GOD IN US

1965

 

Joan Baez performing the song God Is God at the Chautauqua Auditorium in Boulder, CO on 7/15/09.

God Is God

I believe in prophecy.
Some folks see things not everybody can see.
And, once in a while, they pass the secret along to you and me.

And I believe in miracles.
Something sacred burning in every bush and tree.
We can all learn to sing the songs the angels sing.

Yeah, I believe in God, and God in me.

I've traveled around the world,
Stood on mighty mountains and gazed across the wilderness.
Never seen a land with sand or a diamond in the dust.

And as our fate unfurls,
Every day that passes I'm sure about a little bit less.

Even my mommy tells me it's God I need to trust.

And I believe in God, and God in us.

God, of my little understanding, don't care what name I call.
Whether or not I believe doesn't matter at all.
I receive the blessings.
That every day on Earth's another chance to get it right.
Let this little light of mine shine and rage against the night.

Just another lesson:
Maybe someone's watching and wondering what I got.
Maybe this is why I'm here on Earth, and maybe not.

But I believe in God, and God is God.

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Steve Earle

 

2020

Joan Baez portrait of Kamala Harris

“Kamala, you have reintroduced the concept of what should have long been a constant in our lives: The beloved community,” Joan says. “What a joy to see your face as you cheerfully bring compassion and empathy, decency, and bravery - the virtues which should define us as a people - back into our discourse and our lives.” 

 

 

ISAAC PENINGTON

National Gallery

Illustration by Blake to John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress

Christian with the Shield of Faith Taking Leave of His Companions 

  

From The Double Vision, by Northrop Frye:  "What 'the' truth is, is not available to human beings in spiritual matters: the goal of our spiritual life is God, who is spiritual Other, not a spiritual object, much less a conceptual object. That is why the Gospels keep reminding us how many listen and how few hear: the truth of the gospel kind cannot be demonstrated except through personal example. As the seventeenth-century Quaker Isaac Penington said every truth is substantial in its own place, but all truths are shadows except the last. The language which lifts us clear of the merely plausible and the merely credible is the language of the spirit; the language of the spirit is, Paul tells us, the language of love, and the language of love is the only language that we can be sure is spoken and understood by God." (Page 20)

 

Science Quotes by Isaac Penington 

" All truth is a shadow except the last—yet every Truth is true in its kind. It is substance in its own place, though it be but a shadow in another place, (for it is but a shadow from an intenser substance;) and the shadow is a true shadow, as the substance is a true substance."

Thomas Ellwood on Isaac Penington

Hymn by Charles Wesley: Come, O Thou Traveler Unknown

MUSIC & POETRY

Barb has provided us with one of her poems which touches on her experience of music bringing together the explicit and implicit worlds. In the book I am reading, The Master and His Emissary, by Iain McGilchrist, I find that he has shown how the right hemisphere of the brain contributes to our ability to discern in music and poetry the implicit world which is opaque to the left hemisphere which attends to the explicit world. Barb's poem begins with the explicit - the contract, time consciousness, empty seats. Playing the music begins the transition to a different type of experience where the Wedding integrates all into a whole which is more than the sum of the parts.

The Master and His Emissary, Page 72
 
(M)usic is the natural candidate for the concerns of the right hemisphere. It is the relations between things, more than entities in isolation, that are of primary importance to the right hemisphere. Music consists entirely of relations of 'betweenness.' The notes mean nothing in themselves; the tensions between notes, and between notes and the silence with which they live in reciprocal indebtedness, are everything. Melody, harmony and rhythm each lie in the gaps, and yet the betweenness is only what it is because of the notes themselves. Actually the music is not just in the gaps any more than it is just in the notes: it is the whole that the notes and silence make together. Each note becomes transformed by the context in which it lies. What we mean by music is not just any agglomeration of notes, but one in which the whole created to make each note live in a new way, a way that it had never done before. Similarly poetry cannot be just any arrangement of words, but one in which each word is taken up into a new whole and made to live again in a new way, carrying us back to the world of experience, to life: poetry constitutes a 'speaking silence.' Music and poetic language are both part of the world that is delivered by the right hemisphere, the world characterized by betweenness. Perhaps it is not, after all, not so wide off the mark to call the right hemisphere the 'silent' hemisphere: its utterances are implicit."   

