Sharani

Hope is a dress that my mother once wore
A fiddle tune I heard that has no words
Hope is the one thing we have never lost…
-Susan McKeown River (song lyrics excerpt).

River by Irish-born Celtic musician Susan McKeown is a real favorite in my music library. While I enjoy the melody, I fell in love with this song by McKeown even more for the phrase, “Hope is a dress my mother once wore. A fiddle tune I heard that has no words.” I am thinking of these poetic song lyrics about hope and its importance right now now as I observe the whirlwind of change and uncertainty unfolding in America with reverberations felt around the world.

Along with the volatile world events, the October 11th one-year anniversary of my spiritual teacher Sri Chinmoy’s passing is fast approaching - called Mahasamadhi in the case of an illumined spiritual master leaving the body. Thus, my heart is heavy and full of concern — whether for the ravages of hurricanes, financial turmoil or the closeness of memories from memorial activities for Sri Chinmoy one year ago. Given all that is happening, I feel that blogging right now about my latest fun discovery (the Animal Clock in Central Park for instance) from within my own little universe doesn’t quite work.

Odd is it for me that even as I bear witness to tremendous upheaval and sad memories, I find myself inwardly buoyant. Meditation like an anchor is holding me fast in its arms. Recently my regular travels to New York to meditate with other members of the Sri Chinmoy Centre leave me immersed in deeper and deeper peace, serenity and faith.

Back home I even find that in spite of a storm of ongoing uncertainty for the fate of public libraries in Massachusetts (my chosen profession for over 20 years), I am greeted by sweet, encouraging dreams when I sleep at night. In the dream world, I encounter healing advice, support and teaching.

I can only surmise that my spiritual outlook is ringing like a bell with the message that the true meaning of life is not found in outer prosperity or material things but rather in union of our soul with God. And the clapper inside that bell is none other than hope.

Hope is more important than ever when times are troubled. The Webster’s Collegiate Thesaurus gives “trust, confidence, dependence, faith, reliance and stock” as synonyms for the word hope. Sri Chinmoy placed abundant importance on the role of hope in his philosophy and teachings. In an interview with journalist Joel Martin, Sri Chinmoy stated,

He who treasures hope can make progress…
without hope we cannot even budge an inch…
Is there any human being who can live on
earth without hope?
-Sri Chinmoy

I will be concentrating on hope through this stormy weather, humming that fiddle tune that has no words and thinking of more lyrics from Susan KcKeown’s River song:

Hoe is a river that flows from these stone walls
into an ocean we have never seen…

Related Resources:

• Poems and Pages on Hope from Poetseers.org
• Sri Chinmoy’s Mahasamadhi

Listen to the song:

River - Susan Mckeown

Spiritual Teacher Sri Chinmoy composed and performed thousands upon thousands of devotional and meditative songs during his life. He wrote several books on the subject of music as well.

• God the Supreme Musician
• The Height of Silence and the Might of Sound
• The Source of Music

Ponder this captivating concept that you and everything in the world around you vibrates in an inner symphony found in his book The Height of Silence:

There are seven higher worlds and seven lower worlds. Each world has a music of its own and a note of its own. The higher worlds have a music that awakens us, inspires us, illumines us, perfects and fulfils us. The music of the higher worlds constantly comes to us as the harbinger of the highest Height, whereas the music of the lower worlds naturally comes to us as a messenger of destruction.

It is not only the higher and lower worlds that have a music of their own; each individual has his music, each movement has music, each action has music. Each time we breathe in and breathe out there is music. When we don’t pay attention to the inner depth of the action, we don’t hear the music. If we do pay adequate attention to each action, then inside the very depth of that action we are bound to hear music. Unless we hear music inside each action, the action is lifeless.
-Sri Chinmoy

Sri Chinmoy’s vast musical output (over 13,000 songs in his native tongue Bengali alone) seemed to tap into exactly what he describes in this quote about the all-pervading and infinite kinds of music accessible to the spiritually initiated. For just a small taste of his unbounded creative expression, listen to Nirab Amare performed by Kusahli Tarantsova and Rageshri Muzychenko, the musical duo Silence and Sound, a violinist and keyboard player from the Ukraine who are both students of Sri Chinmoy.

