Susan Lafferty“There’s a song in the air. There’s a star in the sky.”
It was always my favorite carol as a kid. At Christmas.
Years later. In a country with only a small percentage of believers. I was walking through a department store one day and suddenly stopped. Listened.
Christmas music was in the air. Playing over the sound system. Lyrics and all.
“…O come let us adore Him, Christ the Lord!”
Crowds. Criss-crossing street intersections. Train stations. Shopping malls.
In multiple directions.
Pressing up escalators. Hiking staircases. Moving ever forward into trains. Onto sidewalks. Through subways.
Crowds. In your face. Up close. Yet often silent. Solitary.
Eyes on their phones.
Looking down. Or away. Staring off into the distance.
Light falls. Through the archway. Across timeworn stones.
We sit in cool shade. Island breeze, soft. The old city, silent.
Footsteps echo in narrow passageways. Against ancient walls. In Malta.
Climbing uneven steps, we look out across a valley. Small villages scattered here and there. White houses. Flat roofs.
These stretch out to a defined edge. On the Mediterranean Sea.
