RockOm

RockOm Round-up is a quick glance at what's going on around the world in the areas of music and spirituality...

• Jason Mraz wants his music and his actions to help people change their lives for the better - "Mraz shares the restaurant's philosophies at a 'gratitude tent' at his shows. Personally, he is always looking for ways to improve his life, whether it's through Buddhism or other sources... 'Anything I can do to stay tuned up,' Mraz said. 'It's every little pamphlet, every spiritual text, every life manual I can get. As a writer, it's my duty to stay abreast of different philosophies.'" (modbee.com)
• Terence Blanchard melds philosophy, music in 'Choices' - "These albums are not simply collections of songs, but larger thematic pieces recorded around a central idea, inspired by hard times and social change... It's part of our generation's response," said Blanchard. (latimes.com)
• Dance Your Blues Away - "Dance is also used throughout many of the spiritual traditions as a form of losing self-centeredness and opening the heart, as seen in Sufi whirling dervishes, Tibetan lama dancing, the ecstatic dance accompanying Hindu devotional chanting, or in Jewish circle dancing." (huffingtonpost.com)
• Looking to the music to lead us back - "It shouldn’t be left to politicians and economists to show the way forward... our traditional musicians have their own story to tell and a long history of healing ills" (irishtimes.com)
• Cracking the code, is music the universal language? - "During a unique panel on Notes and Neurons: In Search of the Common Chorus, the presenters discussed this question: 'Is our response to music hard-wired or culturally determined? Is the reaction to rhythm and melody universal or influenced by environment?'" (examiner.com)

The saints and sages have gone before us, lighting our path, giving us clues as to what they had discovered. Many have found music and song at the heart of their discoveries and rapture in the vibrational foundations of Creation. Spend some time marinating in these words, allowing the wisdom of those who have gone before to wash over you like a flood, opening your eyes to see more music and beauty in the world today.

Dance, my heart; dance today with joy.
The strains of love fill the days and nights with music,
and the world is listening to its melodies:
Mad with joy, life dances to the rhythm of this music.
The hills and the sea and the earth dance.
The world of the human being dances in laughter and tears.
Why live aloof from the world in lonely pride?
Behold! My heart dances in the delight of a hundred arts;
and the Creator is well-pleased.

[Kabir]

Who am I?
I live flying.
I compose hymns,
I sing the flowers:
butterflies of song.
They leap forth from within me,
my heart relishes them.
I hve arrived among the people,
I have come down,
I, the bird of spring...
My song arises over the earth,
my song bursts out.

[Unknown Mesoamerican poet]

At night as I sit by my camp-fire
the Great Serpent Spirit a'star
I sing songs of love to the Presence within
as It plays with the sparks on my fire.

[Aboriginal poem]

It used to be
That when I would wake in the morning
I could with confidence say,
"What am 'I' going to do?"
That was before the seed
Cracked Open.
Now Hafiz is certain:
There are two of us housed
In this body,
Doing the shopping together in the market and
Tickling each other
While fixing the evening's food.
Now when I awake
All the internal instruments play the same music:
"God, what love-mischief can 'We' do
For the world
Today?"

[Hafiz]

Shout for joy to honor God our strenth,
shout to acclaim the God of Jacob!
Start the music, sound the drum,
the melodious lyre and the harp;
sound the New Moon trumpet,
at the full moon, on our feastday!

Let the sea thunder and all that it holds,
and the world, with all who live in it;
let all the rivers clap their hands
and the mountains shout for joy,
at the presence of Yahweh...

[The Book of Psalms]

All references found in "One River, Many Wells" by Matthew Fox

"We could say that meditation doesn't have a reason or doesn't have a purpose. In this respect it's unlike almost all other things we do except perhaps making music and dancing. When we make music we don't do it in order to reach a certain point, such as the end of the composition. If that were the purpose of music then obviously the fastest players would be the best. Also, when we are dancing we are not aiming to arrive at a particular place on the floor as in a journey. When we dance, the journey itself is the point, as when we play music the playing itself is the point. And exactly the same thing is true in meditation. Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment."

