I have been thinking a lot about beauty lately… about how, alongside all of the difficulty, suffering, and tragedy in our world, there is an ever-present flow of beauty, joy, grace, and love all around us… and within us.
Many times every day something shows up that takes my breath away, makes me smile or laugh out loud, or makes me bow my head for a few moments in gratitude. Sometimes it’s a bird at my feeder, the flowers in my garden, one of my beloved animal family members’ faces or fur or silly antics; sometimes the voice of a friend, or an inspiration of goodness, an expression of kindness and love in my community or around the world.
Art-music-creativity in all its forms is a conduit for beauty and love, often expressing and nourishing the energy of beauty, compassion, and kindness in our world. One of my soul-sisters sent this to me a couple of weeks ago… and it stopped me in my tracks with its message, its beauty, the powerful spiritual resonance of the lyrics and music.
“We Shall Be Known” by the folk duo MaMuse
We Shall Be Known
by K. Longaker
We shall be known by the company we keep
By the ones who circle round to tend these fires
We shall be known by the ones who sow and reap
The seeds of change alive from deep within the Earth
It is time now
It is time now that we thrive
It is time we lead ourselves into the well
It is time now
And what a time to be alive
In this “Great Turning” we shall learn to lead in love
In this “Great Turning” we shall learn to lead in love
The great teachers of all species and all traditions offer us this teaching… as the great Sufi poet Rumi wrote,
Today, like every other day,
we wake up empty and frightened.
Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading.
Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
From Rumi: The Book of Love: Poems of Ecstasy and Longing, by Jalal al-Din Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks.
I hope that this song and poem will inspire you the way it inspires me to open more and more deeply to beauty, to joy, to love in all of its manifestations and forms.
If we truly lead in love, what kind of a world might we create? What is the beauty you love? What are the ways that you kneel and kiss the ground?
