Living as Part of a Symphony

Balbir Matbur: Part of the Symphony

“I plant trees, but I am not the doer of this work. I am the facilitator, the instrument—I am one part of the symphony. I know this symphony has an overall scheme that I cannot understand.

In some way, we are each playing our part. It is not for me to judge or criticize the life or work of another. All I know is that this is my dance. I would plant trees today, even if I knew for certain that the world would end tomorrow.”—Balbir Matbur in Heron Dance interview (Issue 11) from Inward Outward, Daily Words, October 19, 2016, inwardoutward.org 

arkansas symphony orchestra

Our tickets at the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra were in the third row for many years. At times, we felt we were part of the orchestra. We knew who sat where, when someone new was there, or when someone was missing. We learned a few by name. Many orchestra members were still there when we first came to Little Rock over forty years ago.

I especially remember one moment many years ago when the first cellist had a twenty-second solo close to the end of the performance. Suddenly, we heard his deep, melodious sound above the rest of the orchestra, and then, just as suddenly, he faded back into the background to support the other instruments.

If I had been him, I would have been too nervous the whole night, waiting for that brief moment when the soloist’s voice soared above the rest of the orchestra. The professional cellist seemed as comfortable blending in the symphony as he was with his solo. He also continuously maintained direct eye contact with the conductor while playing his brief solo part. I later wondered about the many hours he must have practiced this short solo until it was almost part of his being.

The cellist taught me that we spend most of our lives as members of the orchestra with our unique instruments and talents, blending and giving depth to the composition assigned to us.

Sometimes, we are called to speak out above the symphony’s music. Before we do this, however, we should be prepared by practicing, knowing our part intimately, especially the timing, and keeping our eye on the conductor. Most of the time, we are called to spend our gifts blending, supporting, and, in many ways, encouraging the sounds of others.

Joanna   https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Putting on a New Pair of Glasses to Live in the Present Moment

   Richard Rohr, Poe: Seeing and Living in the Present Moment

“Most people do not see things as they are because they see things as they are!” Which is not to see at all. Their many self-created filters keep them from seeing with any clear vision.”—Richard Rohr, Center for Action and Contemplation, daily Rohr Meditation.

Edgar Allan Poe also gives us more clues about having a clearer vision in “The Purloined Letter.” The Paris police chief asks a famous amateur detective, C. Auguste Dupin, to help him find a letter stolen from the boudoir of an unnamed woman by an unscrupulous minister who is blackmailing his victim. The chief of police and his detectives have combed the hotel where the minister lives, behind the wallpaper, under the carpets, examining tables and chairs with microscopes, probing cushions with needles, and found no sign of the letter. Dupin gets a detailed description of the letter and visits the minister at his hotel.

Complaining of weak eyes and wearing green spectacles, he disguises his eyes as he searches for the note. Finally, he sees it in plain sight, in a cheap card rack hanging from a dirty ribbon. He leaves a snuff box behind as an excuse to return the next day and switches out the letter for a duplicate.

Rohr is calling us to put on a new pair of glasses, perhaps 3-D glasses, to see the depth of what is in plain sight immediately around us in the present moment.

Guides and friends in our community remind us to meet God in the present moment. They remind us to listen to this call from God to live in the present moment, especially in the stories of the Epiphany season in our Sunday Lectionary readings.

Epiphany means an illuminating realization.

 The season of Epiphany calls us to see more clearly, living in the present moment.

Joanna https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Many, Many Epiphanies:seeinng Christ in All

Many, many Epiphanies: Seeing Christ in All

“I was in an underground train, a crowded train in which all sorts of people jostled together, workers of every description going home at the end of the day. Quite suddenly, I saw with my mind, but as vividly as a wonderful picture, Christ in them all.

But I saw more than that; not only was Christ in every one of them, living in them, dying in them, rejoicing in them, sorrowing in them—but because He was in them, and because they were here, the whole world was here too … all those people who had lived in the past, and all those yet to come.”—Caryll Houselander, A Rocking-Horse Catholic (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1955), 137–139, 140. 

This twentieth-century English mystic Caryll Houselander (1901–1954) describes how a powerful vision of Christ’s presence in all occurs on an ordinary underground train journey in London.  It brings to mind Thomas Merton’s epiphany in Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut.

“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers.” — Thomas Merton.

This is the first line of Thomas Merton’s famous mystical revelation and epiphany in downtown Louisville, Kentucky, described in his 1968 journal about the world of the 1960s, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander. pp. 140-142.

Merton had been a Trappist monk for seventeen years and was on an errand for the monastery in the middle of an ordinary day on March 18th, 1958. The story became so famous that Louisville erected a plaque at the site in 2008 at the 50th anniversary of Merton’s revelation. Ordinary people and popes continue to visit the corner of Fourth and Walnut, which was life-changing for Merton and those who read his works. 

 Merton’s and Houselanfer’s experience also seems similar to what James Finley describes in Christian Meditation: Experiencing God’s Presence as “having a finger in the pulse of Christ, realizing oneness with God in life itself.”

 This experience may also be similar to what St. Francis realized in nature when he called the sun his brother and the moon his sister. Richard Rohr calls it finding our True Self, “our basic and unchangeable identity in God.” 1

Methodists might relate it to John Wesley’s experience at 8:45 pm on May 24th, 1738, at a Society meeting in Aldersgate Street when someone read from Luther’s Preface to the Epistle to Romans, and Wesley says, “I felt my heart strangely warmed.” 2

Suppose you ever have an opportunity to visit Louisville. In that case, we hope you can go to the corner of Fourth and Walnut and let us know what epiphanies may happen to you, in London in the underground, on Aldersgate Street, or in a new place you experience!

1 Richard Rohr in Center for Action and Contemplation,” Richard Rohr Meditation: “Thomas Merton Part II,” October 6th, 2017.

2 John Wesley in Journal of John Wesley (London: Charles H. Kelly, 1903), p. 51.

Joanna       https://www.joannaseibert.com/