Silence is disturbing because it is the wavelength of the soul. If we leave no space in our music, then we rob the sound we make of defining context...It’s almost as if we’re afraid of leaving space. Great music is as often about the space between the notes as it is about the notes themselves...What I’m trying to say here is that if I’m ever asked if I’m religious, I always reply, "Yes, I’m a devout musician." Music puts me in touch with something beyond intellect, something otherworldly, something sacred.
~ "Silence in Music" from a commencement speech by Sting
Like laughter, music can help put us into NOW like nothing else can. And it can ennoble and lift up the NOW to where it belongs -- to the sublime. The beat, the rhythm, the measured time that is transparent in every fine musical work speaks to the subconscious rhythm of our very souls. Music as a part of a prayer-walking experience can hold wonders for us ... and these wonders just ARE.
~ from THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO PRAYER WALKING by Linus Murdy
Music is a part of life, not separate from it; and life itself is musical with its rhythms, variations of themes, episodes, fugues, counterpoints, consonances and dissonances, cadences, silences, and tonalities. When we listen to music, we are contemplating the very structures and colors that make up our own lives. The music we play mirrors the music we live.
One day when Francis was walking in the woods, he was so filled with delight at the beauty of the world that he wished to express his gratitude with music. He had no violin, so he picked up two sticks and began to play. Birds sang and animals came out and danced. Far-fetched, you say? Perhaps only those who believe that animals dance can hear the violin music of two twigs.
We live in a world of sound
We are sound
We are singers,
born into this world to sing our song
The old language speaks with purity
through the songs of our feelings
Resonating from the core
to fill the vastness of our being.
The world of violins and flutes, of horns and cellos, of fugues, scherzos and gavottes, obeyed laws which were so clear that all music seemed to speak of God. My body was not listening, it was praying. My spirit no longer had bounds, and if tears came to my eyes, I did not feel them running down because they were outside me. I wept with gratitude every time the orchestra began to sing. A world of sounds for a blind man, what sudden grace! The inner world made concrete.
In the next stage of our collective evolution it is the hearts of individuals that will hold the cosmic note of the planet. This note can be recognized as a song being born within the hearts of seekers. It is a quality of joy that is being infused into the world. It is the heartbeat of the world and needs to be heard in our cities and towns.
~ from THE BOND WITH THE BELOVED by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
One night we visited camp for devotional songs. One man would start the first line of the song, his companions joining in. Then the women would begin, huddling together under their dark wool, keening their lungs out... It was as if they took a spiritual bath in the music, their troubles washed away with songs as old as the subcontinent. How comforting it must be to pass through life's storms always with the support of the group infusing every action and every thought with one voice extending down through the generations, saying,
"It is all right. We are all here. There is no such thing as alone."
I remember as a boy standing at the side of a gorge watching the swift, shallow water and a girl standing in it up to her knees. Everything was settled and at peace in the sunlight. As I watched the hills began to sing -- I could hear them as an indistinct choir. Then they began to shimmer and dance. It seemed clear that we were linked -- hills and humans -- in a deep, objective way. And this connection made life true, and my usual fears irrelevant.
I know that we hear God in the silence. And for this reason, it is crucial to avail ourselves of silence. For there is a sound in silence that is the voice of God. There is that divine whisper.
Driving home on a rainy day, Lorna was rear-ended by a truck just before the woman playing Rosina in Act I of the Barber of Seville was to sing. The impact was sudden and stunning. "But even as I entered a world of shock and pain, I found a world of bliss and order. I listened to the aria and fifteen minutes of the opera as firemen tried to free me from the wreckage of my car." Though told she had been unconscious until she was in the ambulance, she remembered listening to Rosina's voice throughout the ordeal. "My spirit stayed with my body. The music kept me alive. I was able to listen and stay conscious, alert, and at peace with the music. ... From the beginning of that aria, I knew I had to finish the opera of my life."
Music is, and always will be, a method used by beings to bring about a unity between different vibrations, causing a harmonious note to the ear. In mystical fashion, one endeavors to achieve the same result with our intermingling vibrations of polarity. The thread, which binds in harmony, is the "music of the spheres." Its song plays continuously, but our ears cannot hear, unless our soul is tuned in.
Essentially neuter, silence, like light or love, requires a medium to give it meaning, takes on the color of its host, adapts easily to our fears and needs. Quite apart from whether we seek or shun it, silences orchestrate the music of our days... If it's true that all symphonies end in silence, it's equally true that they begin there as well. Silence, after all, both buries and births us, and just as life without the counterweight of mortality would mean nothing, so silence alone, by offering itself as the eternal Other, makes music possible.
~ from "Listening For Silence" by Mark Slouka with thanks to Alice Spicer
BLESSINGS and EVERY GOOD WISH, dea friends! To reflect on your faith is to look at the strong convictions you live by; to reflect on your life is to examine your faith. Life and faith walk hand in hand.
FAITH is the touching of a mystery. It is to perceive another dimension to absolutely every thing in the world. In faith, the mysterious meaning of life comes through ... To speak in the simplest possible terms: faith sees, knows, senses the presence of God in the world.
Abandonment to the will of God is a life-long discipline that is rooted and grows in humility, prayer, listening, and pondering, as well as an agreement to be close kin to the foolish, unseen, and disenfranchised... It provides life at a satisfying gallop, fast and fulfilling, characterized by contentment and high-spirited courage, and it is an unmistakable sign of great faith.
If you are here unfaithfully with us,
you're causing terrible damage.
If you've opened your loving to God's love,
you're helping people you don't know
and have never seen.
God's call is mysterious: it comes in the darkness of faith. It is so fine, so subtle, that it is only with the deepest silence within us that we can hear it. And yet nothing is so decisive and overpowering for a person on this earth, nothing surer or stronger. This call is uninterrupted: God is always calling us! But there are distinctive moments in this call, moments which leave a permanent mark on us -- moments which we never forget.
What is experienced in meditation as aridity, or even as dark night, can at the same time in a hidden but true sense be the brightest radiance of love. But this love must hide itself in the nakedness of faith... Every silence in meditation is meaningful. In other words, where in an earthly sense we experience wordlessness, the spheres of Word and meaning beyond expression open up.
Where fear and doubt imprison, faith and love liberate;
Where fear and doubt paralyze, faith and love empower;
Where fear and doubt dishearten, faith and love encourage;
Where fear and doubt sicken, faith and love heal; and,
Where fear and doubt make useless, faith and love create new life.
My life has been perhaps harder than the normal, but I have learned to endure what cannot be altered, with only my own inner strength to sustain me. During disastrous times, the inner voice was always there to comfort me, even if it did not always speak to me in so many words. Faith, though, has always played a great part in my life; faith and inner certainty. Endurance, coupled with love and faith have been the keynotes of my life, and through them I have been blessed beyond all measure.
