We hunger to be known and understood. We hunger to be loved. We hunger to be at peace inside our own skins. We hunger not just to be fed these things but, often without realizing it, we hunger to feed others these things because they too are starving for them. We hunger not just to be loved but to love, not just to be forgiven but to forgive, not just to be known and understood for all the good times and bad times that for better for worse have made us who we are, but to know and understand each other to the same point of seeing that, in the last analysis, we all have the same good times, the same bad times, and that for that very reason there is no such thing in all the world as anyone who is really a stranger.
~ from SECRETS IN THE DARK: A LIFE IN SERMONS by Frederick Buechner, thanks to Liz Stewart
There's such beauty in sharing the distinctive songs of our own souls as we dance with the grand web of life, each of us embodying particular forms, energies, and rhythms, bringing into the world our unique purposes, passions, and gifts. The tapestry of our lives is colored with freedom when we are guided by our own creativity and knowing.
When you are interiorly free you call others to freedom, whether you know it or not. Freedom attracts wherever it appears. A free man or a free woman creates a space where others feel safe and want to dwell. Our world is so full of conditions, demands, requirements, and obligations that we often wonder what is expected of us. But when we meet a truly free person there are no expectations, only an invitation to reach into ourselves and discover there our own freedom. Where true inner freedom is, there God is. And where God is, there we want to be.
"Is there enough Silence for the Word to be heard? "
WARMEST GREETINGS, beloved friends! Out of the silence come songs of summer as day and night Nature's melded voices offer music when we pause to listen. Our own organ of the heart plays all the rhythms of our lives: from pain, loneliness, grief, sadness . . . to joy, praise, celebration, silence. At every moment we can listen inwardly for the music of our heart, body, and soul. And we can dance, wail, sing, pray, chant to its changing tunes. Just as birds naturally sing their various songs, so we, too, have heart-songs to share with one another and Life! May your own special heart-songs rise up out of the silence.
The imagination is one of every thing in the universe as a song of praise ... the world as symphony. If one note in a musical composition is played off-key, the whole composition is off. If a musician decides to go his or her own way in the middle of a symphony in order to express freedom, the free play of the whole is destroyed. On the other hand, musicians find true freedom when their individuality harmonizes with the whole.
My life goes on in endless song above Earth's lamentations, I hear the real, though far-off hymn that hails a new creation. Through all the tumult and the strife I hear its music ringing, It sounds an echo in my soul; How can I keep from singing?
Nothing prepared me for what I saw. I realized that the young voice was coming from 83-year-old Jonas, who was singing the "Sanctus" by Beethoven, with a beauty that could not be explained. It was like the Soul of all life summoning each spirit who listened: Here! Here is the sound of all that is true. Hear the sound of the Love to which you belong. That afternoon I learned that Jonas had been sent to Siberia as a young man because of that voice. Because of the remarkable gift he had been sent to build roads and live in obscurity. Now he was an elderly man, but the voice had never aged. Truly, it existed apart from any space and time.
It's a wonder to behold how human beings feel after making their own music. It's been well-documented throughout history that people really put themselves on a higher spiritual level when they involve themselves in music or any of the allied arts. Our lives are so affected by what we do artistically. But too often we hold back because of our limiting image of success thinking: I don't know how to do this. We need to give ourselves the freedom to create our own sounds of music.
~ from "Playing for the Fun of It" by Jeff Wangenheim
I am one of a new breed, a hospital musician. Last week a doctor who had come out of a difficult eight-hour surgery heard the piano and stopped to rest. He said the aria I was playing from Bach's Goldenberg Variations revived him by reminding him of the larger picture. He said he felt more accepting of the outcome of the operation he'd performed. The man who'd received a new kidney said, "Beethoven's Ninth Symphony reminded me how much I want to live, how much I love life. After listening to the music I was able to pray again."
~ from THE NATURE OF MUSIC by Maureen McCarthy Draper