[Alan Watts]

An Interview with Brooklyn Qawwali Party
By Tom Crenshaw, tom@rockom.net

The New York Times says, "Liking Brooklyn Qawwali Party doesn't depend on if you know what Qawwali is. Nor does it depend on how you feel about Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, its most revered practitioner. This is an 11-piece band… that piles texture into Mr. Khan's melodies, ultimately transforming them; it's joyous music, and this band adds all the extra fun and funk it knows." Paying tribute to one of the world’s great vocalists, Brooklyn Qawwali Party formed to honor the legendary Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, reworking his thunderous songs for an eclectic orchestra comprised of groundbreaking jazz musicians. Funky, smart, and loving, BQP captures the joyful spirit of this Pakistani folk music in a unique instrumental blend of jazz and Qawwali that will be sure to get you on your feet and clapping. RockOm recently sat down with Brook Martinez, founder of Brooklyn Qawwali Party to discuss the band’s music, the music of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and their appearance on CBS Television special Faith, Music and Culture.

RockOm: Tell us how Brooklyn Qawwali Party came about.

Brook Martinez: Brooklyn Qawwali Party came about in 2004. In college I had become a fan of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the late great Pakastani Sufi vocalist, who became internationally famous in the '80s and '90s and then died in 1997. Originally I was studying Indian philosophy and Indian music and then I studied jazz and worked at the World Music Institute, which is a non-profit in New York that used to present him before he died. So I had been a fan of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan for a while and I had also been studying jazz in New York and was an active New York jazz musician. Basically, my community of musicians started to pass around a CD of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan without me knowing until they finally came up to me and said, "Hey, have you heard of this guy? He's an amazing singer!" I said, "Of course I've heard of him. I've been listening to him for forever." I didn't know they were interested in that kind of music; I thought they were more interested in Western jazz music. So once I knew that my jazz community was starting to get into him I thought, well this music actually lends itself well or has parallels to jazz music in that it uses simple melodies as platforms for improvisation and it's got a great swinging rhythm similar to jazz. So I thought, well what if we tried playing these melodies themselves - not singing them and not singing the Sufi poetry as Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan did - but actually perform them with our own jazz instruments? So I got five of my horn player friends together, percussionists, someone who could play accordion and eventually change that to the harmonium, and guitar and bass and we tried playing the music and it really worked out. That was back in 2004 and we had our first show that summer.

RockOm: What was the original reaction from your musician buddies? Did they think you had lost your mind that you were trying to unite these two fronts?

Brook: No, the initial reaction was "Yes!" One member found out that I had this idea and he was like, "I have to be in this band." They instantly knew this was something special and they basically sought me out for it. I chose people I had wanted but there was even one musician who heard about it from a friend and was like, "Oh, I gotta do that... that would be amazing." And then at the first rehearsal, the first notes we hit, we all sort of knew and looked at each other and said, "This sounds really good." From the start it was really exciting.

RockOm: Is it just about the music for you guys or do you actually subscribe to the Sufi faith and tradition? Is that something you practice?

Brook: Well, my approach to the band was to go from the music into wherever each person is at spiritually and allow the music to move them in that way. Everyone really has their own different spiritual beliefs. None of us are actually practicing Sufis. But the music from its origins is inherently spiritual and Sufism has an openness by saying that it really is about your own intimate relationship with The Higher or the Divine, regardless of your religion or what you believe in. For me personally, it's about the actual experience in the moment of playing that hopefully will move us into different states of good feeling. Original qawwali is really to get into a sort of spiritual trance or higher vibration through the music. So personally I just open myself up to the music and I've had all different experiences with the music - amazing moments as well as moments where I'm just a band leader managing a band. I think that's reality; every note you play can't be an ecstatic high but if you are open to the music then things can happen. I try to keep the music itself in an open enough format where special moments can happen.

RockOm: Particularly now with what's going on in Iran, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and unrest throughout the middle east, how important is it to learn about eastern music?

