One Voice

The sun and blue, blue sky are supersized today ... brightness everywhere! I practice facing into brilliant light and glorious blue and feel in tune with the Earth's vibrant song. Soft, flowing movements stream out of me and I marvel at the beauty that lies around and within me.

Today is incredibly synchronous. First, a quote from a book I read this morning. Henry Lewis, an African-American dairy farmer in Sulphur Springs, TX tells the book's author that the Earth is a pasture because God is the creator and pasture is the foodstuff for his creation. He explains further:

     Pas-ture. You can use the word in the same way that you use the word godliness. We all love to use the word G-O-D. You can use pasture the same way--it doesn't change....
     ... you have to get out here and say I feel it. That's what It's about. Church is a building, a place to assemble and worship together. But every day is God.
     From: Deeply Rooted: Unconventional Farmers in the Age of Agribusiness
     by Lisa Hamilton, Counterpoint Press, 2009, pp. 43, 45

Mid-morning I listened to another wonderful show on Public Radio featuring the women's singing group, The Wailin' Jennys. Just as members of the a cappella group, Sweet Honey in the Rock, discussed on this show earlier in the week, the Jennys talked about the need to listen to each other as they sing. One Jenny spoke about the importance of feeling the vibration in her body ... feeling the rightness of the Jennys' sound and harmonies.

Both the book and the radio program reminded me of t'ai chi chih moving meditation. While the Jennys struggled to articulate exactly what it is they experience as they sing and how they coordinate their efforts to create an ideal sound, it was clear that--for them--it isn't an intellectual exercise but an intuitive sense, a feeling for what works, a bodily reaction to the coordinated sound of the moment.

This is t'ai chi chih ... you can feel when your personal practice connects with a reality beyond yourself, you can feel when your class or practice group coordinate themselves into one unified whole, and you can feel when the miracle of Oneness is achieved, fleeting though it may be....

Most--if not all of us--strive to achieve that Oneness during our lifetimes and it's a wondrous moment when it is sensed, felt, heard.

.... This is the sound of all of us
Singing with love and the will to trust
Leave the rest behind it will turn to dust
This is the sound of all of us

This is the sound of one voice
One people, one voice
A song for every one of us
This is the sound of one voice....
               From: One Voice by The Wailin' Jennys