The two hemispheres of the brain complement each other. Singing provides the left half of the brain with words which it's language skills use to add another dimension to the enjoyment.

King's Singers - In the Real Early Morning

"In the real early morning

With the sun slowly rising
I was walking out slowly
Wandering free
When out in the distance
Over the valley
I saw an old friend
Waiting for me
Waiting for me

She was a young girl
She was an old soul
As fair as the ocean
Timeless and free
She was my mother
She was my daughter
She was my lover
She was everything
An old friend could be

I said it's been such a long time
Since we have spoken
There's so much to say to you
I want you to know
Wish you could tell me
All that you've seen here
But we haven't got long now
For soon you'll be fading
And soon I must go

She said you are a soldier
You are a father
You are a wise man
You are a friend
You were my first love
I won't forget you
I'm walking beside you
I was here when you started
I'll be here till the end

And now it's evening
There's a moon slowly rising
There isn't much more that
I wanted to know (wanted to know)

And I am alone now
She isn't beside me no more
But I feel no sorrow
I'll come tomorrow
I'll be on my way home
I'll be on my way home

Source: Musixmatch

Songwriter: Jacob Collier

REALIZING THE DREAM

March on Washington

Martin Luther King

1963

I Have a Dream excerpt from speech delivered from Lincoln Memorial:

"I say to you today, my friends, though, even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. 

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream . . . I have a dream that one day in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today ." 

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If we are open to listening and seeking new experience we are often led in unexpected and surprising directions. When seeking performances by The King's Singers I came across a meditative video which included in the title Bono/U2 arr. Bob Chilcott - MLK.

This is the legend for the recording: "To mark Martin Luther King Day 2018, The King's Singers took a few minutes to record their cover of this song, MLK, by Bono from the band U2. The arrangement is by Bob Chilcott, former tenor in The King's Singers, and it was recorded during in L'Oratoire du Louvre, Paris."

So my next step was to check out Bono and the connection to Martin Luther King.

These are the simple words of the song:

 

"Sleep
Sleep tonight
And may your dreams
Be realized

If the thundercloud
Passes rain
So let it rain
Rain down on him
Mmm
So let it be
Mmm
So let it be

Sleep
Sleep tonight
And may your dreams
Be realized
If the thundercloud
Passes rain
So let it rain
Let it rain
Rain on him"

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Adam Clayton / Dave Evans / Larry Mullen / Paul Hewson [Bono]

 

I found this tribute to King from Bono:

“Dr. King kept us tolerant in a time of terror,” Bono says during his 10-minute tribute. “Kept us faithful to peace and community. Made us believe in joy and justice. Showed us the way to a shared humanity. Dr. King’s voice is louder today than it has ever been. He is one of the true fathers of our American dream.”

Now I wanted to know more about Bono and U2. Searching on Wikipedia through his biography and career as a pop singer, I learned that a tour which the group made in 2014-15 was named Songs of Innocence. The next tour 2017 they named Songs of Experience. A combined Innocence and Experience tour took place in 2018. I needed to know more about the connection of Bono with William Blake who wrote his illuminated poetry titled Songs of Innocence and of Experience in the late 18th century.

