Bewick’s Wren : The Song of our Lives

This is a Bewick’s Wren. On a perfectly crisp morning with ideal light, he found a prominent perch and was singing his heart out. His song is clear and loud. It repeats, reinforcing his message to the intended audience. He sings distinctively, and out in the open as he is, there is no question of mistaken identity. His morning was, quite literally, a full-throated pronouncement of his message. And in a still-photo like this, there is a space, a gap, into which we place our own recollection of the sound of his song.

The Jewish year is typically tracked by the calendar. It can also be measured by song. At the simplest level, there are songs we sing only annually, during a particular festival. A bit deeper, there are melodies that clue us that this weekly-repeated prayer is being sung during a holiday. At root: song is tempo and melody, chorus and verse, elated crescendo and dirgeful diminuendo. And there is silence. Our Jewish year incorporates all these elements in its repetition of secular days and Shabbat, the punctuating marks - high and low - of the holidays, and the assurance that the song will be sung yet again.

We each sing our own song. The cherubic little boy becomes a raspy old man. The tinkling little girl grows throaty and rich. These songs reflect the evolution of our lives. And taken together, we form the chorus of our community. We don’t always harmonize fully, and that’s OK. The occasional blue note, the exception that proves the rule, demonstrates the power of sym-phony, of “together in sound.” The Jewish year provides us all with a venue in which to make the music of our lives together. The Wren, showing the space that is held for each of us, inspires and encourages our most heartfelt performance.