the song we know
Thursday I took a group of ladies from the church on a "little pilgrimage."
We spent the day hanging out in Sewanee at St. Mary’s Convent with our new friends, Sister Elizabeth and Sister Margaret. We sat together. We had a picnic. We sat alone. We looked together. We looked alone. We prayed together. We prayed alone. We listened together. We listened alone. Something instinctive – something in our wiring – our essence – seemed to take over. A natural rhythm. Like the ebb and flow of the tide. We’d ebb back to shore, together … then we’d flow back out to sea. With next to no direction from me, either.
We talked of how this movement of quiet and conversation, of community and solitude – this simplicity they had remembered – seemed more in tune with how life should ; not how life most often is. So we drove back home, wondering how we might carry into our worlds what we found and remembered at the convent.
So today is Saturday – the day on the mountain at the convent seems years ago — he fans are blowing; the windows are open; just did a bit of baking … It’s quiet. I noticed the quiet this morning actually walking Bugs. It’s calm. It’s still. Today there is peace. And somehow the convent doesn’t seem so far away.
Unlike normal, I have no CD playing. But the birds are chirping. And my wind chimes are ringing. Even my breathing and my heart beat seem to be moving in a different rhtyhm as if music is actually playing somewhere.
An old song. A familiar song. The original song. That’s what I hear today.
The song of creation. the song that plays within us and all around us; the song we all know somehow, somewhere, someway. The song that was played at the beginning, the song that has played ever since and the song that will play on forever.
The song that usually gets drowned out by all the other music that plays in our worlds and in our minds. But still it is the song we know.
The same song who’s rhyme and rhythm matched the ebb and flow we found ourselves floating in at the convent. The same song that the birds chirp, the trees sway and the wind blows to. The same music that today my every thought; my every breath; my every step; and even my heart seems to move ot.
Oh that I would more often be caught in this current. that I would move often find myself singing this song.
As it was. As it is. As it will be forever.
Boy! I really enjoy reading your blogs. This one was so calming. I’m glad you enjoyed the trip.
“A natural rhythm. Like the ebb and flow of the tide. We’d ebb back to shore, together … then we’d flow back out to sea.”
Reminds me of a place I miss, sometimes.