The transformation that comes from believing in something greater than yourself.

The small inkling of hope that comes from seeing beauty in the ruins. Something familiar in the wild. I imagine that’s what the British settlers must have felt when that first little baby, named Virginia Dare after the Virgin Queen, was introduced to Roanoke. It was probably no small relief when they saw with their eyes, felt with their hands those soft little baby fingers that gave evidence to the mysterious cycle of life that continued despite being so very far from home.

I remember as a teenager going to some crack houses in Philadelphia, handing out hot egg sandwiches to people who were skinnier and sadder than they should be. Everywhere I looked, the story was not good. All the clues–the boarded up windows, door frames that no longer bothered with an actual door, kids in ragged clothes that fit somebody at some point, but it sure wasn’t them and it sure wasn’t now–added up to a people who had given up hope.

Until I met him.

One guy, whose name escapes me all these years later, was different.

Not because he didn’t quickly grab a sandwich or wasn’t addicted to crack or worse. But because of two things that still stand out clearly to me now:

He looked me in the eyes. Like we were both people. Just people. Neither better or worse than the other. Maybe luckier, sure, but not better. And what’s that saying? We’re all on the same level before the cross. Well, that’s true. And we are also all made up of DNA, of thoughts we learned to think from the way the world has reacted to us through the years, and a jumble of painful wounds and loving touches that make us who we are today.

And there was an air of transcendence about him also. I felt it when he opened his mouth and sang for me. He sang Amazing Grace and I couldn’t help but believe it. All of it. I saw the wretchedness of his home, felt where he has been and knew without a shadow of a doubt that he needed somebody and was not about to turn grace, any grace, down.

And there he was, just singing. In the ugliest place in Philadelphia, it was beautiful. Like an alter not built from materials that can crumble with the passing of time, but made from a raw honesty and the desire to look up, up, up; past these old buildings and even the charity that would fleetingly last the afternoon, he sang and made life better.

And no, a song can’t fill your stomach and no, a song can’t pay your bills, but it sure can transcend you. It sure can remind you that there is something more to life than our own hollow desires and the way that we clumsily hurt each other.

And I guess that is why I am going to keep on singing.

Because I want to look up, up, up. Not in denial, necessarily, but in belief that there is still something to sing about.

Sorry for the deep thoughts (by Jack Handy). Maybe next time I listen to Christmas music I will write about silver bells and whether or not an angel or a star should top the tree.

Um, totally a star, by the way.