“Our imagination is really the sail of the soul; and the question is, where will that sail take us if we will but let it?” — Terence McKenna

This assertive question brings to mind the saying:
“The voice is the muscle of the soul.”

So, if the voice is the soul’s muscle and the imagination is the soul’s sail, then perhaps in singing a song (and voicing your truth) you can fill that sail with a robust wind of spirit that helps propel you to your destiny.

Similarly, Michael Meade says:

In the soul’s adventure we become a self-unknown, a self-unexpected, and in that way we find the greater soul and genius self within us. Answering the call gives primacy to unknown places and foreign lands; it requires that we seek farther in the world than we would choose on our own. We enter our essential ‘creatureliness’ and learn to sniff at the world again. We learn to read the wind and find our way by sensing and intuiting, by imagining and by dreaming on. Eventually, the dream of the soul becomes the only hope; it becomes a prayer and a map as well. In allowing the journey to ‘have us’ we become lost; we lose our usual selves in order to find our original self again. Lost souls are the only ones who ever get found.

What do you think?

Hi singing friends,

Consider this musing from Maria Popova on music, singing and the great harmonic of belonging:

To me, this is what makes music so singular — the way it bridges the cosmic and the human, the ephemeral and the eternal. It is at once the most abstract of the arts, made of mathematics, feeling, and time, and the most concrete in its inescapable embodiment — we sing because we have a body, this bittersweet reminder that we are mortal, and we sing to celebrate that we are alive. Alongside love, music may be our best way of saying “yes” to life, and to our life together — I know from the most etymologically passionate person in my life that the Latin root of the word person means “to sound through,” in turn implying a listener: We sound through to something other than ourselves. When we speak, when we sing, when we channel this sound wave of the soul, we reach beyond the self and partake of the great harmonic of belonging.

Popova’s musings on music are a prelude to an animated video in which poet Marie Howe recites her poem, “Hymn”:

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Dear friends,

Recently, our contemplayful singing cohort (we call it the Songtuary) got some national exposure on the NPR show “Interfaith Voices”, hosted by Amber Kahn. Our half hour conversation turned into this 16-minute podcast. You can listen here.

“Musician Craig Green tells us why creating space for people to sing outdoors is his spiritual calling.”

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