Symphonies aim at healing the soul by taking human emotions and concerns and, through the alchemy of art, make us somehow feel better about all of life--and us.Music touches something higher in us directly.All of the arts touch something that is beyond the ordinary machinations of life.And this "something higher and more" makes even the most homespun art somehow therapeutic.
Music is pleasing not only because of the sound but because of the silence that is in it: without the alternation of sound and silence, there would be no rhythm.If we strive to be happy by filling the silence of life with sound, productive by turning all life's leisure into work, and real by turning all our being into doing, we will only succeed in producing a hell on earth.If we have no silence, God is not heard in our music.If we have no rest, God does not bless our work.If we twist our lives out of shape in order to fill every corner of them with action and experience, God will seem silently to withdraw from our hearts and leave us empty.
Music is pleasing not only because of the sound but because of the silence that is in it: without the alternation of sound and silence, there would be no rhythm.If we strive to be happy by filling the silence of life with sound, productive by turning all life's leisure into work, and real by turning all our being into doing, we will only succeed in producing a hell on earth.If we have no silence, God is not heard in our music.If we have no rest, God does not bless our work.If we twist our lives out of shape in order to fill every corner of them with action and experience, God will seem silently to withdraw from our hearts and leave us empty.
"That's me singing," Charlie says."That's me playing the water drum, too.If you know my song, you know Charlie.Everyone has a song.God gives each a song.That's how we know who we are.Our song tells us who we are.
When the world becomes repressive and ugly and mean, we need form and beauty and balance and music--that's when artists feel most pressed into service.
I'm coming to believe in the importance of silence in music.The power of silence after a phrase of music, for example: the dramatic silence after the first four notes of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, or the space between the notes of a Miles Davis solo.There is something very specific about a "rest" in music.You take your foot off the pedal and pay attention.I'm wondering as musicians whether the most important thing we do is merely to provide a frame for silence.I'm wondering if silence itself is perhaps the mystery at the heart of music.And is silence the most perfect form of music of all?Songwriting is the only form of meditation I know.And it is only in silence that the gifts of melody and metaphor are offered.
In the concert hall, each motionless listener is part of the performance.The concentration of the player charges the electric tension in the auditorium and returns to the playLIer magnified.I like the fact that "LISTEN" is an anagram of "SILENT".Silence is not something that is there before the music begins and after it stops.It is the essence of the music itself, the vital ingredient that makes it possible for the music to exist at all.It's wonderful when the audience is part of this productive silence.
Harry Truman once said that listening to good music made him think of the way things ought to be, instead of the way they are.In the presence of music, we gain a taste of Heaven and Earth.Music is vitally important to our spiritual health: clearing the air, changing our mood, taking us to faraway places, revealing mysteries, calming the soul, allowing us true glimpses into the past.
If we do not keep pace with our companions, perhaps it is because we hear a different drummer.Let us step to the music we hear, however measured or far away.
Dear Seiji,
Music is the glue that connects many parallel universes that run through your life.I am amazed at how often you can find grace and simplicity in this complex world.Through your talent, perseverance, and faith in the power of music, you have blazed a path for aspiring musicians from all over the globe.
Yo-Yo Ma
Gramma died 25 years after she stopped mothering me.But she left me something special, and I hear it whenever the need occurs.A tune wafts in unexpectedly when I am kneading bread or hanging laundry on the line.The opening phrase of an oldhymn bursts from my mouth:
"Are ye able," I suddenly sing out.
"To believe that Spirit triumphs," I can hear Gramma picking up the next line.The verses poses a great question about faith, but I am thinking about what Gramma gave me.
"Lillian," I answer, "thank you for my voice."
I sit for a long time in the absolute silence.All at once, there is barely a perceptible noise, a soft rumble as of thunder.The sound dies without discovery of its nature or source.It returns, seeming to come from all directions at once.At last it emerges from its mystery, grows into a tremulous hum, and solidifies into chanting.The music has no tempo.There is no breathing audible in it.No one voice stands out; it is the fusion of all that produces the effect.Long held notes which at last modulate again and again in the calm rhythm of the heart.I am suspended in the sound.And charged. ... The chanting dies away as gently as it began.Once again there is the unanimous voice of silence.
