Do you hear it?

It was the evening (years ago) of a particularly enchanting musical offering...so enchanting that the audience lingered for a while in the silence while the instrument's last notes were absorbed into the hall's open space. I stayed until the last listener had departed, and I went forward to express my appreciation to the musician. He accepted my words of gratitude, and my inadequate attempt to say how the piece had affected my mind, my heart and, yes, my soul. He said with humility and the certainty of an artist:

It is always out there, you know.... it is just that we don't always hear it.

That is the way with ethereal beauty and truth....that is the way with the gifts that underly every day life...often muted or hidden entirely by thought, preoccupation, or fixation upon some (seemingly) predominant concern.

That is the way with the flowing song of God's peaceful presence which can be discerned when we quiet the pace and volume of the mind's dancing energy.

In the same way, I was surprised the other day by the audible rush of the waterfall on the property behind the church....it is a small waterfall that comes to life in the midst of (or immediately following) a hard rain. I walked by the same place today... a crystalline, cloudless, breezy spring day.... I couldn't detect any flow of water. The foliage, nourished and stimulated by the rain, had exploded to lush fullness. Thus, I could scarsely see the small ravine that had been the location of the energetic waterfall only days before.

It would have been nice, perhaps, to be able to see the dancing water on this beautiful day....to bathe in its melody. I stood still...dwelling in the soft space of the peaceful woods.

In the quiet I could "hear" the sacred place of our Cross Walk and Outdoor Chapel saying to me with God's love.....

It is always out there, you know.... it is just that we don't always hear it!