Now, I am spinning with joy.

 

I have just joined the San Diego Threshold Choir.

 

This is a volunteer organization that offers the service of singing to people who are on their deathbed.

 

It is an honor to use my voice and my heart in this way.

 

I love to sing.

 

I am not a professional.  Few people have ever told me I have a beautiful voice.  In fact, though I have longed for it, no one has ever requested me to sing to them.  But nor has anyone ever told me that I should not sing to them.

 

Whenever I sing, there is almost always a voice in my head that says, “What are you doing?  You are no Tori Amos or Snatam Kaur.  Why are you singing so loudly and with so much love and confidence?  Maybe you should shut your mouth and keep quiet.”

 

This voice in my head is not me.

 

Now, I could waste a little time wondering, where ever did that inner message come from?  After all these years that I have been singing in a variety of situations from college choir to morning Sadhana with Kundalini Yogis to Music Together circles with Mamas and Babes, why would such a critic still exists inside of me?  Hasn’t this voice gotten the message that no matter what it says, I will sing?

 

Or, I could just keep singing.

 

As for now, I am bowing my head to those few people who have ever told me that I have a lovely singing voice.  Their kind remark has given me the energy and nerve to step up to use this voice to serve.

 

I am eager to begin my adventure with the San Diego Threshold Choir.  It may seem that the people who are visiting the dying are paying a service to those who are dying.  That may be true.  But I also recognize that being invited to pay a dying person a visit to sing to them is one of the highest blessings that a dying person could give to his or her visitors.

 

It is actually a high honor to be in the presence of anyone who is on the threshold to pass from one lifetime to the Beloved Beyond.  The dying being is in a twilight zone; this means he or she is not fully alive anymore, but nor fully dead yet.  These twilight zones are where the Amrit, the nectar, flows most freely.  And wherever the nectar flows freely, I grow soft, open, receptive, willing, and joyful.

 

May we understand threshold spaces as spaces of infinite possibility and enchantment.  May we realize this possibility and enchantment to grow in love and ecstasy.  May we continue to request those near and dear to us to sing to us and to sing with us.  May the next words I say to the next person I see be, “Please, sing!”

 

Sat Naam!