The Silence that Music Opens

Before a human voice was ever heard here,

This place has known the respect of stone,

The friendship of wind, always returning 

With news of elsewhere, whispered in seed and pollen,

The thin symphonies of birdsong softening the silence,

the litanies of rain rearranging the air,

Cascades of sunlight opening and closing days,

And the glow of the moon gazing through darkness......

John O'Donohue

 Tahigwa Girl Scout Camp, 2014 Village Fire

This past weekend I participated in a community singing gathering in Northeast Iowa called Village Fire....three days of singing, camping, and campfires and did I mention singing?!
There were more than one hundred of us from infants to the elderly.  We sang and sang and sang.  And I'm surprised to admit this, but my favorite part was often that last full chord and then the silence following.

As the poet John O'Donohue says ...."As surprised as the silence that music opens,  May your words for each other be touched with reverence..." and from another poem....

"If you remain generous, 

Time will come good;

And you will find your feet 

Again on fresh pastures of promise,"

Laurence and Pelle on drums, Liz and Ida Rog and the rest of us on joyful listening

I am very grateful I had the chance to go, its one of the many ways we can learn to lift each other up.