i awaken today hearing of Nellie Harper Lee’s death which her family said was unexpected; somehow, through the invisible web connecting us all, her death was foreshadowed for me with yesterday’s cold wind blowing through, a day when i could not get warm much like a day almost five years ago when i coded with septic shock feeling my blood turn to ice… as the cold wind of death blows through once again today, i pay tribute to this archetypal story of justice, innocence, love and purity and to the penner of this story, a story that i read at eight years old, a story that resonated so deeply in me fifty-six years ago, a story still resonating in me so profoundly…

reading this book at eight years old, i am Scout, my father is Atticus, my neighbor is Boo… i, too, live in a small southern backwater town in a family devoted to social justice and i feel the pure innocence and love of a mockingbird named Boo, a wounded bird traumatized much like the people’s journeys i have shared for four plus decades in the vocation that called me from the moment of meeting Boo and before and after… i have also loved mockingbirds from that moment and desire to live simply and wholeheartedly as innocence, as spirit, as mockingbird…

so, in this moment, i am mockingbird re-joy-singer visiting the eight year, the wise one who knew she was here to sing, to sing her soul song of joy in a field of peace seeded with justice and guided by love…

thousandfold thanks for sharing this re-joy-sing journey, this pilgrimage of peace, this coming home to our one heart…