug.com
Instagram in nature: @ChristiKrug
Instagram in creating and curiosity: @burn_this_page