Brook: Music is just one part of learning about eastern culture and understanding that for the most part, we're all very much the same. Then there are extremes on both ends that we hear about in the news all the time, with the more intense political and religious movements. But from my experience, I get so much positive feedback from Pakistani-Americans and Pakistani people all over the world who have been very happy about this. I think an awareness is coming about in the West about the East and eastern music. The musical CDs are available, you can watch videos on YouTube, and so the information is there and people know that it's good. From my perspective, the political media tries to create the separation and drama, but it's up to the people, from the roots, to understand beyond that. We're all so similar, with our own ethnic flares, but at the core we're all human beings.

RockOm: We had the opportunity to interview the Wailers not too long ago and I had asked that if you knew nothing about Rasta, if the spirituality was transferable through the music. So let me ask you about Qawwali. If we know nothing about the music or spirituality itself, do you think there's an essence in the music that's transferable, creating a spark with the audience where there was none before?

Brook: When Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan brought this music to the international limelight, no one that didn't speak Urdu could understand the lyrics, but he became an international superstar. The essence of the music was coming through, regardless if you could understand the poetry and if you knew the history of it all. We were all moved by his music, not by the beliefs we knew that he had, but more by the more immediate effect of listening to his music which was enlivening to say the least. I was able to take that as the reason we focused specifically on Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, because he was the one who brought this to the international limelight. We felt almost welcome to take his style of the music and play with it. Just understanding him from interviews and from friends of his, he had a very open mind on collaborating with the West. So for us, it's really about that immediate effect which can range from making someone smile, making someone get up and dance (when they may not have that night), making someone feel inner joy by listening to good music or maybe someone having a real experience with it. And that really is up to the listener and where they're at that day or in that moment in their life. You just never know.

RockOm: One thing undeniable about Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's music as well as the music that BQP makes is that you can't really be still and listen to it. You have to move; It creates a vibration that makes me want to move. It's a very proactive music.

Brook: Absolutely. I'm a drummer and I'm moved by rhythm, that's my thing. With Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan or Brooklyn Qawwali Party, it's sort of that the rhythm and how it moves you that is the basis for it all. It was really important to me to choose this music, as opposed to other religious music that I love that can be more solemn, because it's upbeat, joyous, it grooves and has that intensity. We compare it to Western gospel music because it has that real intense energy that's not so focused on the more solemn side of religious chant but on the energized side.

RockOm: Tell us about the CBS television special that the band was featured on. How did that come about?

Brook: The CBS documentary was a 30-minute special called Faith, Music and Culture. They had found out about Brooklyn Qawwali Party through someone in their office that said, "Oh, this would be a good band for that." They sent me an email and said "We're the CBS Religion Unit" - which I never knew existed [laughs] - and said they were doing this thing with a Christian a capella group, Jewish rappers, kirtan and they'd love to do us too. They came and videoed a local show in Brooklyn and it was great.

RockOm: Tell us about your song, "Mustt Mustt."

Brook: This was one of the first songs that we started playing and one of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's most famous songs. It has actually been covered by Massive Attack, who did a collaboration with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan in the early 90's and he's recorded it so many times. In Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's culture it's just a popular number and so it's one we love to play for everyone.

RockOm: What's the future hold for Brooklyn Qawwali Party?

Brook: The future holds a second album, hopefully coming out in the fall. We're also playing at Lincoln Center on August 12th at 7:30 for their free outdoor festival, which it's a great honor to be a part of that festival. We're sharing it with Susheela Raman who is a fantastic singer from India. That's our next big show in New York and we're just looking to do some collaborating with singers as well, which could be really interesting coming up. The future is exciting for us.

www.brooklynqawwaliparty.com

Dancing on the Soul's Growing Edge
via PR.com

In February of 1999, “the poster child of clean and healthy living” was blind-sided with a leukemia diagnosis. Already on a spiritual path and listening deeply for the still small voice, Rev. Dr. Kate McLennan began to ponder these questions: Why do bad things happen when you know you’re doing all the right things? Is illness merely a wakeup call, or is there a deeper spiritual meaning? How does one find meaning when life deals a difficult hand? A long time Buddhist practitioner and dharma teacher, her training taught her that being a Buddha means being awake—and sometimes that means being awake to live the questions.