Here is what Bono had to say in an Interview with Rolling Stones:

What are the common themes that tie the songs on Songs of Experience together?
I try not to talk about William Blake too much because it sounds pretentious quoting such a literary giant but it was his great idea I pinched to compare the person we become through experience to the person who set out on the journey. If you’re talking about innocence, you’ve probably already lost it but I do believe at the far end of experience, it’s possible to recover it with wisdom. I’m not saying I have much of that but what little I have, I wanted to cram into these songs. I know U2 go into every album like it’s their last one but even more this time I wanted the people around me that I loved to know exactly how I felt. So a lot of the songs are kind of letters, letters to Ali [wife], letters to my sons and daughters, actually our sons and daughters.
...
And one that I didn’t realize until too late that I was writing to myself, “It’s the Little Things Give You Away.” In all of these advice type songs, you are of course preaching what you need to hear. In that sense, they’re all written to the singer. One other piece on Blake, I don’t know if I’m explaining too much here but the best songs for me are often arguments with yourself or arguments with some other version of yourself. Even singing our song “One,” which was half fiction, I’ve had this ongoing fight. In “Little Things,” innocence challenges experience: “I saw you on the stairs, you didn’t notice I was there, that’s cause you were busy talking at me, not to me. You were high above the storm, a hurricane being born but this freedom just might cost you your liberty.”

At the end of the song, experience breaks down and admits his deepest fears, having been called out on it by his younger, braver, bolder self. That same conversation also opens the album with a song called ”Love Is All We Have Left.” My favorite opening line to a U2 album: “There’s nothing to stop this being the best day ever.” In the second verse, innocence admonishes experience: “Now you’re at the other end of the telescope, seven billion stars in her eyes, so many stars so many ways of seeing, hey, this is no time not to be alive.” It’s a chilling moment – in the chorus I was pretending to be Frank Sinatra singing on the moon, a sci-fi torch song “love, love is all we have left, a baby cries on the doorstep, love is all we have left.”

William Blake

Songs of Innocence 

Little Black Boy

Bono quote from the LA Times:

“Songwriting comes from a different place,” he continues. “Music is the language of the spirit. I think ideas and words are our excuse as songwriters to allow our heart or our spirit to run free. That’s when magic happens.”

Dreams, too, come from a different place. We don't own them; they are shared. But the dream of freedom, equality and justice is implemented in individual ways by individuals. Each of us becomes a part of the dream in the way that it can be expressed through us.

SIMPLE GIFTS

Alfred Shaker Village

Alfred Maine

1915 Postcard

A favorite hymn among Quakers is a Shaker hymn written in 1848. The writer and composer is said to be Elder Joseph Brackett of the Alfred Village in Maine.

'Tis the Gift to be Simple

Original Shaker Hymn
1
Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,
'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
REFRAIN
When true simplicity is gain'd,
To bow and to bend we will not be asham'd,
To turn, turn will be our delight,
Till by turning, turning we come round right

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Additional verses in Worship in Song - A Friends Hymnal
2 -
'Tis the gift to be gentle,'tis the gift to be fair,
'Tis the gift to wake and breathe the morning air.
To walk every day in the path we choose.
'Tis the gift we pray we will never, never lose.
REFRAIN
3
Tis the gift to be knowing, 'tis the gift to be kind,
'Tis the gift to wait to hear another's mind,
That when we speak our feelings we might come out true,
'Tis the gift for me and the gift for you.
REFRAIN
4
'Tis the gift to be loving, 'tis the best gift of all,
Like the warm spring rain bringing beauty when it falls,
And as we use this gift we might come to believe,
'Tis better to give than it is to receive.
REFRAIN

'Tis the Gift to be Simple was not well know outside of Shaker circles until in 1944 the tune was incorporated by Arron Copland in the ballet score he wrote for Martha Graham. Since Shakers used dance in their worship, it was apropos that the Shaker hymn be performed as ballet in Appalachian Spring. In 1963 Sydney Carter adapted the tune for Lord of the Dance which was prominent in the dance musical Lord of the Dance first performed in 1996.

Barack Obama's 2009 inauguration as president included a quartet Air and Simple Gifts composed by John Williams and based on the Shaker hymn. The moving performance by Anthony McGill (clarinet), Itzhak Perlman (violin), Yo-Yo Ma (cello) and Gabriela Montero (piano) made that inauguration the only one that sticks in my memory. (I do also remember Jimmy Carter and Rosalynn getting out of their limousine and walking along Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House.) 

