Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,
what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change...
In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.
And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent Earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.
(SONNETS TO ORPHEUS, Part Two, XXIX by Rainer Maria Rilke)
Anyone who has probed the inner life, who has sat in silence long enough to experience the stillness of the mind behind its apparent noise is faced with a mystery. Apart from all the outer attractions of life in the world, there exists at the center of human consciousness something quite satisfying and beautiful in itself, a beauty without features. The mystery is not so much that these two dimensions exist – an outer world and the mystery of the inner world – but that we are suspended between them, as a space in which both worlds meet ... as if the human being is the meeting point, the threshold between two worlds.
While we were away in Tucson, the reality of endings became vividly clear to me: I wrote about them, I felt them in my soul, I talked about them with treasured friends, and I sensed them as we walked through the silence of the Sonoran desert. So many endings so deeply felt that I could neither deny nor escape their gift: an awkward inner emptiness. "Sit in the darkness awhile," it seemed to whisper. "Listen and be still. Practice what you preach." And when I paid careful attention, there was also this: "Please, for God's sake, don't rush into anything new for at least a season." Maybe more.
The year had ended. My collaborations in various artistic projects was over. And the land in Massachusetts was frozen and dark. Rilke suggests that we choose to let the darkness become our bell tower - a source of strength - from which we ring out tones formed within the uncontainable night. This is a very different type of music, these dark, bell tower songs, sparse and spacious rather than solid. Substantial, of course - but less crowded. And this music takes patience to comprehend for there is more silence surrounding each note and just the hint of melody.
Rabbi Lawrence Kushner in a wise, little volume, The Book of Letters, writes that both the dark letters of the printed Hebrew alphabet as well as the light space surrounding them hold meaning and beauty for those with eyes to see. "A mystic," he observes, "is anyone who has the gnawing suspicion that the apparent discord, brokenness, contradictions, and discontinuities that assault us every day might conceal a hidden unity." Even in the emptiness there is more to know. He adds:
The "burning bush" was not a miracle. It was a test. God wanted to find out whether or not Moses could pay attention to something for more than a few minutes. When Moses did, God spoke. The trick is to pay attention to what is going on around you long enough to behold the miracle without falling asleep. There is another world, right here within this one, whenever we pay attention.
Paying attention, learning to rest in the emptiness rather than fret, trusting that the darkness is every bit as beautiful as the light is the invitation of this season. In Tucson, a place that takes pride in limiting the lights of the night so that the stars and planets might shine out boldly, the darkness - and the stars - become vivid. So, too, the silence of the desert. It is complete. Such stillness asks us to move slowly into the mystery. No rushing lest we miss the blessing. Perhaps the best articulation of this comes from Kabir Helminski who writes in The Knowing Heart:
Our being is the meeting point, the threshold, between two worlds where we experience a trust for a beauty that is without features. As I was practicing my upright bass last night - and then listening to some old songs by Pentangle - I found myself mesmerized by the notes that weren't played. Or the deep vibrations of my lowest notes plucked in isolation. Without accompaniment. With just a few random bluesy notes sung beyond words. For a moment - at least - I rested at that threshold - and loved it. It has been reported that John Coltrane played himself into sobriety, kicking his heroin addiction, by improvising so resolutely that at the end of a week of solitude he no longer had a monkey on his back. He knew that threshold and spent the rest of his life welcoming others to it through his music.
The music - and prayer - of this dark bell tower feels a lot like the notes that Danny Thompson plays in this remake of Pentangle's "I've Got a Feeling" or Jacqui McShee's vocals. It is, of course, their reworking of the Miles Davis classic, "All Blues," and is as perfect a genre bender as anything I have ever heard. Take a listen - and rest in the fullness of the empty places.
No comments:
Post a Comment