Recently I found comfort, insight and solace in contemplation of Psalm 139. As I prayed and meditated on this well-known Psalm from the Bible, its message fostered a feeling of increased intimacy with God and trust in God’s unconditional love. The Bengali lyrics of Nirab Amare translated into English resonated with this teaching found in Psalm 139 with its culmination in a close embrace by the Supreme.

Nirab Amare English Translation
Silence me,
O Self-transcendent and Self-amorous One.
Silence me!
I shall before long start worshipping You
Inside the very depths of my heart
And You will keep me always
In Your fond Embrace.

Nirab Amare.mp3

The score follows:

I am particularly fond of the song by folksinger Bill Staines called
All God’s Critters Got a Place in the Choir. The lyrics are:

All God’s critters got a place in the choir
Some sing low, some sing higher
Some sing out loud on the telephone wire
And some just clap their hands, or paws
Or anything they got.

Listen to the bass, it’s the one on the bottom
Where the bullfrog croaks and the hippopotamus
Moans and groans with a big to-do
The old cow just goes MOOOOO

The dog and the cat pick up the middle
While the honey bee hums and the cricket fiddles
The donkey brays and the pony neighs
And the old coyote howls

All God’s critters got a place in the choir
Some sing low, some sing higher
Some sing out loud on the telephone wire
And some just clap their hands, or paws
Or anything they got.

Listen to the top where the little birds sing
On the melody with the high note ringing
The hoot owl hollars over everything
And the jaybird disagrees

Singin’ in the night-time, singin’ in the day
Little duck quacks, and he’s on his way
The possum ain’t got much to say
And the porcupine talks to himself

All God’s critters got a place in the choir
Some sing low, some sing higher
Some sing out loud on the telephone wire
And some just clap their hands, or paws
Or anything they got.

It’s a simple song of livin’ sung everywhere
By the ox and the fox and the grizzly bear
Grumpy alligator and the hawks above
Sly raccoon and the turtle dove.

All God’s critters got a place in the choir
Some sing low, some sing higher
Some sing out loud on the telephone wire
And some just clap their hands, or paws
Or anything they got.

Here you can watch a video of a performance of it by the children’s singer/performer Red Grammer.

The philosophy in this song’s lyrics were never more true than during a week-long memorial vigil after Sri Chinmoy’s passing. The praying mantis photographs shared here were taken by me while sharing in these memorial activities. During the entire time I spent in Queens, NY for the wake, memorial service and burial of spiritual leader Sri Chinmoy, this particular praying mantis stayed nearby. It was as if the insect world joined us in paying respects to this revered spiritual figure.There is much lore concerning this insect. Insectlore.com’s entry on the praying mantis states,

“Mantises are famous in many cultures. In some cultures, they are considered holy. Some believe that if you are lost, and you see a mantis, that you should go in the direction it is facing: that will lead you home. Others think that the mantis always ‘prays’ facing Mecca.“

Chinese martial arts movements derive inspiration from the praying mantis and after I saw this one during my sojourn in New York I wrote, “This morning when I folded my hands at my personal shrine to sing the Invocation I felt as if the spirit of the praying mantis was teaching me to yearn for the capacity to keep my hands folded sleeplessly in prayer and gratitude for the glory of God and His Love.”

More photos I took of the praying mantis

With the Fall Equinox only 2 days away, I shouldn’t be surprised that my habit of taking a daily constitutional (a.k.a walk) at around 7 pm would mean that the sun sets and darkness rises before I finish. Today’s warm summer-like day inspired me to journey on the bike path along the water located only a short distance from my house. Since the sun was setting even as I headed out, I left my camera at home - quite uncharacteristic for me since I love to take photos of nature and birds along this well-worn route, this shot of the moon over the path being one of them.

After staring for a while rather wistfully at the half moon as I walked, the darkness slowly enveloped me and led my thoughts to wander to a recent reference question at work. The patron (a.k.a customer) wanted books on visual and auditory learning. Once I determined that our library catalog used the subject heading “cognitive styles” to tag this subject, I unfortunately determined that we did not have any books particular to that topic. My colleague with more years of reference under his belt than myself took over mid-stream but we did not end up meeting her wish to walk out the door with books related to this topic. I wondered what type of learner I was - visual or auditory and this dusk to darkness transition seemed a metaphor for the visual to auditory shift.

