Saturday, December 27, 2014
Saturday, December 20, 2014
Saturday, December 13, 2014
Saturday, December 6, 2014
Saturday, November 29, 2014
Saturday, November 22, 2014
Saturday, November 15, 2014
It is my hope that during my brief passage through this universe, that I may share with you the joy of hearing the music of the stars . . . knowing that the composer was from a distant place and the songs were written eons ago, which now fall gently on this place for all to hear.
-- Richard H. Baker
Saturday, November 8, 2014
Saturday, November 1, 2014
It was a music more tangible than form or sight. It had essence and structure. . . . It seemed to travel with her [Meg], to sweep her aloft in the power of song, so that she was moving in glory among the stars, and for a moment she, too, felt the words Darkness and Light had no meaning, and only this melody was real.
-- Madeleine L'Engle
(from A Wrinkle in Time)
Saturday, October 25, 2014
Saturday, October 18, 2014
Saturday, October 11, 2014
Saturday, October 4, 2014
Saturday, September 13, 2014
Saturday, September 6, 2014
Saturday, August 23, 2014
Saturday, August 16, 2014
Saturday, August 9, 2014
Saturday, August 2, 2014
Seek not to know, and do not dare to ask
Why you are here, or what your fate will be.
Be still and listen to the symphony
Which your surroundings play in unity.
The part cannot exist without the whole;
The whole cannot exist without the part;
And reason has no place in cosmic art.
-- Robert Goslin
(in Poetry for the Spirit, edited by Alan Jacobs)
Saturday, July 26, 2014
And this that forever shall spur us and lead us from peak unto peak on the way
Till body and spirit be welded in one and the long Night fall on the Day,
And all the sonorous music of time, the hills and the woods and the wind and the sea,
The one great song of the whole creation, of all that is and that yet shall be,
Chanted aloud as a paean of joy by the Being whose home is the vast
Shall tremble away in silence, and all be gone at the last,
Save only afar in the Heart of the Singer of whom it was chanted and heard
Remembrance left of the music as a sunset-fire in the west,
Remembrance left of the mighty Enchanted Palace that rose at His Word,
This, and a joy everlasting, an immense inviolate rest.
-- Clifford Bax
(in Poetry of the Spirit, edited by Alan Jacobs)
Saturday, July 19, 2014
And this is the meaning of man,
The task of the soul,
The labour of world, and the plan
That is set for the whole.
For the spark of the spirit imprisoned within it,
In all things one and the same,
Aeon by aeon and minute by minute,
Is longing to leap into flame,
To shatter the limits of life and be lost in a glory intense and profound
As the soul with a cry goes out into music and seeks to be one with the sound.
-- Clifford Bax
(in Poetry of the Spirit, edited by Alan Jacobs)
The task of the soul,
The labour of world, and the plan
That is set for the whole.
For the spark of the spirit imprisoned within it,
In all things one and the same,
Aeon by aeon and minute by minute,
Is longing to leap into flame,
To shatter the limits of life and be lost in a glory intense and profound
As the soul with a cry goes out into music and seeks to be one with the sound.
-- Clifford Bax
(in Poetry of the Spirit, edited by Alan Jacobs)
Saturday, July 12, 2014
To whom shall I send my hymn of praise --
This yearning of my heart?
It seeks voice to give value
To that which is beyond all value --
But it remains silent.
It only says: 'I am happy.'
The rhythm comes to a stop,
But its cadence says: 'I am blest.'
-- Rabindranath Tagore
(in Poetry of the Spirit, edited by Alan Jacobs)
Saturday, July 5, 2014
O Thou Poet, great and primal, in the rhythm of Thy thought
The sun and moon arise and move toward their setting;
The stars, shining like bits of gems, are the fair characters
In which Thy song is written across the blue expanse of sky.
-- Ramakrishna (trans. S. Nikhilananda)
(in Poetry of the Spirit, edited by Alan Jacobs)
Saturday, June 28, 2014
Dance, my heart: O dance to-day with joy!
The hymn of Love filleth the days and the nights with music,
and the world hearkeneth to the melody.
Mad with joy, Life and Death dance to the rhythm of this music.
The hills and the sea and the earth dance;
The world of man danceth in laughter and tears.
-- Ramakrishna (trans. S. Nikhilananada)
(in Poetry of the Spirit, edited by Alan Jacobs)
Saturday, June 21, 2014
. . . . Soon shall the song
That rolls all down the ages blend its voice
With our weak utterance and make us strong;
That we, borne forward still, may still rejoice,
Fronting the wave of change. Thou who alone
Changeless remainest, O most mighty Soul,
Hear us before we vanish! O make known
Thyself in us, us in Thy living whole.
-- Edward Carpenter
(in Poetry of the Spirit, edited by Alan Jacobs)
Saturday, June 14, 2014
The harp at Nature's advent strung
Has never ceased to play;
The song the stars of morning sung
Has never died away.
And prayer is made, and praise is given,
By all things near and far;
The ocean looketh up to heaven,
And mirrors every star.
. . .
The blue sky is the temple's arch,
Its transept earth and air,
The music of its starry march
The chorus of a prayer.
-- John Greenleaf Whittier
(in Poetry of the Spirit, edited by Alan Jacobs)
Saturday, June 7, 2014
He fumbles at your soul
As players at the keys
Before they drop full music on.
