Sunday Morning Service

I wake up at 3 PM. I’m fresh because I took a nap on Saturday to store up some extra energy. I know the moon will be setting soon. I would prefer to walk in the moonlight. Even if the moon is low in the sky near the horizon it reflects a lot of light. But I know that by the time I am prepared and into the desert the moon will have set below the horizon. The waiting dawn will not yet be visible. The land will be very dark. I know that darkness and don’t exactly relish it.

My pack is ready. I have water, and extra layer if it gets chilly, my Love flute. I fix a quick snack and get out of the four walls. I feed the horses as I pass by – half a ration. They will get the rest when I get back. I enter the darkness like going into a dense fog bank. Suddenly I can’t see my feet and barely see my hands. The world is a phantasmagoria of subtle lights. Every shape is vague and distant. Blue-gray is the dominant color.

The dark takes away the known with all it’s built in securities. Now I can barely perceive where I am in space. Chasms can open up under me upon a misstep. Walking becomes an absolute focus of attention. Feeling with my toes and the balls of my feet before committing my full weight to the step. My insecurities surface and must be neutralized or I will fall. I know from past experience that my body can do this if I can agree to let it.

It means doing strange things like walking on all fours. Using my body like my brothers the chimps and apes. Three secure places to balance on before committing to the next move. It’s slow – especially if I allow the mind to want to get somewhere. Then it becomes tedious. I must abandon myself to the now – no future, no past, just here. What comes may.

There are many mountains to climb. Places to go and people to meet and Native American style flutes to play. Will any of that happen? When I left my room I put thing in order knowing that I might never come back. Not that it would make any difference. Or would it? It feels right to me so that is the way I do it. What is the best way I can leave a room? Or leave a life?

The Birds Fly South

The birds have stopped singing and the hot dry has gripped the desert. Now the days are getting shorter. The cool days of Fall are a longed for respite. Even knowing that the cutting winds of Winter are not far behind. The birds have already started to move higher into the mountains in search of food and more hospitable temperatures. Soon some will start the long journey South for the winter. Many of the smart desert plants are dropping their leaves so as to conserve precious water. They will lie dormant until awakened for Spring by the Winter rains – if there are any.

The Desert ecosystem is a master of the art of conservation of energy. As I get older and the vigor of my youth wanes I understand better the necessity of energy efficiency. The impulse to measure my every movement for waste brings with it a certain respect for the limitations that come with physical life. It is a reminder that nothing can exist outside of the Circle of Life and its delicate balance of creation and dissolution, birth, life and death.

How have we managed to lose contact with Mother Nature? We are bleeding her to death to fuel a joy ride that cannot be sustained. Where is the respect for the land that generations before ours took so seriously?

Now I devote myself to making happiness available to a world hungry for a feeling of peace and togetherness. Happiness in the form of a simple musical instrument called the Native American flute. It’s not a grand project, I know. It won’t attract any government funding or a spot on Ophra. But, it’s enough for me to know that every Love flute is making a difference is someone’s life. Somewhere there is a song where before there was none. Someone is playing a tune and others are listening. The world turns another time. The birds start South. Tomorrow I will return to my shop and make a few more flutes.

Time, Space, Love and the Native American Flute

We measure space by the five directions – North, South, East, West, Up and Down. We measure time in years, days, hours, minutes and seconds. With this mental construct we give order to the space-time continuum. We experience ourselves within space and time as a conscious awareness. I am. I am finds itself emanating form a material form we call the human body. This body, we now know, has taken billions of years to achieve its present configuration. We find ourselves to be a locus of experience within the form of a living, mobile, organic being capable of speculating on the source of its existence.

With our body we move about on the surface of a ball of matter we call a planet. This ball is itself moving through something we call space at an incredible speed. This planet is one of a whole family of spheres of matter rotating around a huge ball of energetic activity we call the Sun. This Sun, a star, is one of an inconceivable number of other stars.

Time, space, matter, awareness. To what end, to what purpose, have these come into existence. I sit at my computer and you sit at yours. We don’t know each other. But we are asking similar questions. What is this experience of Life for? Am I here for a reason? Is there purpose in Life? Toward what end have billions of years of careful, patient evolution been moving? Idle questions – No!

Pick up your flute. Play a tune. Wonder at the perfection of sound filling inner and outer space. Feel the joy of being alive and having the divine opportunity to express your life in music. With your music sing praise to the Power that has brought into being this wonderful world. The Power that sustains you, me and all the wondrous forms and feelings that are the Universe.

Play and Heal With the Native American Flute

This morning I went out into the desert before dawn. The air was cool with just an edge of crispness. With my flute in my backpack I start off into the hills. In the West the moon is almost full. A faint glow of the coming sun is barely visible in the East. I have moccasins on my feet I walk softly. I feel the body of Mother Earth through the soles.

For several years now I have made it a habit to spend my Sunday mornings alone in the Desert. For me nature is the power of God manifest in physical form. On Sunday morning the world pauses for a moment. There is a palpable relaxation of tension as society takes a pause in its busy schedule. The disturbing sounds of people bustling off to work are absent.

Gradually the light of the magnificent Sun returns to a still sleeping world. The first bird song pierces the stillness of the dawn. A mocking bird announcing his territorial imperative. The air resonates with his thrill of life. Reaching a familiar hilltop I put down my pack and take a long drink of water. I take my flute out of its bag and begin to play.

Off in the distance a civilization is dying. The age of the merchants is ending. They have held us in thrall to their sirens call of material wealth for so long. The age of the mystic-lover is dawning. This new civilization is like a rising Sun. It is now a faint light on the horizon. Our hearts thrill to the promise of a new day.

The Native American flute is a tool that is helping bring about this change. It brings each of us into contact with our true self. Our true self is Love. We are children of light. We are sons and daughters of the Holy power that has brought into being and supports all Life. The Love flute helps bring us into direct contact with that power. Music is part of the very fabric of creation. It is a link to the always-mysterious flow of creative energy that we call the Universe.

With each new player the circle of Love grows. We meet in a place that is without boarders. It is an expanding circle with the larger circle of Life. When we pick up our flutes and play we bring healing harmony into a dissonant society. You and I and everyone who expresses his heart through the Indian flute are emissaries from the Kingdom come.

There is nothing to do. No plans to make or speeches to give. Powers beyond our ability to conceive are flowing through each one of us. Healing and hope for the future are in our music. With our simple songs we send out an invitation to forgive, relax, enjoy and play together.

May the Holy power of the Father – Mother be with you this and every day. May your flute songs sing out healing to a troubled world. May peace reign on Earth.