Honoring both her Christian roots and Buddhist practices, McLennan offers an interfaith approach to spirituality, which she defines as “deepening our connection with Spirit and … awakening to live life fully in the moment.” And awakening to life’s sumptuous and messy fullness is her destiny after her harrowing bout with cancer, a near death experience, and the struggles and gifts inherent in returning to tell the story.

Part spiritual memoir, part instruction manual, her new book, The Messy Buddha: Dancing on the Soul’s Growing Edge, published by Outskirts Press, is a unique and soulful guide to approaching life and art as spiritual practice. Weaving insights, music, and spiritual guidance into an inspiring story, McLennan dares her readers to dance on the soul’s growing edge—leaving our safety zones, risking falling into the abyss, and trusting that we will fly. Why the Messy Buddha?

“My life partner, Sharon, named me ‘the messy Buddha’ when I was in the hospital for months with leukemia. She said that most of the time I was calm, peaceful, and Buddha-like with my beautiful bald head. Then there were times when I would totally lose it... Why couldn’t I be more sage-like and accepting? Living authentically in the moment is sometimes messy. Certainly being a Buddha—which means being awake—is messy business. The art of being alive is the ability to breathe and live each messy moment.”

Empowering individuals to deepen into their own spirituality and the messiness of their own lives, The Messy Buddha appeals to spiritual seekers—beginning and experienced. Speaking compassionately to people whose lives are touched by serious illness, McLennan invites readers to creatively search for meaning in these painful rites of passage. An accomplished singer/songwriter, she encourages creativity as a spiritual path through mindful awareness and intention. This 200-page retreat in skillful living teaches meditation, body prayer techniques, and explores the way of the mystic, artist, and prophet as a roadmap for spiritual living. In her own words: “I invite you to dance on your soul’s growing edge. Your guide is messy, imperfect, and not the greatest dancer. But I am willing, and offering my hand and my heart.”

About the Author: Rev. Dr. Kate McLennan is an interfaith minister with a Doctor of Ministry degree from the University of Creation Spirituality, a dharma teacher in the Vipassana lineage, and a captivating performing artist. Her leukemia survival story was filmed for the Lance Armstrong Foundation’s website. Kate lives in the Texas Hill Country on the outskirts of Austin with her beloved partner of several decades, five dogs, and one ancient cat who actually sleeps on a hot tin roof.

For more information or to contact the author, visit www.outskirtspress.com/MessyBuddha or www.MessyBuddha.com.

Authors Ken Wilber and David Deida often talk about the difference between being closed and being open. Are you contracted, pulled in and withdrawn? Or open, uninhibited and free? Here's one way to find out - get your butt out on the dance floor! While I tend to fall into the former camp, there's something admirable about the "devil may care" attitude that allows one to shake, shake, shake one's booty in mixed company. So, in the spirit of freedom and openness...

What is the one song (when you hear it at a club, dance or wedding reception) that will get you out of your chair and onto the floor?

Leave your responses below...

[By John Stoehr, Arts Editor for the Charleston City Paper. See the original posted article here.]

She was looking for something. What, she wasn't sure. But traditional religion, with its thrust of surrender and sin, its din of fear and death, was not enough.

Gail Sickel knew there must be more. Many ancient faiths populated the world. How could one be better than another? Each aims for pretty much the same set of ideals: prayer, compassion, unity, peace.

It was the 1970s, a dynamic period still roiling with the social and political upheavals of the decade before. The United States was still sunk in the quagmire of a foreign war. Coming of age amid this influence of anxiety, Sickel was part of a boom of young, idealistic Americans searching for new ways to express spirituality.

"I was looking for oneness," she says, reflecting on that time. "I was a seeker and eventually I found an experience that was heart-focused."

That experience was the Dances of Universal Peace.

