I recently had the pleasure of joining, via Skype, a rehearsal of the Penn State Concert Choir, directed by Christopher Kiver. They’re performing “The Little Stream Sings”, an unaccompanied SATB piece from my “Celebrating Wendell Berry in Music” album, in upcoming concerts.

“Tell us a little about the piece,” Dr. Kiver said.

I knew the question was coming, and I complied by fumbling through a few thoughts, probably too self-aware of my voice booming through classroom speakers 2,000 miles away. But as I’ve re-read the poem in the days since, and thought of the students I had the pleasure of “meeting,” I’ve wished I had better expressed what this poem has meant to me.

So, in my usual mode of finding the clever rejoinder a day late, I’m now prepared to say a little about the piece, which I’ve written as a letter. First, here is the poem:

The little stream sings
in the crease of the hill.
It is the water of life. It knows
nothing of death, nothing.
And this is the morning
of Christ’s resurrection.
The tomb is empty. There is
no death. Death is our illusion,
our wish to belong only
to ourselves, which is our freedom
to kill one another.
From this sleep may we too
rise, as out of the dark grave.

Berry, Wendell. “Sabbaths 2003, IV.” Given: New Poems. 2005. Washington, DC: Shoemaker & Hoard. 

Dear Friends,

At some point, each of us realizes the gravity of moral agency, which is to say the fact that we each can—and do—make choices that affect other people. And this includes the possibility that we will hurt them, that we might “kill one another.”

That’s a jarring image, isn’t it?

The fact that we are free to act, not just to be acted upon, is a profound and true lesson, one that I hope will sink deep into you as you sing.

Regardless of your religious leanings (if any), regardless of whether you entertain the idea of the literal bodily resurrection of Jesus or prefer to think of this as a metaphor from literature, don’t let the poem be lost on you: this text invites us first to consider death (of a certain kind) as a human fabrication, and second, to rise above employing our agency to perpetuate this “innovation.”

How can anyone read a text like this so soon after a mass killing, such as occurred recently in Las Vegas, and not feel deeply anguished?

Education, which is what we’re up to, can be defined as the proper ordering of our affections (our loyalties, ambitions, desires). To live rightly as social creatures, we must elevate our commitment to neighborly love and forgiveness and carefully, deliberately subordinate our natural desires for power, convenience, and gain. The hierarchy of our affections will ultimately determine the course of our lives; happiness ensues from ordering our affections properly.

(To believe that something is proper implies also believing in a difference between right and wrong. While that isn’t always a popular theme in secular education, you will want to wrestle with the grand ideas of right and wrong, and commit yourself to live “aright,” if you want to chart a course to purpose and meaning.)

Do you hear this as a sermon? It isn’t necessarily a religious idea, though religious and philosophical traditions concern themselves with creating roadmaps for navigating this kind of life terrain. For example, this is the Tao (Path) and Te (Virtue) of Taoism. However, if this is a sermon, then it’s a sermon in favor of the arts and humanities too!

What I’ve learned about practicing an art (composing, in my case) is that it can teach me to hear a quiet voice within me, my own “little stream.” My inner compass points towards beauty and harmony. It reminds me that I don’t “belong only / to [myself] …”

Practicing the art of singing can help each of us locate that quiet inner voice and learn to follow it. This little stream runs along the path that leads us to become our best selves, which is the same path that results from ordering our affections properly. Simultaneously, our study of the humanities helps us to learn vicariously through the stories of others. We become more fully human, more capable of proceeding on our paths with clarity and compassion, as we internalize these stories.

One of the gifts of a university education is the chance to immerse ourselves in the arts and humanities. If you’re majoring in the arts or humanities, don’t be discouraged when people ask, “what are you going to do with that?” “I’m learning to be my best self in a world that needs me, that’s what!” If you’re majoring in engineering or business (as Dr. Kiver says many of you are), then remember that a prerequisite to using the powerful tools of your trade is learning about the proper (read: restrained) use of power.

One of the gifts of life is that learning doesn’t stop at graduation. Regardless of your declared major, remember that your true discipline of study will be self-discipline, which is inherently interdisciplinary and as broad as your life experiences. Learning to hear and follow the best voice within you, your own little stream, will ensure a rich and useful path in years to come—something to be proud of.

Wendell Berry writes:

“There are, it seems, two muses: the Muse of Inspiration, who gives us inarticulate visions and desires, and the Muse of Realization, who returns again and again to say ‘It is yet more difficult than you thought.’ This is the muse of form. … It may be then that form serves us best when it works as an obstruction, to baffle us and deflect our intended course. It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.”* (My emphasis.)

Ultimately, I’ve said very little about this piece of music, and I suppose that’s on purpose. In musical terms, I hope it can speak for itself. You can be the judge of that. But I’ve spoken about the music within the music, the little stream that draws me back to my own quiet inner voice and nudges me forward. I hope that you’ll navigate the inevitable obstructions of life by listening to the little stream singing within you, that you’ll rise from our illusions of death, and lift others along the way.

