My Friend

Morning and sunshine greet your smiles
—on them, evidently, each day relies!
While light quietly casts you over miles
of forms and pathways well-traveled,
the presence of your warm shadow signifies
your arrival for fun, discussion and laughter
over all the world’s revels and riles
(though key mysteries might need to be unraveled
in a follow-up phone call, well after),
and though you and the sun make way for moon wiles,
memory of your smile lingers; a light that never dies.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

The Season of Giving and Sharing Revisited

Well, we are now on that slippery slope that leads to Thanksgiving, Christmas and a New Year. For many, it is either “Ho, Ho, Ho” or “Ho hum”. For some, it may be an excuse to acquire, an excuse to shop, an excuse to spend and indulge, and for some to boost their image. We have, after all, been well trained to feed the capitalist system by spending.

But, I sometimes wonder if we are really fulfilled by the excesses of Holiday spending. Does spending give us a feeling of power? I know it place stresses on us and our society that are difficult to overcome: financial burdens, obligations, waste creation are but a few of such stresses.

My observations of today’s society is not a happy one for me. I see that there is a great deal of existence and experience that is extremely shallow and solitary, if not outright alienating. Polar extremes of opinion keep people from thinking and acting toward a via media that might prove to make life better for more people. The greed of the top 1% percent, as well as that of those political leaders who are charged with the responsibility of overseeing the general welfare of all citizens, is all too transparent; not a day goes by when there is not some new scandal having to do with public money being misused.

Growing up, as I did, within the roiling foment of the 1960s, it is hard to see that we fulfilled those needs we peacefully marched for. While there is greater parity, there are now even greater divides and millions more examples of small-minded thinking to overcome. We may be created equal, but there is no equal treatment to be had.

Growing up, as I did, in a time of seeming plenty, I look around now and see that current events and trends have people afraid for their financial and personal security. Our natural resources are being consumed at ever greater rates, often expended for the sake of cheaply manufactured items that all to easily become broken and toxic trash. While we pride ourselves for our recycling efforts, but the truth is that much of what America recycles is sent to be processed overseas. While vast amounts of money are spent on maintaining the status quo of toxic and endangered energy, not all that much is spent to develop new technologies that might turn our recycling into more localized business that creates or renews energy.

Knowing this, one thing we can do is conscientiously work to reduce our waste.

During the great SpendFest of the 1980s and 1990s, we were taught that catalog purchases meant we could have anything at anytime. All well and good, but the waste of packaging materials and fuel used in shipping can add irresponsibly to our environmental dilemma. The avalanche of catalogs, themselves, add to our landfill! One of the most egregious examples of such catalog purchasing happens when people order perishable foods, such as steaks, and have them shipped to the giftee—think about the giant box with the additional Styrofoam insert box, dry ice and other materials added just to send a couple of steaks that, let’s face it, aren’t worth all that effort and waste. Much better to send a gift certificate for a lovely meal at a fine restaurant local to the giftee. 

One thing is very clear: More than ever, people need each other, we need to share what we have, pool resources and avoid unnecessary waste.

Here are a few ideas for sustainable, seasonal or year-round giving:

* Buy locally made items – support local business, Made in USA and Union Labor

* Support your local Food Bank and/or Animal Shelter with a donation

* Give gift certificates presented in handcrafted cards

* When there is a two-for-one sale, particularly on food items, take the deal and donate the second item to the local Food Bank or Soup Kitchen

* Re-gift quality items from your home that you no longer need

* Likewise, your local second hand shop is a local business where you can find treasures less expensive but every bit as good as new retail items

* Before running them to the thrift shop, consider donating old, but still useable clothing or new underwear and socks to the local homeless shelter

* Play, Movie or concert tickets make and unexpected wonderful gifts

* Make a home cooked meal or prepare baked goods or jams or candies for friends

* Repurpose baskets with gifts of canned delicacies or crafted items

* If you know do-it-yourselfers, gift certificates at auto parts, hobby shops, craft supply or hardware stores might be just the thing

* Rather than a once-a-year donation to local shelters or food banks, consider a monthly contribution—these concerns don’t just need money at Thanksgiving and Christmas, but all year long!

* Comic pages from the Sunday paper make colorful and compostable giftwrap!

* These ideas may just have given you an idea or two—or twelve!

Obviously, a lot more could be said in this article. The short of it is that we can find new, creative and thoughtful ways of responsibly sharing and caring and celebrating with each other this year. It might mean an investment of more time and thought, but the results can only make you feel good about what you are doing—leading to less of that post-holiday let down.

Katharsis

O Pure Wind!
O Spirit Divine!
blow through my soul,
sweep me through and through;
sweep away all the noise of my discontents
—blow through me,
as you do through
water reeds and tree tops;
cleanse me, empty me,
until I be a bottomless vessel.

O Spirit Divine!
O Pure Wind!
blow through this vessel
with a heavenly friction;
create of me a bell tone and
send me in the ten directions
—waves of sound you set in motion
by answering this humble prayer.

And when I have been your song,
stretched abroad to the outer
reaches of infinity,
if it be your will,
pull me back,
that I may abide
as an echo
in your bosom,
O Spirit!
O Wind!
O Love Divine!