The dances are the creation of Samuel L. Lewis, an American spiritual figure who was a disciple of Hazrat Inayat Khan, an Indian Muslim and visionary best known for popularizing in the West the mystical tradition of Islam known as Sufism.

Lewis, whom journalists at the time somewhat condescendingly called "Sufi Sam," was also closely associated with Ruth St. Denis, a feminist and pioneer of modern dance in America who taught Martha Graham early on. St. Denis was instumental in founding Jacob's Pillow, the famed dance festival in New England.

In the early '70s, after traveling the globe, studying the esoteric sects of the world's orthodox religions, and teaching Sufism to young Americans radicalized by the draft and the Vietnam War, Lewis finally created his New Age masterpiece.

He married mysticism to movement to "promote peace through the arts."

That art is the Dances of Universal Peace.

To say "art" or "dance," however, is a bit misleading. Martha Graham wouldn't recognize it as art per se. These dances are a means to an end, conduits through which participants express their inner selves with sound and movement. A trained mentor guides groups of people through set dances accompanied by music and traditional prayers, each peculiar to a myriad of faiths, from Christianity to Hinduism, from pagan Celtic beliefs to Zorastrianism.

"The dances bring forth an experience that's heartfelt," Sickel says. "I notice the faces of people who come. When they arrive, they're tense. When they leave, they're so relaxed, because the idea is to internalize joy, to feel one's self."

One might indeed use the word "art" to describe this deeply personal act of self expression. What is art if not an individual assertion of self amid other selves? Besides, the dances are in concert with the origins of art. Art was religion in prehistory.

Art and religion have had a rocky marriage, but the divorce came only recently. Looking back at of the rise the 20th-century avant-garde — which, for the most part, aimed to subvert the complacent values of the bourgeoisie — one might wonder what role art ever had in American religious life.

But of course it did, and for a long time.

Rock or hip-hop might not exist if Martin Luther, during the Reformation, hadn't insisted everyone sing together at church. If the 19th century had a soundtrack, it'd be the sound of noisy hymnals rising up from tent revitals and mass baptisms. The King James Bible informed the imaginations of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Emily Dickenson. Whitman was considered a prophet in his time. Emerson's Transcendentalism yielded a powerful pantheistic view of nature and a belief in the divinity of all mankind.

Thanks to modernism, art and religion parted ways until the 1980s and '90s, when they clashed in ways familiar to us today. Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority launched a pernicious campaign to purge media of "indecency." "Piss Christ" nearly shut down the NEA. Mapplethorpe's bullwhip landed a Cincinnati curator in jail. Chris Ofili, a British-Nigerian artist, sent Rudy Giuliani into apoplexy after using elephant dung to ornament his Virgin Mary.

Camille Paglia has called these controversies, in a 2007 Arion article, "fading sparks" of the old mid-century politics of style. It's time to move on, she said. People need religion, and they need artists. To reunite them, modern day artists need to look back and "recover their spiritual center."

Whether that's happening is in doubt. Last week, an Australian judge quit a religious art contest because a short-listed painting depicted Jesus at Calvary with the words "Only Women Bleed," a line by shock-rocker Alice Cooper. The judge said it was "deliberate ugliness." The artist said the judge was "subjective and close-minded."

Dances of Universal Peace, a global New Age organization of thousands, has moved in the opposite direction of history for nearly four decades, reclaiming, as Paglia suggests, art's "spiritual center." For Sickel and her Charleston cohort of about 25, art has been an expression of that existential mystery.

"We dance to simple songs sung from the heart," Sickel says.

If you live in the Greater Charleston, SC area:
Dances of Universal Peace
Sept. 13, 7-9 p.m.
$10
Gage Hall, Unitarian Universalist Church
4 Archdale St.
(843) 437-0365
www.dancesofuniversalpeace.org

In front of the altar of the Jubilee Church on a recent Friday night, 16-year-old Jordan Taylor pulls a well-worn Bible from his backpack and flips to an earmarked page to read aloud from Ephesians 6:13.