He stuns you by degrees,
Prepares your brittle nature
For the ethereal blow
By fainter hammers further heard,
Then nearer, then so slow
Your breath has time to straighten,
Your brain to bubble cool,
Deals one imperial thunderbolt
That scalps your naked soul.
-- Emily Dickinson
(in Poetry for the Spirit, edited by Alan Jacobs)
Saturday, May 31, 2014
Saturday, May 24, 2014
All voices of all things inanimate
Join with the song of Angels and the song
Of blessed Spirits, chiming with
Their Hallelujahs. One wind wakeneth
Across the sleeping sea, crisping along
The waves, the brushes thro' the great
Forests and tangled hedges, and calls out
Of rivers a clear sound,
And makes the ripe corn rustle on the ground,
And murmurs in a shell;
Till all their voices swell
Above the clouds in one loud hymn
Joining the song of Seraphim,
Or like pure incense circle round about
The walls of Heaven, or like a well-spring rise
In shady Paradise.
-- Christina Rossetti
(in Poetry for the Spirit, edited by Alan Jacobs)
Saturday, May 17, 2014
O we can wait no longer,
We too take ship O soul
Joyous we too launch out on trackless seas,
Fearless for unknown shores on waves of ecstasy to sail,
Amid the wafting winds, (thou pressing me to thee, I thee to me, O soul,)
Caroling free, singing our song of God,
Chanting our chant of pleasant exploration.
-- Walt Whitman
(in Poetry for the Spirit, edited by Alan Jacobs)
Saturday, May 10, 2014
Saturday, May 3, 2014
Saturday, April 26, 2014
Dust as we are, the immortal spirit grows
Like harmony in music: there is a dark
Inscrutable workmanship that reconciles
Discordant elements, makes them cling together
In one society. How strange, that all
The terrors, pains, and early miseries,
Regrets, vexations, lassitudes interfused
Within my mind, should e'er have borne a part,
And that a needful part, in making up
The calm existence that is mine when I
Am worthy of myself. Praise to the end!
-- William Wordsworth
(from The Prelude)
(in Poetry for the Spirit, edited by Alan Jacobs)
Saturday, April 19, 2014
Break forth into thanksgiving,
Ye banded instruments of wind and chords;
Unite, to magnify the Ever-living,
Your inarticulate notes with the voice of words!
Nor hushed be service from the lowing mead,
Nor mute the forest hum of noon;
Thou too be heard, lone eagle! freed
From snowy peak and cloud, attune
Thy hungry barkings to the hymn
Of joy, that from her utmost walls
The six-days' Work by flaming Seraphim
Transmits to Heaven! As Deep to Deep
Shouting through one valley calls,
All worlds, all natures, mood and measure keep
For praise and ceaseless gratulation, poured
Into the ear of God, their Lord!
-- William Wordsworth
(from On the Power of Sound)
(in Poetry for the Spirit, edited by Alan Jacobs)
Saturday, April 12, 2014
When the eye of wisdom opened in me, all duality and unity disappeared;
A great wonder possessed my soul, neither subject nor object remained.
When the music of Reality fell on mine ear, all other sounds ceased;
Love withdrew all name and form from my being: sorrow and joy vanished forever.
-- Nazir
(trans. by H. P. Shastri)
(in Poetry for the Spirit, edited by Alan Jacobs)
Saturday, April 5, 2014
Sometimes with His beauty He sets the heart on fire,
Sometimes He induces ecstasy.
Those who know Him cry with one voice:
'He is the singer, He the song and He the music.'
He speaks through every tune, He is manifest in every melody.
-- Nazir
(trans. by H. P. Shastri)
(in Poetry for the Spirit, edited by Alan Jacobs)
Saturday, March 29, 2014
Saturday, March 22, 2014
Saturday, March 15, 2014
. . . Look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patens of bright gold.
There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins:
Such harmony is in immortal souls
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.
-- Shakespeare
(in Poetry for the Spirit,
edited by Alan Jacobs)
Saturday, March 8, 2014
Saturday, March 1, 2014
The flute of the Infinite is played without ceasing, and its sound is love:
When love renounces all limits, it reaches truth.
How widely the fragrance spreads! It has no end, nothing stands in its way.
The form of this melody is bright like a million suns; incomparably sound the vina, the vina of the notes of truth.
-- Kabir (trans. Rabindranath Tagore)
(in Poetry for the Spirit,
edited by Alan Jacobs)
Saturday, February 22, 2014
At whose blest sound divine
My soul that in forgetfulness hath lain
With a new light doth shine
And unto memory plain
Of its first splendid origin attain.
Up through the fields of air
It wings, till in the highest sphere it dwells
And a new music there
It hears, music that wells
Undying, and all other kinds excels.
-- Luis de Leon (trans. Anon.)
(in Poetry for the Spirit,
edited by Alan Jacobs)
Saturday, February 15, 2014
Saturday, February 8, 2014
Saturday, February 1, 2014
Close the ears that track the outer world
Open the ears of the soul
The song of creation, the unstruck chord,
Is playing in your heart . . .
Listen in.
Meditating on the sound of your own life currents,
Enter the shimmering palace of the Creator.
-- Sutra 91
(The Radiance Sutras,
translated by Lorin Roche)
Saturday, January 25, 2014
Saturday, January 18, 2014
Saturday, January 11, 2014
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)