On Saturday night I was invited to play for about a hundred yogis at ‘source yoga’, a studio in town, for the arrival of a swami from India. I get there and stand in a corner where I can hear myself tune, and think about what has happened in the last few days, specifically in Mumbai. I think of so many people who have given a message to us, a message of common humanity and shared values of goodness and compassion. In India, independence would not have come so easily had Gandhi not been there. Oh, it would have come; you cannot sustain a colonial presence, especially with ethnic differences as deep as between the British and the Indians; but somehow his message of Satyagraha, non-violent action, really succeeded where many armed uprisings failed.
I go to play, and the music comes out. I stand there, listening twice. Once for the music that I hear inside, and then again as I try to copy as accurately as I can the sounds that I hear in my heart. Mostly I do all right, and as I resolutely play without any amplifitation in the large and very full room, I let the music take me over until I’m hanging on for dear life as this sound emerges from my instrument.
The swami is late, held up in traffic; they ask if I would play some more. I take my instrument, and in the time that it takes to tune a new thing is there to be freed. I again try to be a pure conduit for the energy, thinking about everyone who has lost someone in the mess that was the siege of the hotels Oberoi, Taj, and Nariman house; the pictures of the young rabbi and his wife, the faces of the two ‘terrorists’ who were photographed, all come together in a face that reflects the intensity of the feelings of the situation.
The second piece starts with the hymn ‘Amazing Grace’, then moves into a terra ingognita of conflicting feelings, odd and jagged melodies contrasting with solemn tones that are like Bach’s cello suites in their sobriety. gradually the sound evolves back to finish where it began, with the simple notes of ‘Amazing Grace’, one of my favorite hymns, full of hope and redemption. I can’t help thinking that the young men who executed the attack left behind a grieving mother, a family burdened by grief; everyone of us pays for this, no matter the exhortations of religious figures that preach that violence is a great way of serving God. And I realize that we, as common humanity, have paid enough for religious differences; We have paid enough and too much for the exhortations of religious leaders who urge violence as a sacred duty, sanctioned by the Creator, who I believe has said no such thing.
And I return to my personal revelation, of Jesus coming to me late at night a few weeks ago and saying just this:
“I am love; first of all and most importantly, I am that love that moves all things. Remember this, and remember that apart from all sectarian feelings and dogmatic sayings I am first and last pure love.”
I pray that we all can move towards this universal love, the source of all good action towards all beings; beyond individual prophets and their revelations, “that love that moves the sun and the other stars”, as Dante so beautifully puts it, pulls all beings toward itself.
Lawrence of Arabia wrote that during one of his travels, he ran into an old blind hermit near a spring of pure water in the desert; and that finally, the old man said:
“The Love is From God, and of God, and towards God”.
That’s all the religion I need. And all the religion that the whole world needs.
NPR.org, November 18, 2008 – When The Fireman released its debut album in 1993 – the instrumental dance and electronica mix Strawberries Oceans Ships Forest – the band’s identity was a mystery. U.K. music magazine Melody Maker eventually exposed The Fireman as a duo featuring the bassist and producer known as Youth and, to everyone’s surprise, Paul McCartney. Reviewers praised the collaboration as “staggeringly brilliant,” but it was a strange and entirely unexpected direction for the former Beatle.