"Therefore," he intones, "you put on the full armor of God so that when the day of evil comes you may be able to stand your ground and after, you've done everything to stand."

Then, with a hip-hop beat filling the room, Taylor stands rigid at first, his face contorting as if he's in pain. His hands clutch at his shoulders, torso, hips and legs as he symbolically puts on the armor of God. His body convulses. He kicks and stomps, his knees bend, and he kneels on the ground before rising to his feet, all in a matter of seconds.

Taylor is "krumping" for Christ, dancing to interpret Scripture through movement. It's a regular feature of the Mattapan church's youth ministry, as well as with a larger Boston community of hundreds of young people who feel a connection to God when they so behave.

Sometimes referred to as "break dancing on speed," krump got its start on the streets of South Central Los Angeles about 10 years ago, among young people looking for a way to fight back in a creative way against a life of struggle. The style, parts of which are derived from African tribal dances, was originally a way for urban youths to release anger and frustration, said Ben Carter, a youth leader at Jubilee.

But since its conception, krump has evolved into a spiritual movement. One of its founders in LA, Ceasare Willis, who goes by the name "Tight Eyez," felt he was saved by God via krumping, Carter said. Tight Eyez developed an acronym to convey the dance's newfound meaning; KRUMP has come to mean "Kingdom Radically Uplifting Mighty Praise" and krumpers have BUCK sessions, or gatherings for "Believers Upholding Christ's Kingdom.'

Before service each week, young people gather at Jubilee to krump. When they stomp and punch, they say, they are fighting off demons; when they pull at their flesh, they add, they are releasing themselves from evil. They say they minister to each other through their dance and feel God's presence when they enter a trance-like state.

"God's gonna be with you while you're krumping," said Deonte Lockhart, 14, of Randolph. "He told you how to do these moves . . . You gotta do it to the best in His name."

"We don't just do it to dance," added Benito Henri, a towering 16-year-old from Dorchester. "We do it for something higher. Something more than us, more than movements, more than anything we say out of our mouths. . . . We're using this as a weapon to fight against the things that we go through daily."

The transformation from secular to religious happened naturally for many krumpers, said Jimmy Thompson Jr., a member of Dorchester's Greater Love Tabernacle, and an ambassador of information for his son's krump ministry in Boston, the Gooniez.

"Young kids who were frustrated with economic conditions were taking their issues to the dance floor," said Thompson, adding that "they were getting relief on the spiritual level."

Brendon "Genesis" Waters, who dances with Status Quo, said he started krumping a couple of years ago when the dance began to gain ground in Boston. "Dancing in general is a good way to get people off the streets," Waters said. He and the rest of Status Quo have made a lifestyle out of dancing, using it as an alternative to drugs and violence that other young people fall into.

Krumping adds meaning to dance moves that may "look cool" but also serve as a way for young people to give physical expression to their spirituality, said Waters, who introduced krumping to other Status Quo members.

Ernest "E-Knock" Phillips, the leader of Status Quo, admits he's new to krumping but has found a renewed connection to God since he picked up the style. "There are times that we all . . . have krumped so long and so hard and for a certain reason that we cried," said Phillips.

Status Quo has krumped at several churches in the area, including Jubilee, one of the first in Boston to introduce krump as a form of worship. Some churches, particularly those with older, more traditional congregations, are not as welcoming, Phillips admits.

Rami Thompson, a youth pastor at Jubilee, said when she noticed kids from her church krumping and learned about its spiritual roots, she invited them to do so at Jubilee. Some people think the young dancers look possessed and demonic, Thompson said, but as youth ministers, "our job . . . is to see the way that youth express themselves . . . find redeeming qualities in it, and bring those qualities out," she said. The krumpers at Jubilee say their relationship with God has grown stronger in the year since their krump group, or "family," the Royal Family, was born.

Emmett Price, Northeastern professor and author of "The Black Church, Hip-Hop Culture and the Dilemma of the Generational Divide," said he's not surprised there has been resistance to bringing krump into a religious setting. In the 1930s, Thomas Dorsey was thrown out of churches when he introduced gospel music as a form of worship, Price said.