Warmly yours,
Andrew Maxfield

* Excerpted from “Poetry and Marriage: The Use of Old Forms.” Standing by Words: Essays. 2011. Counterpoint Press.

Posted on September 3, 2020  by IAAP 

Excerpt
from a talk by Martin Cecil (Exeter)
« November 24, 1974 »

It is not at all difficult to see the disintegration of the civilized world which is occurring in these days. Most people are aware of it, even though there is the usual human tendency to avoid facing the fact as far as possible. This is partly because nobody can see what to do about it; therefore they look for something to distract the attention…

We have recognized something of the reality which is symbolized by fire – Love. Love transmutes, just as fire does in symbol. Fire leaves an ash residue and produces a gas: carbon dioxide and water vapor, in a general sense – from physical substance into spirit. The transmutation process looks like disintegration, but something is being born. We are aware, in theory at least, that disintegration is necessary to integration, in the process by which things are transformed. It should be clearly evident to people everywhere that there is a need for things to be transformed. The disintegrative aspect of what is occurring is plain to see and becomes more obvious as time goes on, but in the general sense the integrative aspect is unknown…

Luke 21:25-26 (KJV) And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.

“Men’s hearts failing them for fear.” We certainly see fear as being very strongly present in the hearts of human beings everywhere. Fear causes people to do peculiar things, generally stupid things. Afterwards they may say, “I didn’t think,” which was true enough, but then, human beings seldom think. They don’t really know how, in spite of extensive so-called education, because thinking is not something which properly originates in the mind. If there is to be true thinking and true feeling they must be born out of the heaven into the earth, not out of the earth to be reflected back into the earth…

We have become aware that there is another true process, which springs from nowhere into the now here. Something is born into the dimensional state and this engenders, amongst other things, true thinking and true feeling. Human thought and feeling is reflective thought and feeling; it is consequent upon the reflection of what is present in the world…The true creative process is on moving; it’s not a rehash of something that’s already happened. It springs forth and is born out of the heaven into the earth.

Radiant thinking is not governed by the environment. This includes radiant feeling also. Most of human feelings are produced by external events. This is why there is so much concern about manipulating those events so as to make them of such a nature that they will engender pleasant feelings. But true feeling is not reflective feeling; it is radiant feeling; it is consequent upon what is coming down from God [Being] out of heaven…Radiant feeling and radiant thinking establish a very stable condition.

The evidence of fire is radiation – in a practical sense radiant thought and feeling springing forth of their own nature in the moment, an entirely new experience. The former things pass away. Thought and feeling as they were – the first heaven and the first earth – pass away and we feel no more necessity to indulge ourselves in reactive or reflective thinking and feeling…We need to learn what it is to participate in radiant thinking. Obviously this would open up new channels in us.

Heaven comes down from God and is reflected by the earth when it does so. Heaven does not come up out of the earth…”Let the waters bring forth.” Now that bringing forth is consequent upon the true tone, the fire of the true tone, the passion that is felt by reason of the expressed radiation of that true tone in one’s own living. Radiant feeling, radiant thinking, ensues, and the creative process is moving in the individual consciousness. What moves in the heaven of the individual consciousness is reflected in the earth of the individual environment. That is the true process of transformation, of transmutation. Let us acknowledge the reality of this process and let it occur in our own experience…

This is the field where the battle did not happen
Where the unknown soldier did not die
This is the field where grass joins hands
Where no monument stands
And the only heroic thing
Is the sky
Birds fly here without any sound
Spreading their wings upon the open
No people killed or were killed on this ground
Hallowed by neglect
And an air so tame
People celebrate it by forgetting its name
This is the field…

(Lyrics: William Stafford
Music: John Gorka)

The sky

is a suspended blue ocean

the stars are the fish

that swim.

The planets are the white whales,

I sometimes hitch a ride on,

And the sun and all light

have forever fused themselves

into my heart and upon

my skin

there is only one rule

on this wild playground,

Earth

for every sign I have ever seen

reads the same.

They all say,

“Have fun, my dear;

my dear, have fun

in this divine

wonderful game.”

i thank You God for most this amazing

day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees 

and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything

 which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,

and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth

 day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay

 great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing

 breathing any–lifted from the no

of allnothing–human merely being

doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and

now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

e.e. cummings

By Navajo (Anonymous)
(19th Century)

Dark young pine, at the center of the earth originating,
I have made your sacrifice.
Whiteshell, turquoise, abalone beautiful,
Jet beautiful, fool’s gold beautiful, blue pollen beautiful,
Red pollen, pollen beautiful, your sacrifice I have made.
This day your child I have become, I say.