It is not enough to seek and care; to pay lip service to all manner of ideals. Real witness is what counts. It is something to do with leaps in the dark. Recognizing that Truth is hidden. But transformation towards truth is something else. It is practice and diligence.
Compassion is an aspect of Divine love that melts all defenses and resistance when anyone's suffering is really seen. There is nothing the personality can do to create compassion, but when we are willing to be completely open and truthful about whatever we are truly feeling, it arises naturally and soothes our hurt. (We could say that truth without compassion is not really truth, and that compassion without truth is not really compassion.) The Divine love that seeks to express itself in the world through us is a powerful force that can break through all of the old barriers and untruths that have accumulated in us.
These are the three steps of truth. We climb to the first by the toil of humility, to the second by the deep feelings of compassion, and to the third by the ecstasy of contemplation. On the first step we experience the severity of truth, on the second its tenderness, on the third its purity. Reason brings us to the first as we judge ourselves; compassion brings us to the second when we have mercy on others; on the third the purity of truth sweeps us up to the sight of things invisible.
Prayer is listening to the voice of the One who calls you the beloved. It is to constantly go back to the Truth of who we are and claim it for ourselves. I'm not what I do. I'm not what people say about me. I'm not what I have. My life is not rooted in the world, the things the world gives me. My life is rooted in the truth of my spiritual identity. Whatever we do — we have to go back regularly to that place of core identity.
A walk in nature can help bring about one of the most essential acts a human being can perform: the stilling of the mind. For when the cacophony of disturbances, reactions, and self-talk subsides, like a windswept sea suddenly finding calm, the lens of our lives becomes a still, pure crystalline window for the cosmos to experience itself through... A walk in the natural world, with conscious mindfulness, can help bathe the senses in the implicate ordering of existence. Such a direct and immediate reminder does much to help steer us back to the center of ourselves.
Silence ... And in the west, the ever-setting sun consumed itself, surrounded by its circling sisters, rushing with the speed of light toward the point systems and cosmic galaxies had been fleeing from the beginning, toward darkness and the primordial Fiat. And across the cold ocean of space, audible as the music of the spheres, the defining cry of creation comes. Maranatha!
The Spirit of God
is a life that bestows life,
root of world-tree
and the wind in its boughs.
Scrubbing out sin,
she rubs oil into wounds.
She is glistening life
alluring all praise,
all-awakening,
all-resurrecting.
I walked through the birches by the river today. Overwhelming! The earth is stripped down to simple designs. The land has become a visual haiku. Sun on the fretwork of twigs. Blood droplets of rose hips clinging to the bushes. The chatter of the creek against trimmings of ice. The skiff of snow. My breath a white cloud like a departing soul... I have always been beguiled by birds. As if there was much they would tell me if they could, but they are only permitted to bear witness with their lives, their song.
Walking home, I ponder about a love of art and I think about my love of the land back home, about the healing grace of wildness, and how difficult it is to articulate why conservation matters, why wilderness matters to the health of our souls and how a language of the heart becomes suspect. I wonder how it is we have come to this place where art and nature are spoken in terms of what is optional?
My daughter, three years old and fearless, loves nothing more than wading along the shallow shoreline outside our house. Holding hands, we walk barefoot upstream quietly in the water, stepping delicately over stones. Besides the water sounds, there is just immense silence. We stop and listen to the water. She asked me for a story; I did not have one. Listening, she turned in delight and announced, "Daddy, this water is talking." In listening to the river a kind of silence prevails, broken only by the rush of water over rocks. Such a silence is more like faint echoes, each a series of dim reverberations. They continue in you, distant yet familiar.
Silently a flower blooms,
In silence it falls away;
Yet here now, at this moment, at this place,
The world of the flow, the whole of
the world is blooming.
This is the talk of the flower,
the truth of the blossom;
The glory of eternal life is fully shining
here.
Prayer fulfills the need humans have for God, for inspiration, for affirmation of our own spirits. In prayer, we communicate with the essence of everything that exists, including our own essence. We have a message to share with life, with God, and we want to share it with authority. The message is coming directly from our hearts, we are talking with our divinity, with Divinity Itself. The power of prayer can lead us into love, truth, and personal freedom.
Sacred Friend, be with us this day.
Within us to purify us;
Above us to draw us up;
Beneath us to sustain us;
Before us to lead us;
Behind us to restrain us;
Around us to protect us.