… watching for the brushstrokes of God
“A poet is an unhappy creature whose heart is tortured by deepest suffering but whose lips are so formed that when his sighs and cries stream out over them, their sound becomes like the sound of beautiful music…” ~ Søren Kierkegaard
How do you tap into the poetic?
“All life has emptiness at its core; it is the quiet hollow reed through which the wind of God blows and makes the music that is our life.” ~ Wayne Muller
What music emerges from you?
Out of the heart
The song rises,
The mind searching
For notes
To capture
its flight. ~ Murray Bodo O.F.M.
What song rises within you?
Give us a song to guide our feet as we are marching to freedom land. ~ Common Prayer
“Jazz speaks for life, the blues tell the story of life’s difficulties — and, if you think for a moment, you realize that they take the hardest realities of life and put them into music, only to come out with some new hope or sense of triumph.” Martin Luther King Jr., Berlin Jazz Festival 1964
What song guides you?
On May 27, 1992 a mortar killed 22 people waiting in front of a bakery in Sarajevo. Vedran Smailovic, the cellist of Sarajevo responded to the trauma by playing cello in public spaces for two years. When a reporter asked him, “Aren’t you crazy to be playing cello during the shelling?” Smailovic replied, “You ask me am I crazy for playing cello, why don’t you ask them if they are crazy to be shelling?”
What questions need to be turned around?
“I believe in kindness. Also in mischief. Also in singing, especially when singing is not necessarily prescribed.” ― Mary Oliver
Oh, how we miss singing together. What kind of kindness and mischief do these times require of us?
With the Eyes of the Heart 