Sung Into Existence

This is beautiful and interesting- thinking of music as a piece of your identity- a unique descriptor as much as your name is- as a way to call you back to who you are truly intended  to be (your " inner- most song"). Aside from the focus on self, implying that humans are inherently good and all we need is to be in touch with ourselves (whatever that practically means), I find this to be largely true. We all have a song- figuratively, and using music to communicate this, rather than words that put desires, characteristics and giftings down on a page in black ink is just another way to convey or represent this. On another note, what implications does this have for how this culture would approach abortion if a child's birthday is the day its song was first sung and it was conceived? I wonder, do these songs have words or are they strictly pitch and rhythm?

"There is a tribe in Africa where the birth of a child is not counted from when they’ve been born, nor from when they are conceived, but from the day that the child was a thought in the mother’s mind.

And when a woman decides she will have a child, she goes off and sits under a tree by herself, and she listens until she can hear the song of the child that wants to come. And after she’s heard the song, she comes back to the man who will be the child’s father, and teaches it to him. And then, when they make love and physically conceive the child, some of that time they sing the song of the child, as a way to invite it.

And then when the mother is pregnant, she teaches that child’s song to the midwives and the old women of the village, so that when the child is born, the women and the people around her sing the child’s song to welcome it. And then, as the child grows up, the other villagers are taught the child’s song. Later, when the child enters education, the village gathers and chants the child’s song. When the child passes through the initiation to adulthood, the people again come together and sing. At the time of marriage, the person hears his or her song. Finally, when the soul is about to pass from this world, the family and friends gather at the person’s bed, just as they did at their birth, and they sing the person to the next life.

In the African tribe there is one other occasion upon which the villagers sing to the child. If at any time during his or her life, the person commits a crime or aberrant social act, the individual is called to the center of the village and the people in the community form a circle around them. Then they sing their song to them. The tribe recognizes that the correction for antisocial behavior is not punishment; it is love and the remembrance of identity.

When you recognize your own song, you have no desire or need to do anything that would hurt another. A friend is someone who knows your song and sings it to you when you have forgotten it. Those who love you are not fooled by mistakes you have made or dark images you hold about yourself. They remember your beauty when you feel ugly; your wholeness when you are broken; your innocence when you feel guilty; and your purpose when you are confused. If you do not give your song a voice, you will feel lost, alone and confused. If you express it, you will come to life.

You may not have grown up in an African tribe that sings your song to you at crucial life transitions, but life is always reminding you when you are in tune with yourself and when you are not. When you feel good, what you are doing matches your song, and when you feel awful, it doesn’t.

In the end, we shall all recognize our song and sing it well. You may feel a little warbly at the moment, but so have all the great singers. Just keep singing and you’ll find your way home."

~A Child's Song from Wisdom of the Heart by Alan Cohen

How!???! Make it stop!

In a moment of utter awe and exasperation, I am taking a two minute break to start what will be a highly entertaining document. I'm an in awe of my clumsiness and how frequently ridiculous things happen. Just now, I was innocently sipping coffee and it managed to leap from the minuscule hole into my eye, all over my face, and on my shirt and pants. That's right. I barely moved and I have coffee and soy milk in my eye. I have decided to document any special moments for the next week or so. Just a few highlights that I can remember from the past few days:
 

• Slipping as I dodged out of the shower at 6:50 AM on Monday morning to the sound of the smoke alarm and scent of toxic, burning oatmeal and clouds of smoke. It usually takes about 8 minutes to cook. wow. This should not have happened.

• Finding a mysterious bruise on the back of my arm yesterday. 

•  Getting tangled in the frame of a door with a music stand, which resulted in the stand assaulting my leg and a large, painful bruise. 

• Almost toppling down the stairs today on my way to school.

Just wait for it... This list should develop quite rapidly and should be good. You never know what oddity I will experience. Also, I've concluded that about every two weeks the birds conspire and decide to make my car their depository. This has been happening for a few months. in different locations. Really? I could also write about all the friends we try to keep out of our apartment... The cats, the raccoon, wasps, the large ant infestations... I've yet to see a squirrel. Like I said, just wait for it.


Coming next... My eucharisteo list.

A Beautiful Gem

So beautiful.

                                                             

On the summer to do list...

?????????

I'm clumsy. Let's just accept that fact, or rather, embrace it. I am no less of a person, because of it and have actually come to find it really funny ( in hind sight) that I regularly walk into objects - trees, lamp posts, tables, chairs and sometimes people. Basically,  I'm either tuned into my surroundings or I'm simply not and am acting in a haze. Origins are: Exhaustion and lack of coffee or, more commonly, thinking deeply about unrelated things while carrying out physical actions. Don't worry, I do try to mentally enter my physical world when I drive. Yesterday, I had some thoughts, while chopping veggies, which brought to mind the fact that I need to be more careful about when I do this thinking. Anyways, these thoughts are not yet fully developed, but the possible implications give me chills.

We speak about music as a language and it is- it's a language of the spirit, the soul. It has a way of conveying certain feelings or images to people across cultures and age groups that is not conditioned- small children, babies and animals react to certain sounds the same way adults do. In other words, this reaction is not based off of taught correlation. There is something very intrinsic about the how music communicates and is interpreted. What is music? Varying frequency, pitch and timing (rhythm). What are words? Music (pitch and rhythm) with assigned meaning. 

About a year ago a friend told me about an experience she had. She was at a service, playing her violin as an act of worship and someone who she did not know came over and translated what she had played on her violin into words. It was a scripture verse, a verse that had come up multiple times in very strange ways over the course of a few weeks previously in her own life, a verse that my friend and a few others felt God had laid on their hearts for varying reasons.

Recently, I've felt this urge to take my violin to church and play in the back as my voice in worship. It is a voice of mine and I see this as being the same as dancing in the back of a church service as worship, something that I wish I saw more of. Why are a small select, piece of the arts (a few specific, acceptable instruments) confined to the stage as means to help others enter into worship? Why are artists not using their second voice to worship in the congregation? Where is the artwork on the walls, the miming, the dancing, the poetry, the narrative read to the congregation? 

For now I will leave the implications of my earlier words to your own thoughts, but they are magnificently exciting and beautiful.