The former musician, Hazrat Inayat Khan gave up the practise of music "to tune souls instead of instruments, to harmonize people instead of notes ... Music, the word we use in our everyday language, is nothing less than the picture of our Beloved ... It is because music is the picture of our Beloved that we love music."
Certain redwood groves are holy places for me because they capture silence and light. The forest is so dense as to exclude all external noise. It is possible to ignore their silence until a single bird sings within. When the single song has died not only do I realize I have heard a sound exquisite in its simplicity, but also that I have heard it so precisely because it was embedded in pure silence.