And in the 1990s, Kirk Franklin, the first artist to bring hip-hop to the church, was criticized for tainting Christian values. But holy hip-hop, including music and dance, is now a growing phenomenon that brings young people to churches in droves, Price said.

Krumping for Christ is the most recent case of a younger generation using its own voice to say what their elders did years prior, Price said.

"A lot of people just krump because it looks good and everybody's gonna go 'ooh' and 'aah,' " said Giovanni Pabon of Randolph, one of Jubilee's Royal Family. "But we're looking for more of the pleasing God. . . . There are a lot of ways to worship. . . . This is our way."

[By Katherine McInerney, Boston Globe Correspondent]

rhythm (n)
Pronunciation: \ˈri-thəm\

1 a: an ordered recurrent alternation of strong and weak elements in the flow of sound and silence in speech b: a particular example or form of rhythm
2 a: the aspect of music comprising all the elements (as accent, meter, and tempo) that relate to forward movement b: a characteristic rhythmic pattern ; also : 1meter 2 c: the group of instruments in a band supplying the rhythm —called also rhythm section [www.merriam-webster.com]

There is a sacred sequence of life.
An eternal rhythm. A dance of circles.

Planets perpetually spin around their orbits....
Night breaks into day, which falls into night, as the day arrives again...
Life is born, lives, dies, and is reborn into new forms - endlessly...
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall...

-and yet-

We don't live accordingly. What is modern man's greatest triumph? What is the sickness or our age? With what three words do we proclaim to the world as our trophy of worth?

"I'm so busy."

As a culture that values overwork, striving, driving, pushing, out-of-balance-ness, we assume that being busy means you're somebody. We search for the deepest meaning of Who We Are not in the eternal Present where the beginningless, endless, ever-present Witness resides, but rather in some imagined future date of "betterness." Therefore, we must strive to get there - no matter the havoc it wreaks upon our bodies, our families, our world. And as Brother David Steindl-Rast teaches us, the Chinese pictograph for "busy" is made up of two characters: heart and killing.

remember the sabbath

Work hard while you're at work. But find the sacred rhythm of rest. Remember Gandhi's words on the madness of modern man: "There is more to life than merely increasing its speed."

In that rest, savor. Savor a cup of tea in silence. Talk a walk in the quiet woods. Play on the floor with a child. Cook an exquisite meal and eat it alone or with family or friends. Breathe. Nap. Paint. Meditate. Do nothing.

Take nothing for granted. Bring full mindfulness into whatever you're doing so that you're completely "there."

This does not produce laziness. There is no need to feel guilty. Upon fully realizing the rhythm of rest, your work becomes more meaningful and you find mindfulness and strength to apply to your tasks. And yet even while working, find "rest moments." Stop. Breathe 3 deep breaths. Then continue.

Find the sacred rhythm. Rather, tune in to the sacred rhythm, for it is all around and within you like a silent, beating drum. Business, stress, and exhaustion are not medals of your worth - indeed they choke your ability to simply "be."

Yes, tune in to the sacred rhythm. And Dance.

[By Trevor Harden, President of RockOm. This post was inspired by the book "Sabbath" by Wayne Muller - a very beautiful and important book. Trevor suggests you pick one up and says you'll be blessed by it.]

Not much goes with music more than dancing. As it is, enjoy the following poem written by RockOm staffer Tom Crenshaw. While reading through these words, one can almost hear the music playing...

When Shiva Dances

When Shiva dances with arms whirling
I sit in the fields watching the morning sun appear,

When Shiva bends gracefully touching hand to foot
I rise, tending to obligations appearing,

When Shiva arches, with head gazing high
I churn over thoughts while walking homeward,

When Shiva leaps, keeping solemn tempo
I sit in the fields watching the afternoon sun descend,

Morning-rise, from collapsing night
Dream death into dream life
All measures found sufficient
As twilight falls, as radiant day surrenders

What is destroyed but all illusion?

[By Tom Crenshaw, 2004]