For days I have heard an inordinate number of sirens. Sometimes it’s just one and sometimes it’s like they fill all the air around me.  All day long it seems they are roaring, blaring, calling for my attention.
It’s as if at every moment there is an unattended fire raging; an emergency forming as the second hand pushes forward; there is an alarm sounding that there is not only danger lurking but it’s ready to pounce.
I am a believer in signs and yet I don’t know quite what to make of this one.

Some signs are literal and apparent and others require a little more finessing, coaxing out into the sunlight.
And these sirens, while their noise is loud and jarring, their meaning remains hidden much like their exact location.
I walk around and ask myself, ask God, as the universe what is the message? What does the sign mean? And so far I don’t know.
I do know that it feels like there is far too much smoke for there not to be a fire but I don’t know where to look; don’t know its source; or if I’m to be the one to extinguish it.

That’s how signs go. Even though they keep appearing our learning curve is often larger, wider, scarier than we’d like; than I’d like.
I continue to listen. I look up with questions. I shake my head in uncertainty.
And I affirm to anyone who is listening, ethereal or otherwise, that I am hearing them. I just haven’t quite interpreted the message, or what action I am to take.

But lately these signs I get are unavoidable in their volume. Last week while walking around the block near my house I had a similar experience. For about 300 yards a child in the park adjacent to me screamed repeatedly. I saw the child and no harm was coming to him, he was just screaming because sometimes kids do. But it was so insistent and incessant that it had my ear and my attention. As I turned away from the park I was relieved that the silence had returned but as I made the next turn heading back toward my house, the whole next length of my walk was dominated with a bird screaming repeatedly. It was so loud, unrelenting that I stopped, looked to the sky and said out loud, “I hear the bird, God. I heard the kid. I just don’t know what it means. I need more.”

Still no answers.
I get quiet and I wait. My mind gets busy and loud and again I tell it to quiet so I can hear the next instruction. There is a fire. I just don’t know where it is.

Sunshine & Sarcasm,

Lowi & G