The Speech of Rain - Thomas Merton

The rain.....fills the woods with an immense and confused sound.
It covers the flat roof of the cabin and its porch with inconsistent
and controlled rhythms.  And I listen, because it reminds me
again and again that the whole world runs by rhythms I have not
yet learned to recognize.

The rain [surrounds] the cabin with its enormous virginal myth,
a whole world of meaning, of secrecy, of silence, or rumor.
Think of it: all that speech pouring down, selling nothing,
judging nobody, drenching the thick mulch of dead leaves,
soaking the trees, filling the gullies and crannies of the wood
with water, washing out the places where men have stripped the
hillside!  What a thing it is to sit absolutely alone, in the forest
at night, cherished by this wonderful, unintelligible, perfectly
innocent speech, the most comforting speech in the world,
the talk that rain makes by itself all over the ridges, and the
talk of the water courses everywhere in the hollows!

.....It will talk as long as it wants, this rain.  As long as it talks
I am going to listen.

Thomas Merton
excerpt from Thomas Merton's essay:
The Rain and the Rhinoceros,
Raids on the Unspeakable 

With thanks to Heron Dance

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Photo from the internet

 

Ride the Light Rhythm ~ ~ ~

Ride The Rhythm ~

The deeper Rhythm within you
that arises like warm liquid light
from the deepest part of your being.
Let it soothe you like a lullaby...

Put all your burdens of the heart to rest now
in The Rhythm: the heaviness of sorrow, the fear
of loss, the angst, the edginess,
and the grief...

Feel them integrate with The Rhythm.
Feel the fluidity that arises in the body ~

loosening the constraints of form...

Breathe with The Rhythm ~

as you are breathed by The Rhythm...

No intention, no agenda, no expectation ~

just listening to the whispers of The Rhythm
in total immersion in The Rhythm...

Ride the Rhythm ~ ~ ~

Mystic Meandering
Feb. 8, 2021

This is the gift of The Silence...
We listen, we hear, we Ride ~ ~ ~

_/\_

 

The Rhythm behind the rhythm...

I've heard a deeper rhythm...
Composed of cello, viola and oboe, I think.
I heard it when I was in the kitchen
cooking dinner one night,
a few years ago,
and every other night after that,
for several weeks,
until it stopped...
when the noise of my life
became too loud - again,
and the weight of my weary heart
drowned it out...

There was no music playing on the stereo,
just the sound of the meal cooking,
and the sounds of daily living
outside the window:
children playing,
dogs barking,
lawn mowers,
power saws,
and birds -
chirping...

Underneath it all was a Rhythm
so melodious I could even hum it;
forgotten now...

I just listened, and hummed, with wonder...
Where was this coming from -
this music -
this slow, deep melodic rhythm,
drawing me into itself...

I didn't even have to try to listen,
it was just there

soft - in the distance,
barely audible,
as if in another room,
through another door,
maybe even in another realm;
a cosmic rhythm...

I knew then, somehow, that my own life rhythm
was hidden in this deeper Rhythm...

But I no longer hear it now;
drowned out by the 
noise of living
other people's 
rhythms -
and the endless
rhythms
of daily
existence.

But I know it is there -
playing somewhere.
I listen for it -
this deeper Rhythm,
that underlies
all other rhythms...

The Rhythm behind the rhythm...

Mystic Meandering
Nov, 5, 2015

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering