December 6, 2010

            As I feel winter approaching I am usually in a frenzy of activity trying to finish up all the things that need to be done to the house, the yard, and the cars to fortify them for winter.  I feel the need to have additional supplies on hand in case we get a lot of snow and I start to crave hearty foods.  By the time I finally wind up my list, I am taking ibuprofen because I have strained muscles in my lower back and that is actually what lets me know that I am finally done.

            I actually love the frozen beauty of the winter landscape, but it invariably signals a return to my inner life and the process of making it through the long dark nights of winter. The short days make the experience of leaving for work and returning home in darkness seem almost surreal.   Activities that would normally anchor my day are temporarily disabled such as gardening, sitting outside with my morning coffee, and walking in the evening. 

Winter does provide the perfect environment to quiet the mind from the constant push of our culture to achieve ever greater things. The increasing darkness seems to invite examination of self and finding a mood that draws me inward towards clarity and understanding. I seem to spend more time alone and like the quietness of it.  Often I will go to bed early because I love the feel of my bed linens and its warmth and comfort.  I enjoy feeling cocooned and protected.  Sometimes I just want to settle down next to the fire, with a big bowl of hot soup or chili and my two cats.  It is so dark out there and all that I want is in here.

Paul Shoffeitt

When I was growing up we lived in Atlanta.  The church my family attended had a program one year encouraging all the members to read the entire Bible over the course of a year.  My mom and dad decided that we would do this as a family.  At the end of the year the Atlanta Constitution published a story about the program and carried a picture of the youngest and the oldest participant.  I was the youngest.

While I’m sure I slept through a great deal of the family reading sessions, I can remember either waking up or coming to attention when one night my father read the passage from one of the epistles which reads, “In all things give thanks.”

I remember thinking, whoa, wait a minute, did I hear that right, in all things?

If it had read, “In all things happy and successful give thanks” it wouldn’t have hit me like it did.  But to give thanks for things not so good, things sad and disappointing in a major way, to give thanks for such things and times, I thought, come on, really!

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 You probably are more familiar with this Bible verse as:

 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. …. All things were made by him; … In him was life; and the life was the light of men. (John 1: 1-4, King James Version)

But in the original Greek text, legos meant not only, “Word” it also meant sound or vibration.   For me, it makes more sense that in the beginning there was a vibration.  In fact, the creation stories that begin the western traditions of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity all imply an “a priori”, a movement or vibration.

 Today, physicists, attempting to determine the precise nature of matter, have probed deeper into the realms of atomic and subatomic behavior, only to find that there is no ‘thing” there in the sense in which we normally think of matter. They describe the tiniest subatomic particles as ‘interference patterns of various sound frequencies. “They call them ‘nodes of resonance.”

In essence, every Thing is a made of vibration. 

Today we’re going to be talking about vibration in the form of music and its ability to heal us both physically and spiritually.  Without a doubt, music has a profound impact on our lives, and as you saw in the quotes this morning, music is being used all over the world in very unique ways, as a means to decrease stress and improve quality of life for all living creatures.   

You would think, being a musician, I would have no difficulty preparing a talk on the healing nature of music.  But in fact, my life is so intertwined with music, and I am so fascinated by the subject, I found it difficult to focus on what I thought were the most important elements to address today.  Finally, I remembered that all I needed to do was tell my story.  After all, that’s what we do here at Journeys, we share our stories, and I do have stories of both physical and spiritual healing through music to share.

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Brad and Anda had recently had such a moment to which they had responded this way. Both had zipped through their professional training. Bad is a CPA and Anda a lawyer. Both had great jobs with all kinds of promise in their respective careers. They had a nice home with a swimming pool in an upscale Arizona community.

But one day they decided to pause and look at their lives, to stop the rush down the road they were on and think hard about how they were living. Out of that hold on wait a minute moment they made a decision to embrace an adventure, to quit their jobs, sell their house and set out on an odyssey to build a microbrewery. So off to Germany they went to brew master school and as we sat and talked they were moving down this exciting life path born out of a hold on wait a minute moment in their lives.

All of them talked about how they didn’t want to measure their lives against the traditional so-called good life template; the traditional conformist life path markers like career, mortgage, acquisitions. All of them talked about living consciously, consciously enough to be able to recognize opportunities to modify the to do list or even abandon it all together and set out on an unanticipated path.

