Music is Majestic
Music is Majestic
From be bop to birdsong, from a symphonic orchestra to the humming of a lullaby, from a multi-layered Bach fugue to the "One Note Samba" by Tom Jobim, from a city mall flash mob to an elephant swaying to the song played on an outdoor piano, and we can include a warm autumn night cricket chorus - music is stunningly varied and affects us physically, psychologically, emotionally, and ways related to mental health and wellbeing.
This Sunday, with our Music Director, Scott Kearns, we'll dip into the subject, as it relates to our values and commitments to ourselves, each other, and the planet.
READINGS
The readings today are taken from works by three writers, a poet, a dramatist, and a naturalist. It’s important to note that we acknolwedge the fallibility of all writers whose words are chosen for readings at West Hill, for while some of their works offer wisdom for the journey, other works may contain opinions to which we would object.
The readings chosen are ones that can bring light to our path.
This particularly applies to the third writer, John Muir, the American scientist, naturalist, environmentalist, and national park protector, born in 1838, and founder of the Sierra Club. His early writings express disrespectful views on Ingenous people and people of colour, views shared by many of his colleagues, which had a negative effect and have been formally apolgized for by the Sierra Club.
Fortunately Muir’s later views evolved to ones of greater acceptance. The readings are taken from two of his books Our National Parks and Sierra.
The first reading is by the English poet, William Wordsworth, born in 1770, famous for the poem “Daffodils”. The reading is taken from his poem “The World is Too Much With Us”.
The second reading is by English dramatist, William Congreve, born exactly 100 years before Wordsworth, known for his satirical “comedy of manners” writing style. The reading is taken from two of his poems, “The Mourning Bride” and “Hymn to Harmony”
The selections will be read as one reading, each answering the next.
The World is too much with us…
getting and spending, we lay waste our powers…
we have given our hearts away…for this, for everything, we are out of tune…
Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast,
To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.
Music alone with sudden charms can bind
The wand’ring sense, and calm the troubled mind.
2
Nature is ever at work building and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another.
The sun shines not on us but in us. The rivers flow not past, but through us. Thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fiber and cell of the substance of our bodies, making them glide and sing. The trees wave and the flowers bloom in our bodies as well as our souls, and every bird song, wind song, and tremendous storm song of the rocks in the heart of the mountains is our song, our very own, and sings our love.