Watch over me.
Hold your hand before me in protection.
Stand guard for me, speak in defense of me.
As I speak for you, speak for me.
          May it be beautiful before me.
          May it be beautiful behind me.
          May it be beautiful below me.
          May it be beautiful above me.
          May it be beautiful all around me.

          I am restored in beauty.
          I am restored in beauty.
          I am restored in beauty.
          I am restored in beauty.

English version by Gladys A. Reichard

My friends, let’s grow up.
Let’s stop pretending we don’t know the deal here.
Or if we truly haven’t noticed, let’s wake up and notice.
Look: Everything that can be lost, will be lost.
It’s simple — how could we have missed it for so long?
Let’s grieve our losses fully, like ripe human beings,
But please, let’s not be so shocked by them.
Let’s not act so betrayed,
As though life had broken her secret promise to us.
Impermanence is life’s only promise to us,
And she keeps it with ruthless impeccability.
To a child she seems cruel, but she is only wild,
And her compassion exquisitely precise:
Brilliantly penetrating, luminous with truth,
She strips away the unreal to show us the real.
This is the true ride — let’s give ourselves to it!
Let’s stop making deals for a safe passage:
There isn’t one anyway, and the cost is too high.
We are not children anymore.
The true human adult gives everything for what cannot be lost.
Let’s dance the wild dance of no hope!

© Jennifer Welwood

Peter Donohue, Times Writers GroupPublished 5:00 p.m. CT Feb. 17, 2020

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I recently ran across this incredible quote: “Love is the greatest force in the universe. It is the heartbeat of the moral cosmos. He who loves is a participant in the being of God.” 

I immediately thought of “Living Buddha, Living Christ,” one of my favorite books by Thich Nhat Hanh. If not authored by him then perhaps Thomas Merton. Much to my surprise I discovered the author was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 

I should not have been surprised, but I all too often think of Dr. King as a civil rights activist, one whose life was dedicated to peaceful civil disobedience, a Gandhi-like warrior of equal rights and a voice for the downtrodden. 

I fail to place in perspective that all those external acts of Dr. King were rooted in a deep spiritual conviction and an essential belief in Jesus Christ. This quote from Dr. King was only recently discovered, a handwritten note on an obscure piece of paper. Authenticated it sold at auction.

Is there any doubt in the accuracy of this quote? No. For it is the identical message of Jesus Christ delivered in a slightly different way. This message that both men left us places love as the dominant commandment, the all-important force. Jesus brought the new commandment, love of God and neighbor as opposed to a list of don’ts or thou shall nots. 

Both men lived an example of what to do; not what not to do – the benchmark of the Old Testament.

The parish I belong to held a concert in mid-February to honor Dr. King during Black History month. The concert was titled “Are we there yet?” The obvious answer is a resounding NO, especially as white supremacy has reared its ugly head and crimes and angry words of violence are commonplace.

A few years ago, I would have said that we had made great progress since King’s death in ‘68. Now I have to say with great sadness; I don’t think so. Are we there yet? No, and it truly seems like we are losing ground. 

I fluctuate between thinking the racial animus, expressed in violent outbursts at demonstrations and evidenced in acts of violence, was here all along but had become politically incorrect; unacceptable and fearing that it has been fueled again as the perceived cause of economic disparity and loss of social status as our society becomes more diverse. I don’t know if we will ever know the answer to my uncertainty.

We do know that those who are currently acting out have been encouraged and fueled by a foreign propaganda campaign meant to sow discord in our country. 

A different discord was present at the time of Dr. King’s death. A discord that was just as destructive, divisive and deadly. The fight for racial equality was being led by Dr. King and others. The seeds of a second divisive issue were sowed as people began to question our involvement in the Vietnam War. Both issues that surfaced in violent conflict were homegrown issues rightly brought to the forefront by our own social circumstance. 

The immorality of our involvement in the Vietnam War was most vividly demonstrated by the self-immolation of Buddhist monks in Vietnam. I only recently discovered that the monks viewed this as an act of compassion, an act of peace, not an act of violence. It was a dramatic way to be heard that the Vietnamese wanted peace not war; that the war was being fueled by others at their expense and fought on their homeland. 

Thich Nhat Hahn wrote Dr. King in 1965 that “some of us in Vietnam had immolated ourselves in protest against the war. I explained that it was not an act of suicide, or of despair; it was an act of love.”

Dr. King and Thich Nhat Hahn were both members of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, an organization devoted to finding peaceful solutions to problems.A year before Dr. King’s death he joined Thich Nhat Hahn in demanding an end to the war in Vietnam. 

The war in Vietnam ended and there has been peace there for many years. It seemed like we made strides in equality for all in our country until recent years. 

I think it important to go back to those words of Dr. King, “Love is the greatest force in the universe. It is the heartbeat of the moral cosmos. He who loves is a participant in the being of God.” 

This is the opinion of Peter Donohue, who has been involved in the arts in Central Minnesota for more than 35 years. His column is published the third Tuesday of the month.