All of them recognized, even at their young ages, how incredibly tenuous and short this life venue is. (more…)

What’s so important about fractals that we would want to do a service about them? Well for mathematicians it meant finally being able to visualize the possibility of infinity, once they had computers powerful enough to graph a very simple equation and repeat it billions of times. The result was a beautifully complex and complete form, which did not lose any of its essential character regardless of how infinitely large or infinitely small it became. Can you imagine how Mandelbrot felt the first time he thought that he was looking at infinity-and then to have it be so powerfully simple, visually stunning, and endless? There is not much space between infinity and eternity, which is why this particular fractal was dubbed “the thumb print of God.” (more…)

My mother was very active and always looked younger than she was She never liked people to know how old she was. When she turned 80, I wanted have a party for her, but she refused. She didn’t want any celebration at all, so we honored her wishes. When she turned 85, my brother and I planned a surprise party for her. Fortunately, we knew that she loved surprises (some people don’t), and we wanted to celebrate her many years of life experience. We invited her family and friends and exactly 85 showed up. We had a wonderful celebration which she loved, and finally everyone knew her age. (more…)

I believe you and I were made, given this mysterious gift we call life by an entity, by an all-powerful being, God, self-described simply as love. And I believe we are akin to this being. In fact, I believe we are patterned after this being and that we possess the same kind of power that this One possesses. This power is love and it is at the core of our identity. (more…)

Lilly asked me if I had any thoughts about the service. I read her this poem I wrote in 1995

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

In olden times speech had a different purpose.
Red would be described as
“Red - as the color of the blood shed by our Lord Christ Jesus
when he was on the cross to take away our sins.”
and not just red, but everything was specified that way
which now seems strange, but which helped souls
remember who they were, their purpose and their goal.
This is not the way we speak today and we have lost some
sense of cosmic place and the meaning of our lives,
not that I’d resurrect the old, it does not fit for me.
Today in meditation I focused on the light stream
through my body, seeing light, asking that today
I am aware of being filled with light and being in the light.
I do not talk of red as the color of the blood
of someone dead two thousand years, and still,
there’s something I am trying to recall.

There was recently a Woody Allen interview on NPR. He was asked if his personal philosophy was as dark as his films. I’ve seen several - Love and Death was memorable. Mr. Allen said that he was much taken by a story he heard about two women at an American plan [meals included] Spa. One woman said, “The food is very bad here.” The second said, “Yes, and the portions are so small!” This is kind of his ongoing guidance. The food is bad, and the portions are so small. Life is full of troubles - and short. (more…)

As remarkable and wonderful as life can be, there is no escaping the fact that tragedy and heartache are very much a part of it. Human suffering and misery is all around us. Everyday the news is full of stories of tragedies and challenges. We are often confronted with disturbing images of suffering and strife. Here lately, with the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile, we are powerfully reminded of the unavoidable certainty of tragedy.

And sadly, although our thoughts have focused lately on these quakes and the unimaginable challenges facing those affected, Haiti and Chile aren’t the only places where people are confronting overwhelming difficulty.

The images from these quakes have been very disturbing. The attention the news media has given to this catastrophe has reminded us of the horrors so many of us face.

The images show the face of unspeakable tragedy, real human suffering. Think of it, lying in pain on the street with broken limbs, no one to help, no one to give you medication or water or food or move you or help you with toileting; lying in pain, infection setting in, crying out and no one to bring relief; dying a long painful death. (more…)

.”God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.”

I remember a time when I used to be too afraid to laugh. I wasn’t sure of anything - not myself, and definitely not who or what God was. I still don’t have a well defined explanation of “God”. I just know that things are thrown in people’s path, either by a God, the Universe, or Life in general, and we must deal with them. There are a multitude of ways we can handle these challenges. For me, I have learned that my best tool with which to deal with challenges is humor. Whatever struggles dealt to me by “God”, the Universe, or Life in general, well, along with those struggles, I was also dealt this sense of humor, along with my questions about my spirituality. Humor came first and has been the gateway to my spirituality. Without humor, I would not have been able to get to the place I am today. Without humor, I would not have discovered my spirit.
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Official Definition of “Therapeutic Humor” according to The Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor (AATH)
Any intervention that promotes health and wellness by stimulating a playful discovery, expression or appreciation of the absurdity or incongruity of life’s situations.
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This intervention may enhance health or be used as a complementary treatment of illness to facilitate healing or coping, whether physical, emotional, cognitive, social or spiritual.
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What is “Spirituality”
Spirituality is a way of life that is not religious, but honors the soul and the belief that there is more to life than physical things.
. . . . having to do with deep, sometimes religious, feelings and beliefs, including a person’s sense of peace, purpose, connection to others and beliefs about the meaning of life.
To me, my sense of humor [has helped me develop my spirituality by allowing me to] connect with others on this Journey through life. (more…)