Warm Greetings, dear Friends of Silence! The music of nature encourages our souls to sing along these beautiful days of early summer. I've just completed a landscaping project in my back yard, and each morning now when I wake and open my blinds, I am struck by the beauty of nature's symphony: the silence of early morning, broken only by birdsong, and the humming along of the awakening world. Truly it is "the music of the spheres," as an old and beloved hymn poetically states:
This is my Father's world, and to my listening ears, All nature sings and round me rings the music of the spheres.
It is easy to be so caught up in the everyday tasks of busy lives that we miss the music. We are able to hear that kind of music only when we listen for it with the awareness of open hearts, and then our spirits come alive.
There are songs in stone as well as in sound, which overflow with rejoicing at the bountiful riches of Creation. . . . We need silences to be free from the words that come between us and reality. We need silence to still our chattering minds and focus on the new creation to which we are constantly giving birth. There is a music to silence and a dance within stillness which is lacking in our lives and communities.
This is the greatest skill of all, to take the bitter with the sweet and make it beautiful, to take the whole of life in all its moods, its strengths and weaknesses, and of the whole make one great and celestial harmony.
The houses are clean and white, and great trees stand among them and spread over them. The fields lie around the town, divided by rows of such trees as stand in the town and in the woods, each field more beautiful than all the rest. Over town and fields the one great song sings, and is answered everywhere; every leaf and flower and grass blade sings. And in the fields and the town, walking, standing, or sitting under the trees, resting and talking together in the peace of a Sabbath profound and bright, are people of such beauty that he weeps to see them. He sees that these are the membership of one another and of the place and of the song or light in which they live and move.
"There they go, chanting again." "Maybe that is what really matters," Equitius said. "What? The chanting?" "You. Constantly getting in touch with God. Getting others to do it, too. They sing with their hearts, these people. For all I know, they may keep the world alive by what they're doing."
To see all things at their origin, their beginnings, puts us in kinship with all that lives: trees, birds, stars seem foreign to us only inasmuch as we perceive them outside of our common origin with them. To drink at the source of all that lives and breathes expands the heart and makes the blood sing, echoing of all the vital fluids of the world. To dwell near the beginnings is to draw infinitely near to that which creates both the unity and diversity of all beings.
From the age of six to fourteen I took violin lessons but had no luck with my teachers, for whom music did not transcend mechanical practicing. I really began to learn only after I had fallen in love with Mozart's sonatas. The attempt to reproduce their singular grace compelled me to improve my technique. I believe, on the whole, that love is a better teacher than sense of duty.
~ Albert Einstein, in THE HERON DANCE BOOK OF LOVE AND GRATITUDE
Music can not only help you access aspects of yourself you may have long forgotten, it can also help you grow qualities of yourself that are not yet fully developed.
~ from TALES OF A WOUNDED HEALER by Maria Fenton Gladis
