Making The Music That Overcomes
The work of creating a more just and peaceful world sometimes overwhelms people when we think about the gap we must overcome. Add to the enormity of our problems the prevailing sense of scarcity and helplessness that so many people and communities experience and you may soon find yourself wondering what good can actually be done.
Scarcity and hopelessness are in many ways the most devious of the shackles we must shed. They keep us fighting with would-be collaborators and chasing after resources that come with their own chains. Scarcity and hopelessness wear on our sense of possibility, eroding the spaciousness our futures might otherwise hold.
We may invest considerable emotional and intellectual energy doubling down on our sense of isolated resistance and exceptional abilities to make change. We feel special and essential, but often also lonely and impotent.
Cultivating our expectations of abundance and shared power is therefore an essential practice in developing longevity in the movement. Rest and relief can be found in the realization that we are both an important part of the larger movement, and not the whole movement itself. We are an instrument that brings essetial, special elements to the music that needs to be made; but we can never bring the whole alone.
The more we understand where our participation takes the form of sound and where it takes the form of silence, the more we can appreciate the beauty of the whole musical movement. We start to recognize the abundance of music-makers, the way we’ve all been uniquely formed to create together, and the way our silence makes the music as much as our sounding.
With a sense of the whole we can let go of our anxiety about the gap we face and give our energy to the task of choosing to live in just and peaceful ways here and now. We can embody the future we hope to create.
(listen to this poem for free on Patreon)
The Music Overcomes
Let the song of this day rise in your chest.
Discover the meter that carries
even the most discordant truth through walls.
Strike your unmistakable note
like a soft rubber mallet draws the whole
arborous history from the marimba’s mahogany bars.
Let the timbre of your being resonate among this collection.
So long as the rains move mountains
and the winds form seas,
the friction of the universe in motion
will send songs to undo
even the most ancient of comet and coal.
Find your moments to step forward into silence,
sensing the power of your tone in its absence.
Sink into the rhythm, feel the improvised way,
dance out your part, rest in the beauty of the whole.
In this hour, in this space
choose to fulfill this prophecy –
The music overcomes.
- Bjørn Peterson
(Read more poetry for free or become a patron at patreon.com/bjornpeterson.)
What does this poem mean to you? What phrases or images stand out? How has your history formed you to participate in our shared music-making? How can you cultivate a sense of abundance and possibility in your context?
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