Although the Shaker faith developed out of Quakerism it deviated from Quaker practice in many ways. Shakers practiced a communal lifestyle, they were organized under a hierarchical system, they practiced celibacy and they followed a strict set of rules. Although there were once nineteen Shaker communities scattered among at least six states with as many as 500 members each, they gradually had to close their communities for lack of membership. 

The memory of the Shaker experiment in radical Christianity is kept alive by their music, their furniture and the remnants of their communities left behind.

More music:
The songs and dances included are: The Humble Heart; Simple Gifts; Love, Love, Love; Father James' Song; Come Dance and Sing; Now My Dear Companions; A People Called Christians; I Am a Brave Soldier; Step Tune; A Cup of Rejoicing; Lay me Low; My Carnal Life I will Lay Down; Dismission of the Devil; Primitive Dance Tune; An Indian Song; When Cheer Fills the Hearts; Shuffling Song; Shepherdess Song.

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National Parks Service

History of the Shakers

EXTREME HEAT

NOAA Climate Map

Wikipedia -  Heat Wave

David Hastings, whom you met on the post SOLAR ENERGY, has written another article for the Gainesville Sun. His column titled To avoid deaths from extreme heat, we need to switch to clean power looks at Extreme Heat from several perspective. First he considers the conditions which are current on the west coast, then he presents the perspective of the impact of global warming on causing excessive temperatures and resulting deaths, and the final perspective is on what the state of Florida may expect in the future regarding expected temperatures.

Of course David's main interest is not in the problems themselves but in potential solutions to the problems we have created by our misguided choices.  

"In order to avoid more deaths from extreme heat, we need to switch to clean power, which turns out to be feasible, good for the economy and good for public health. If we continue on our current path of failing to reduce carbon emissions, extreme heat will soar. Or we can take bold action now to dramatically reduce carbon emissions and prevent the worst from becoming reality."

"In Florida we are most at risk for dangerous heat fueled by climate change compared to other states; we are projected to see the biggest increase in its extreme heat threat of any state by 2050, and yet our state is poorly prepared for this risk."

"Congress is debating an infrastructure package called the American Jobs Plan. The climate provisions of this bill are critical." 

Heat Dome

BREAKTHROUGH

 

The Ocala public library recently purchased a book with the unlikely title I Have Been Buried Under Years of Dust. These words were chosen because they were the first words typed by a young autistic woman with the help of a technique called Facilitated Communication. Although this method is disparaged by some therapists, it succeeded for the co-author of the book, Emily Grodin. Emily had never acquired more than a few words of spoken language. For her a floodgate of communication skills was released when she made her breakthrough. Although she did not learn to speak or to communicate without a facilitator, her ability to write on an iPad gave her  the confidence to enroll in college with the hope of becoming a spokesperson for others with autism.

To me the most remarkable significance of the account in the book is that it demonstrates that people suffering from autism can have an unusually high intellect which has no way to find expression. The behavioral symptoms associated with autism make it hard to recognize the underlying intelligence. A theory attempting to explain the syndrome called autism is that there is a deficient connection between the brain and the body resulting in the brain being locked up without an appropriate outlet. 

I Have Been Buried Under Years if Dust is written by Valerie Gilpeer and her daughter Emily Grodin, both remarkable writers with distinctive styles. These words written by Emily give a taste of her remarkable ability:

"Because I write with such clarity, the world wonders why I cannot speak as such. Where I'm from words are celebrated and shared with one another. A book is read at each days end to experience the power of language together. Their messages are discovered in the imaginations that listen. But they still inquire how I know these things I know."

Emily uses prose to explain her situation to the outside world which may see only her deficiencies and not know what lies buried under the surface of pain and struggle. She uses her poetry to reveal the inner being which we all share in our emotional and imaginative lives. 

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Listen to Matthew Arnold's The Buried Life. Read the complete poem.

SOLAR ENERGY

The Energy Consortium

A recent transplant from St Petersburg has written an opinion story for the Gainesville Sun on Climate Crisis Solutions. David Hastings joins us to share the silence at our outdoor worship in the Quaker Woods. He comes to us from the St Petersburg Quaker Meeting.

