{"id":57,"date":"2013-12-29T18:06:58","date_gmt":"2013-12-30T02:06:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amcling.northernhorizons.net\/?p=57"},"modified":"2013-12-29T18:06:58","modified_gmt":"2013-12-30T02:06:58","slug":"blackbird","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/amcling.northernhorizons.net\/?p=57","title":{"rendered":"Blackbird"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It was a wonderful moment. Two 7th grade members of the Confirmation Class played their clarinets at my installation, offering their gifts to usher in the beginning of what we hoped would be a long journey together. My friend chuckled at the red sneakers. I smiled to recognize a Beatles&#8217; song. Good things really do cycle around, don&#8217;t they? Then, because I&#8217;m a word person and the lyrics were eluding me, I googled to see what Blackbird had been singing. &#8220;Blackbird singing in the dead of night, Take these broken wings and learn to fly.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>They couldn&#8217;t possibly have known what gift they were bringing. They&#8217;d played more truth than anyone could have imagined. Likely, my friend and I were the only ones to hear it. The song I&#8217;ve never been able to stop singing (not that I&#8217;ve really tried); but yes, the night has been dark and cold for so very long. Broken wings accompany me, and I want and need to learn to fly &#8211; again. I didn&#8217;t manage to get the wind beneath my wings while I was there. Maybe I knew even then that I wouldn&#8217;t. Instead I&#8217;ve started down a new road, trying to sing, searching for the dawn, scrambling to get my feet under me so one day I can push off and fly.<\/p>\n<p>In the weeks and months ahead, I will try to give voice to the journey here; in the hope that loved ones can share the road with me, and others can find company in their darkness. We&#8217;re not meant to sing alone, and the dark is never as empty when we can reach out and touch a friendly hand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It was a wonderful moment. Two 7th grade members of the Confirmation Class played their clarinets at my installation, offering their gifts to usher in the beginning of what we hoped would be a long journey together. My friend chuckled at the red sneakers. I smiled to recognize a Beatles&#8217; song. Good things really do &hellip; <\/p>\n<p><a class=\"more-link btn\" href=\"http:\/\/amcling.northernhorizons.net\/?p=57\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-year-in-review","item-wrap"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9P5sD-V","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/amcling.northernhorizons.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/amcling.northernhorizons.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/amcling.northernhorizons.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amcling.northernhorizons.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amcling.northernhorizons.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/amcling.northernhorizons.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58,"href":"http:\/\/amcling.northernhorizons.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57\/revisions\/58"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/amcling.northernhorizons.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amcling.northernhorizons.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amcling.northernhorizons.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}