As nighttime caused my visual sense to recede, I spontaneously turned my evening walk into a symphony of sounds. Like a child discovering her environment with newness and awe, I concentrated fiercely to see what sounds surrounded me. It was an eye-opening — or should I say ear-opening — experience to notice just how often I am focused on the visual when I walk on the bike path with all its stimuli of flowers, swans, clouds, marshes and water. Soon my focus swam instead in the chorus of crickets, the cry of a seagull, the wind rustling in the trees around me and the lapping of the waves against the river and marsh banks on each side of me. The shipyard on the other side of the Providence River added the noises of human civilization with its punctuated addition of cargo contents loading and unloading off of large ships. I decided that the auditory sense tends to get neglected when our surroundings offer charming visual feasts. The musicality of the sounds around me seemed just as worthy of attention and the darkness of night provided a shortcut to that particular destination.

The true test will be my vantage point during a daytime walk along the path. On a glorious fall day with a gentle breeze, the tactile sense may crowd in as well when that breeze glides into my heart. Have you ever tried to determine your learning style? Are you a visual, auditory or tactile learner? You might try my experiment and walk through a favorite environment during both day and night and see wherein you find the greatest charm.

One last note - it only seemed fitting that I should write this post while listening to music. I picked another theme song of sorts for this girl on a road. I hit repeat on Itunes and wrote with the song Never-ending Road (Amhrán Duit) from the Ancient Muse CD on playback loop. Loreena McKennitt, another Canadian vocalist genius lyricist and singer, writes/sings:

The road now leads onward
As far as can be
Winding lanes
And hedgerows in threes
By purple mountains
Round every bend
All roads lead to you
There is no journey’s end.

I have given this blog the tagline “girl on a road” and thought a slight word of explanation might be timely while the blog is new. As is true with many of us, you could say that I have been traveling on a road figuratively and literally for some time now. Viewing the horizon of life through this lens came into focus when my meditation teacher Sri Chinmoy offered me the spiritual name “Sharani” which is the literal word for road in Bengali. I surmised that it was not a coincidence that shortly before receiving this name I had written a poem that ended in the stanza:

God for God’s Sake
Mantra breath
No other road
to ignorance death

The figurative aspect of the road travel lies in the context of journeying on a spiritual community or “path” for the last twenty odd years as a student of meditation teacher Sri Chinmoy. I find it fosters unfolding hopes and dreams to become a kinder inhabitant of the planet and a closer friend to God found inside myself and in the world around me.

The literal part lies in the fact that I have also been a girl actually on the road if I stop to ponder some of my far-flung travels and sharing of cultures across the globe. I love to take pictures when on the road and my travel diaries include places such as Singapore, Turkey, England, Bali, Scotland, Malaysia, Paris, Java, Japan, Brazil, Australia, Hawaii and climes closer to home such as Seattle, Chicago, Arizona, Martha’s Vineyard, California, Victoria and Vancouver.

Ferron - called the female Bob Dylan by some and “cowgirl meets Yeats…a thing of beauty” by Rolling Stone - is one of my favorite folksingers and some of the lyrics to her song “Girl on a Road” are calling out to me in this blog post. Just this excerpt alone shows the serious poetry in her lyrics. She is emphatically one of Canada’s crown jewels of folk singing.

I don’t know what it’s like for you but here’s what it’s like for me… I wanted to turn beautiful and serve Eternity and never follow money or love with greasy hands, or move the earth and waters just to make it fit my plans. My eyes would be the harbor, my words the perfect place for a girl on a road…

I did my best to follow the calling of my soul. But, it’s like that first guitar I played…at the center is a hole, at the center is a…longing… that I cannot understand as a girl on a road…

But if music be a boulder, let me carry it a long while. Let it turn into a feather, let it brush against my smile. Let the life be somewhat settled with the life that song has made. Let there be nothing I am longing for in some plan I may have made, in some story quickly written during a long forgotten time as a girl on a road.
Ferron “Girl on a Road” c1994