Singing
To sing, as we have learned from you, is not desiring…
not wooing any grace that can ever be achieved.
To sing is to be alive.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke
Singing
To sing, as we have learned from you, is not desiring…
not wooing any grace that can ever be achieved.
To sing is to be alive.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke
Singing
To surrender oneself to Nature… to actually experience one’s being as a thread woven within its magnificent tapestry… transforms even the briefest Nature experience into a gift beyond compare.
For millennia, human beings have celebrated their awareness of this tapestry—and their place within it—through inspired song and movement. Laurens van der Post—in recalling his night-long Fire Dance with the Kung People of the Kalahari—offers us a beautifully visceral experience of the Kung’s song and movement reaching out to establish a harmonic rapport with all the world around them… thereby creating:
Freedom to Sing
“…Such An Atmosphere Of Oneness And Belonging
Between All That... I Felt That I, Who Had Come So Far
From So Remote A World, Was No Longer A Stranger,
Standing Alone And Isolated, But Someone
Who Had Found Sanctuary In An Ancient Temple
Participating For The First Time In An Act Of
Natural Communion With One The Greatest
Congregations Of Life Ever Gathered.”
Freedom to Sing
“…Such An Atmosphere Of Oneness And Belonging
Between All That... I Felt That I, Who Had Come So Far
From So Remote A World, Was No Longer A Stranger,
Standing Alone And Isolated, But Someone
Who Had Found Sanctuary In An Ancient Temple
Participating For The First Time In An Act Of
Natural Communion With One The Greatest
Congregations Of Life Ever Gathered.”
I experience a similar harmonic rapport each time that I am able to fully surrender my senses to the imagery, smells, sounds, and textures of the Natural World around me.
As my imagination swells with the wonder of this sensate experience, I begin to feel the framework of cultural and societal norms collapse within me… I feel my hard-won image of ‘who I think I am’ begin to dissolve… I feel a willingness to express myself more fully and openly… a freedom to sing and move with the rhythms of Life...
Songscapes
Meanwhile, the wild geese, high in the clean blue air
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination
calls to you, like the wild geese, harsh and exciting,
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
~ Mary Oliver
Songscapes
Meanwhile, the wild geese, high in the clean blue air
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination
calls to you, like the wild geese, harsh and exciting,
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
~ Mary Oliver
Songscapes
Wind Through Sage & Sparrow
Wherever we look in Nature, we see the same thing: Life feeding on Life. We see Life revealed as a wondrous net of gems…with each gem in relationship with every other gem through the rhythm of birth and death and rebirth. Every living thing celebrates this rhythm by converting animal and plant flesh into its own flesh and the flesh of its offspring…and then surrendering its own flesh to others. How can we praise any living thing without—at the same time—praising all of the livingness that has been sacrificed to support its existence?
Towhee
Towhee