David's May 17 article in the Sun concentrates on ways in which we can avoid contributing to global emissions. But action is necessary; if we are complacent now when we have the opportunity to initiate changes we will pass the tipping point and find decline inevitable.

David says:

"The massive shift in technology has transformed how we can produce energy here in the Sunshine State, in developing countries and wherever the sun shines. These advances are revolutionizing energy policy."

OUTDOOR WORSHIP

REMEMBER WHEN

The Attack by Edvard Isto

Symbolizes Finland's Resistance to Russification

Finlandia was composed in 1899-90 by Jean Sibelius as a patriotic symphonic poem.  

Article by Danny Riley

"Press censorship was a strong characteristic of Russian, and in 1899 Sibelius was asked to compose some music for a “Press Celebrations” event. It was advertised as a fundraiser for pensions of newspaper workers, but its real purpose was to help finance a Finnish free press. So, to mark the occasion Sibelius chose to create a set of seven musical tableaux depicting momentous occasions in his country’s history."

...

"The work ended, however, in the rousing “Finland Awakes” – an optimistic look towards the country’s future."

...

"As the work grew in popularity, however, it had to be performed under politically inoffensive pseudonyms to avoid Russian censorship."

...

"When the Finnish parliament declared independence from Russia in December 1917, this feeling was crystallised in the music of Finlandia. “We fought 600 years for our freedom and I am part of the generation which achieved it,” he wrote. “Freedom! My Finlandia is the story of this fight. It is the song of our battle, our hymn of victory.” From then on, Finlandia remained a constant source of inspiration for patriotic Finns, with the poet Veikko Antero Koskenniemi writing his own lyrics to the 'Finlandia Hymn' in response to Russian aggression during the Second World War." 

 

*****

The words of the hymn Be Still, my soul were written in 1752 in German by Katharina von Schlegel and translated to English by Jane Borthwick in 1855. It is sung to Sibelius' tune Finlandia.

Be Still My Soul 

1 Be still, my soul! for God is on your side;
bear patiently the cross of grief or pain:
leave to your God to order and provide,
who through all changes faithful will remain.
Be still, my soul! your best, your heav’nly Friend
through thorny ways leads to a joyful end.

2 Be still, my soul! for God will undertake
to guide the future surely as the past.
Your hope, your confidence, let nothing shake;
all now mysterious shall be clear at last.
Be still, my soul! the waves and winds still know
the voice that calmed their fury long ago.

3 Be still, my soul! the hour is hastening on
when we shall be forever in God's peace;
when disappointment, grief, and fear are gone,
love’s joys restored, our strivings all shall cease.
Be still my soul! when change and tears are past,
all safe and blessed we shall meet at last.

*****

In 1932 a young music student at the University of Southern California aware that the great powers were once again threatening to take control of weaker nations, felt in Sibelius' powerful music a way to speak out for peace. Lloyd Stone wrote his own words to the tune Finlandia.

A Song of Peace

This is my song
Oh God of all the nations
A song of peace for lands so far away
This is my home, a country where my heart is
Here grew my hopes and dreams for all mankind
But other hearts in other lands are beating
With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine

My country's skies are bluer than the ocean
And sunlight shines on clover leaf and pine
But other lands have sunlight too and clover
And skies are everywhere as blue as mine
Oh hear my prayer, o gods of all the nations
A song of peace for their lands and for mine

"Lloyd Stone (1912 – 1993) was born in California and attended the University of Southern California as a music major, with the intent of becoming a teacher. Instead, he joined a circus bound for Hawaii and remained there for the rest of his life, writing poems and songs. This is his best known work; stanzas 1 and 2 were written in 1934 when Lloyd was 22 years old. Often combined with several additional verses by Georgia Harkness, the poem is typically sung to the tune Finlandia, composed by Jean Sibelius. Lloyd also wrote a musical based on Joyce Kilmer’s poem, 'Trees,' and several books of Hawaii-themed poems. Said one reviewer, '[Stone] does not sing of the palms and the surf, but of the earthy human beauty which is the heritage of the islands.'"