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Face to Face

What moon bedecks

with glistening gems by night,
sunrise blesses
with animate light,
opening life’s blossom
out into its symphony of
petals, pollens and particles,
all being face to face
with that divine center
of creative foment
our slant-wise roll
records as moment
of eternal awakening.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

My exegesis of Buddha's Flower Sermon.

Fine Sound

Through each vibration,

the universe
is intoned and out-toned,
tuned and healed—renewed!
—so that, glowing with vibrance,
we may blossom and delight
in the myriad company of
all the invisible gems of tone,
by which Fine Sound
is delivered to all voice hearers
and those who observe
sounds of the world
as music.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

This my summary of the last chapter of Roll Seven of the Lotus Sutra. 
Which is to say that this is not what it says, but what it says to me.

Lost

Lost—

       Lost—
               something I had found

       now seems lost
among the detritus,
       amid the clutter
and the ephemera,
perhaps in some crack
between one tyranny of obligation
        or another,
or perhaps by accident.

Where are you?

            Where am I?

What is all this,
        that clogs both time and space
and moreover needs
        sorting,
               mending,
                       cleaning.

What?

           Where?

                        Why?

Well, perhaps it is not important.

            Or perhaps I am what is lost.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Reflections @ 50: Sound and Silence

This blog has been quiet for a few weeks now—mostly because I have been caught in the “feast” part of the “feast or famine” cycle of busy-ness. Things have been so busy that I could hardly breathe (although I had to and, of course, did), let alone have time to sit down and write.

During this frenzy of activity, my 50^th birthday came and went like a whirlwind, with little time for celebration other than a few glasses of Champagne during a break at a rehearsal. I was also involved in a recording project dedicated to sampling live voice for a database of actual vocal sound.

Paul Simon’s birthday was a few days ago, and probably because of this recording project, “The Sound of Silence” came to mind.

Silence is something I have not savored much of, particularly lately. In a materialistic world that seems increasingly more dedicated to machines than to people, there is so much mechanical noise generated. During this recording project, we struggled to keep moving forward with the work, dodging exterior noises that included 18-wheeler trucks, Blue Angel jets and other aircraft, the beeping of the backing delivery vans, motor cycles with tweaked mufflers, car alarms, lawn mowers and accompanying leaf/dirt/pollution blowers and a barking dog. Of all those sounds that challenged our progress, the barking dog was the only one that made my colleagues smile.

I am a musician, but as much as I love music, I have discovered over time that I crave more quiet. But perhaps I am only acknowledging now what has been true for me all along. I do generate a joyful noise, and I can bellow pretty loudly when I need to, but I have always thought of music as an antidote to noise, as an emotive and healing salve for the soul. Because of that, it tends to hold a sacred place in my life—I hold myself to be a sacred vessel that contains music—and I have found that I listen to music less frequently, or perhaps less frivolously.

“The Sound Of Silence” is a song that touches the start my life and the current of it—like bookends. Paul Simon wrote that song to commemorate the assassination of John F. Kennedy. My earliest memory as a tiny tot was sitting on the floor in our Derby Street home in Berkeley, watching those white horses slowly draw the caisson, on which the flag draped coffin lay, to Arlington on our twelve inch black-and-white television. There was very little talk while the cameras rolled on this spectacle. I really understood that this was a somber event, one that could only be marked with reverent silence. The sight of a mother with small children, one just as small as I was, standing in the cold, made a nation and the world understand a sadness for which there could be no propitiation. Simon’s song came along a little later, and it was on the charts and the AM stations for a long time, and it informed nation’s musical history while it commented on our sociopolitical history.

This past September 11^th, Simon performed this signature song to at a memorial ceremony to that dread day when we were once again, as a nation, brought to an awe that could only inspire silence. Yes, so fitting, this song, to be related not only to the turbulent mid-century before, but to the turbulence of the 21^st Century, as well.

I remember where I was, on September 11^th, 2001. The memory that stays with me is the silence of the skies, due to the grounding of all flights following that horrible day. The skies were silent, but for birds on the wing. I could not remember when it had been so quiet! And We the People were so subdued with shock that for once, we too were quiet; we did not know what to say.

We are, each individual, a music that continues to be born from the silence of creation. I think that we were meant to revere the sacred awesomeness of silence. Instead, we pile noise upon noise, hiding from what is truly profound within a tangled decibel jungle. Garbage trucks weekly shake our homes like an earthquake. Machines rock our world and impair our ears. To a certain extent, we have come to fetishize and worship the machines we have made, and we have done so at the expense of basic human compassion or regard. Witness this week’s frenzy of purchasing the very latest iPhone and tell me I am wrong. Apple couldn’t even stop retail marketing and promotion on the day Steve Jobs died, and he was the music that sang the song that brought Apple into being. What does this say about our society?

Qol d’mamah daqqah. These are old words from the first book of Kings, the story of Elijah eluding the anger of Jezebel. God wasn’t in the wind, s/he wasn’t in the earthquake, and s/he wasn’t in the fire: God was in the qol d’mamah daqqah: the still small voice, the soft murmuring sound, the whisper, the sound of silence. This truly awed Elijah and he covered his head. But it what God said next that is the point of the story:

What are you doing here?

What, indeed?

As I continue in my musical life, I am learning to observe the musical rest with a new reverence. The musical rest is where God will sing a response to our music.

May we all listen carefully, that the holy sound of silence may speak to us.

What wonders might we hear if we truly listen?