Magnificence and the Nice Togetherness | Course of Musings

Magnificence and the Nice Togetherness

On an off-the-cuff spring stroll “I’m waylaid by Magnificence” within the spirit of the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay. The bursting redbud bushes, fluting birdsong, and waving daffodils toss my rambling ideas to the wind and invite me into their world for a second of feeling. This sense has the flavour of one thing bigger and extra enduring and hopeful than me, myself, and I. Instantly, I lose my sense of particular person self-enclosure and I’m going broad, feeling the world as a part of myself and greater than myself. Such easy spring magnificence connects me with the very tenderness of God, and it feeds me for hours, days, a lifetime.

One second of ingesting in magnificence, and my thirst for belonging is quenched. It appears to me that magnificence is a portal to that Nice Togetherness, for because the thinker Roland Faber says, “We’re the togetherness of every part.” (The Thoughts of Whitehead, p. 33)

Magnificence in all its kinds opens us to the “togetherness of every part.” Touring down a rustic highway, listening to Murray Perahia play Bach’s Keyboard Concerto No. 1, I’m swept away in a depth of feeling that surges up from centuries previous. I really feel that I’m touching the thoughts of Bach himself — feeling what he felt — alive to the divine inspiration he skilled when composing this piece. It appears unbelievable to me that in a lightning-bolt second, entire centuries fall away; the impediments of historical past, tradition and language disappear! All that’s left is bare feeling, as highly effective at the moment because it was in 1738. How can that be? It looks like an exploding ball of sunshine and vitality bathing me and every part I see in a Nice Togetherness. The cows on the hillside nurture their younger with tails swishing as if to the music, the oak bushes hum alongside, and the greening bushes ‘clap their palms’ whereas tall grasses sway in rhythm. Bach is right here; the cows are right here; we’re all right here collectively — on the identical time!”

Such dazzling moments of musical magic are just like the redbud tree, the daffodils, and birdsong: a bursting of divine tenderness reaching out for us, waving, singing — luring us to be larger than ourselves for the sake of the world. If the music is correct for the second, heaven breaks via the ego’s crusty impediments of fear and despair and self-centeredness. On this approach, magnificence is sharp; it cuts like a paring knife via not solely our ego, however entire centuries of thought and tragedy and human evolution as if all that had been mere apple peelings falling to the ground. On the core, we’re left with the uncooked, elemental seeds of human feeling, bursting with divine chance for brand spanking new creations, new emotions.

Consider your favourite previous track, hymn, or a bit of pottery or a portray — the way it leaps over years, many years — even centuries — to attach us soul-to-soul with our human ancestors. As Roland Faber factors out, “In a sure sense, every part is all over the place always.” (The Thoughts of Whitehead, p. 46)

Maybe that is magnificence’s nice goal: to attach us with each other, with the earth, with the previous, and with the thoughts of God. On this Nice Togetherness of feeling we start to see a approach via. The whole lot that hinders and divides — even time itself — is pared away; the seeds are sown for a brand new creation.

To Follow:
Take a “Magnificence Break” and lose your self for a couple of minutes in a e-book of poetry, a nature stroll, a bit of music, or a murals. Discover your personal portal to the “The Nice Togetherness.” Go to this place usually and use it as inspiration for artistic work, artistic pondering, and inventive dwelling — for the sake of the frequent good.

Subsequent Put up: Meditating with Hildegard