While the Music Lasts

  

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty

and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study

and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.

 

Let the beauty we love be what we do.

There are a hundred ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

— Rumi

Many of my dreams are woven with music—hardly a surprise given my lifetime as a piano teacher, music director, and troubadour. It’s been a good run, and so it feels natural when my former students appear in my sleep, often turning the tables to teach me a lesson or two.

Lately, however, my dreams have taken on a parabolic quality, echoing the biblical themes of the Lost Coin and the Lost Sheep. In a recent dream, I encountered a woman studying a piece of sheet music: Fruits of a Selfless Heart by Elizabeth Atkinson, featuring the words of Mother Teresa:

The fruit of silence is prayer

The fruit of prayer is faith

The fruit of faith is love

The fruit of love is service

The fruit of service is peace

I approached the woman, filled with the confidence of my past. "I know that song," I told her. "When I directed Joysong, we recorded it. Let me round up the choir so we can show you how it’s meant to sound."

We were in a vast, echoing space filled with people milling about in every direction. I managed to find four of my "Joysong girls"—solid sopranos and altos—but for an a cappella piece like this, four voices aren't enough. You need the full spectrum. You need every part.

Realizing I couldn't assemble the whole choir, I began a frantic search for our CD. When I finally found a copy, there was no player to be found. Just as I finally spotted a man with a CD player, the disk slipped from my hands, tumbling into a massive bin filled with junk. I scrounged through the debris, desperate to recover it, but it was gone. The choir, the recording, the music—all lost.

~*~

Perhaps the "lesson" my students—and my subconscious—are teaching me is that wholeness cannot be forced or "rounded up" through sheer effort. In the dream, I was so focused on proving how the music should sound that I lost the music itself to the junk bin of frantic searching.

Mother Teresa’s ladder begins not with the performance, but with silence. If I am to find those lost parts of my choir—the missing voices of my own psyche—I may need to stop scrounging through the bins of the past and the "should-bes."

Perhaps, as Rumi suggests, the way to "kiss the ground" is simply to stand still in that silence until the harmony finds its way back to me, one missing voice at a time.

 Final Thoughts: Joining the Choir

As I sit with the memory of this dream, I realize that we are all, in some way, music directors of our own souls—constantly trying to coordinate the different voices of our lives into something resembling a song. But sometimes, the best thing we can do for the music is to stop trying to conduct it.

As you move through your week, I invite you to consider these questions:

• What is your instrument? Rumi invites us to let the beauty we love be what we do. If you were to take down your "musical instrument" today, what would you play, and how would you "kiss the ground" through your presence?

 

• Where are the missing voices? We often focus on the sopranos and altos—the parts of ourselves that are bright, capable, and easy to hear. But what about your "missing tenors and basses"? What quiet or forgotten parts of your own psyche are waiting to be invited back into the choir?

 

• Can you start with silence? In a world that rewards "scurrying and scrounging" for results, Mother Teresa reminds us that the fruit of silence is prayer, and only the fruit of service is peace. Is there an area of your life where you are trying to force a performance, when what you truly need is to sit still and wait for the music to return?

 

The song is still there, even when the CD is lost in the junk bin. We just have to be quiet enough to hear it.