Music of the Spheres

I love to sing. I just like to turn off my head and sing loud. It just creates this storm of happy in me. There is poetry in the earth and music, too. I always hear it. There is a simplemindedness in me. Singing just connects me to the poetry and music that I feel all the time. My best memories usually involve being with someone playing music. As a writer, I work it out alone mostly. I yearn, ache inside, to share my stories with others. Perhaps it's the music of the spheres within me.

"The heavenly motions... are nothing but a continuous song for several voices, perceived not by the ear but by the intellect, a figured music which sets landmarks in the immeasurable flow of time." John Banville: Kepler, (Minerva 1990)

I went to a party tonight and there was old fashioned Christmas carol sing-a-long. I just felt joy. The same joy I knew as a little girl with my face pressed to a radio, the same joy I knew as a teenager when all the kids at the high school gathered together and walked the streets singing at all the nativities in my home town, the same joy I knew when I was in college and George played the guitar and Darlene sang, the same joy I know when I pull out my flute and play every hymn I know. I could never name all the events that create this cord of the joyous constancy of music in my life.

"Everyone sing. Together we sing."

My prayer from a song from the 12th century, O come, O Come, Emmanuel.

O come, Desire of nations, bind
In one the hearts of all mankind;
Bid Thou our sad divisions cease,
And be Thyself our King of Peace.

Every year I write a Christmas Poem, so here goes.

I wanted to cry tonight
As I sang an old hymn from a millennia ago,
A voice speaking across the gulf of time,
breaking the barriers of now and then.
"Bind in one the hearts of mankind."

O sweet Savior,
Take the cord of truth.
Wrap it around us all.
Pull it tight and tie a knot.

I dream of peace.
I hunger for it.
I'd die for it.

So help me, Lord,
Make me a peacemaker.
Teach me to teach others
of Christ our peace.

And kindly
help me remember --
We will laugh.
We will sing.
We will all see peace.
Someday.

My prayer
this Christmas
and forever.