*****

I remember when we sang together the hymn A Song of Peace, page 304 in our Friends Hymnal. 

 

PENN SCHOOL

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs

Significant Election Scene at Washington, June 3, 1867

From the earliest days of Quakerism there has been a two pronged thrust of Quaker activities: to make people aware of the Divine Presence within everyone, and to help those who were who were oppressed. In the early days of the Civil War Pennsylvania Quakers saw an opportunity to help the freed slaves on St Helena Island in South Carolina make the transition to freedom. An organization named Friend's Freedmen's Association of Philadelphia provided volunteers and donations of money, clothing and supplies.

Although the rebellious southern states were in the hands of the Confederacy, the sea Islands had been captured during the Battle of Port Royal on November 7, 1861 and remained in the hands of Union troops for the duration of the war. The plantation owners and their families escaped the islands leaving behind their thousands of slaves. Two of the women who saw the need to provide assistance to the freed slaves were Laura Townes, a Unitarian from Philadelphia, and her friend Ellen Murray a Quaker from Rhode Island. They are credited with establishing the first school for freed slaves. When in 1864 the Freedmen's Association of Philadelphia provided a prefabricated building as the first permanent location, the school acquired the name Penn School in gratitude to their supporters in Pennsylvania. For Laura Townes and Ellen Murray assisting the community of Gullahs in the area around St Helena Island became their life's work. Their programs included education for children and adults, health care and helping establish self sustaining agricultural practices. 

Ellen Murray & Students

c. 1890 

The African Americans on St Helana Island were distinctive in being from a group called Gullahs who retained their own language and many of their customs. Since the land had been abandoned by the plantation owners, the military distributed it among the blacks who had served the whites and produced the crops of indigo, rice, cotton and spices. Although the African Americans were later given title to land, policies changed and title was often not secure. 

Rev. Jesse Jackson, Joan Baez, Ira Sandperl, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Dora McDonald on the Penn Center campus in 1964

As the needs of the people changed the programs offered by what became the Penn Center evolved. To secure an economic base for the community, education began to focus on agriculture, industry and practical skills. In the 1960's the center provided space for interracial activities which were prohibited elsewhere. More recently the Penn Center has emphasized making it possible for Gullah families to keep the land which has been hands for over a hundred years. Large scale development in the Sea Islands and changes to legal requirements for ownership have threatened the Gullah people with removal. More recently the Penn Center has become involved with the National Park service in the establishment of the Reconstruction Era National Historical Park.

Gullah Music

Gullah Roots

 

WALLS WE BUILD

 I knew Sally had a sister who lives in New Orleans and who has one of the amazing stories to tell about surviving Hurricane Katrina, but I had never met her. A while back I learned that Sally's sister has a blog titled angels and people, life in New Orleans. It takes very little time to follow this blog because several times a week she will post a photograph which she has recently taken, along with a title which may suggest what she sees in it. I am grateful for the connection I discovered with Susanna through Sally.

This I found particularly moving: Figure By Mount Olivet Cemetery fence

  I try to hold this picture in my consciousness as reminder that we have built a wall between our comfortable, middle class existence and the lives of those whom we have excluded and denied opportunities because of race, class or traditional barriers. The walls will not fall of their own accord nor can they be removed by those who are imprisoned by them. We who built them, benefit by them, and who keep them in repair to protect ourselves, must be the ones who remove them.

History of a Slave Songbook.

Gullah-Geechee Singing

  

READING BLAKE

'Albion sat...Brooding on evil'

Jerusalem

By William Blake 

Detail from Plate 41

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate 3, (E 34):
"Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and
Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to 

Human existence."

In the passage below we see the contraries at work personified in Los and Albion. What I see here is Los being forced into contrary positions by Albion's behavior. 'Albion sat...Brooding on evil'.

