Strolling within the Air: An Creation Music Meditation | Course of Musings

Strolling within the Air: An Creation Music Meditation

We’re strolling within the air
We’re floating within the moonlit sky
The folks far under
Are sleeping as we fly
I am holding very tight
I am using within the midnight blue
I am discovering I can fly
So excessive above with you
— from “Strolling within the Air” by Howard Blake

As many people gentle the “love” candle this Sunday — the fourth Sunday of Creation — maybe we are going to bear in mind the little boy and his snowman in Raymond Brigg’s 1978 youngsters’s guide, The Snowman. It’s a story in photos of affection and loss and magical magnificence. In 1982, a British animated adaptation of the guide options the hauntingly stunning track, “Strolling within the Air,” composed by Howard Blake. On this music/flying sequence, we’re swept up within the magical travels throughout the sky of the boy and his snowman. The soul-stirring fantastic thing about this track (sung by St. Paul’s Cathedral choir boy, Peter Auty) matched with the tender, pencil-sketched animation lifts us out of our despair for this world, and right into a deeper reference to it.

“Strolling within the Air” stirs the soul and expands our hearts to the dimensions of the earth itself. Love, certainly! Maybe such music can save us from the slender, separate cubicles we are likely to inhabit under, and the sense of loneliness and estrangement that rears its head for a lot of in the course of the holidays.

On this track, we’re invited to rise above the separate components, the entrenched views, the slender focus, and fly into the wideness — the breadth and depth and wholeness of affection. The transcendent sky items us with a panoramic imaginative and prescient: a hen’s-eye-view to discover our connections with folks and snowmen and whales and icebergs. Excessive up within the moonlit sky, we’re lured by divine creativeness right into a wider sense of belonging, one which sustains us even in loss.

The picture of the little boy and his snowman gliding by way of the midnight air with arms held tightly jogs my memory of the tiny child within the manger and the view that God “dwells within the tender parts on this planet, which slowly and in quietness function by love” (Whitehead). Sure, that is love, the deep and huge coronary heart of Christmas. We want it now extra the ever.

So, let’s go strolling within the air! Hopefully, you may watch your entire 26-minute movie with your loved ones, or just click on under to listen to the track by itself. Be a part of me on this musical flight internationally, viewing life from above. A couple of moments up within the sky can change the whole lot.

“Strolling within the Air” Music

Lyrics:
We’re strolling within the air
We’re floating within the moonlit sky
The folks far under
Are sleeping as we fly
I am holding very tight
I am using within the midnight blue
I am discovering I can fly
So excessive above with you

Far internationally
The villages go by like goals
The rivers and the hills
The forests and the streams

Kids gaze open-mouthed
Taken without warning
No person down under
Believes their eyes

We’re browsing within the air
We’re swimming within the frozen sky
We’re drifting over icy
Mountains floating by

Abruptly swooping low
On an ocean deep
Rousing up a mighty monster
From his sleep

We’re strolling within the air
We’re dancing within the midnight sky
And everybody who sees us
Greets us as we fly

Subsequent Publish: The Soul-Increasing Melodies of Disappointment