Albion (Mankind) was trapped in a self destructive mental state from which he could not extricate himself. Albion accused Los (who tried to help) and he made demands. Los' opposition began the breaking down of the intractable disease with with Albion was afflicted. Albion began to reflect on the consequences of his misguided decisions.

Milton, PLATE 42 (E 189)
"Thus Albion sat, studious of others in his pale disease:
Brooding on evil: but when Los opend the Furnaces before him:
He saw that the accursed things were his own affections,
And his own beloveds: then he turn'd sick! his soul died within him
Also Los sick & terrified beheld the Furnaces of Death
And must have died, but the Divine Saviour descended
Among the infant loves & affections, and the Divine Vision wept
Like evening dew on every herb upon the breathing ground

Albion spoke in his dismal dreams: O thou deceitful friend
Worshipping mercy & beholding thy friend in such affliction:
Los! thou now discoverest thy turpitude to the heavens.
I demand righteousness & justice. O thou ingratitude!
Give me my Emanations back, food for my dying soul!
My daughters are harlots! my sons are accursed before me.
Enitharmon is my daughter: accursed with a fathers curse!
O! I have utterly been wasted! I have given my daughters to devils
 
So spoke Albion in gloomy majesty, and deepest night
Of Ulro rolld round his skirts from Dover to Cornwall."

Albion in his self righteous desire to be the object of mercy forced Los to direct his mercy to those whom Albion may harm, rejecting Albion's pleas. Albion by not showing mercy, forced cruelty on Los. Albion demanded righteousness and justice for himself with no thought for the harm that his failures were causing others. Albion could not be healed of his sickness by being affirmed in the symptoms he was displaying. (Think of the alcoholic and the enabler.) Los provided the contraries so that progress might take place.

"Los answerd. Righteousness & justice I give thee in return
For thy righteousness! but I add mercy also, and bind
Thee from destroying these little ones: am I to be only
Merciful to thee and cruel to all that thou hatest ?
Thou wast the Image of God surrounded by the Four Zoa's
Three thou hast slain! I am the Fourth: thou canst not destroy me.
Thou art in Error; trouble me not with thy righteousness.
I have innocence to defend and ignorance to instruct:
I have no time for seeming; and little arts of compliment,
In morality and virtue: in self-glorying and pride."

In this little tableau contrariness was the result as well as the cause of progress. Error had not been removed but progress was being made in recognizing and defining it. The process must continue because 'One Error not remov'd, will destroy a human Soul."

 
'Why should Punishment Weave the Veil with Iron Wheels of War When Forgiveness might it Weave with Wings of Cherubim' Jerusalem, Plate 22

 

MUSIC OF THE SPHERES

My attention was drawn to the hymn This Is My Father's World by remembering that it includes the words 'Music of the Spheres.' The concept is an ancient one, explored by Pythagoras and contradicted by Aristotle. The astronomer Kepler took it very seriously; he concluded that "the Solar System was composed of two basses (Saturn and Jupiter), a tenor (Mars), two altos (Venus and Earth), and a soprano (Mercury), which had sung in “perfect concord,” at the beginning of time, and could potentially arrange themselves to do so again."

The imaginations of contemporary musicians and scientists are stimulated by considering relationships among the vibrations of notes which produce music and the arrangement of planets in various solar systems.

This video lets us listen to music which would be produced by The Harmonic Series Played By Planets.

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An Astronomer who is also a musician has produced a Ted Talk on this subject. Matt Russo introduces a way to hear with our ears what we thought was only visible to our eyes.

What does the universe sound like? He gives a musical tour of what the universe sounds like.

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Since sound does not travel through a vacuum whatever sound our earth makes would not be audible from space. However our planet does emit electromagnetic waves which can be translated to audible sound wave just like radio waves become sound waves from our radios. This video lets us listen to waves Earth produces.

Electromagnetic waves as sound

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Returning to our original hymn, This Is My Father's World, we can listen to a recording which is arranged to emphasize that the world is the vehicle through which spiritual music is being played.

 This Is My Father's World

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