Music... Healer of the Soul

1 Chron. 15:16 “And David spake to the chief of the Levites to appoint their brethren to be the singers with instruments of musick, psalteries and harps and cymbals, sounding, by lifting up the voice with joy.”

Music… healer of the Soul

“This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender.” ~ Pete Seeger

Have you ever listened to music that made you happy? Sad? Melancholy? Have you ever wondered why music does that to every single person alive on the planet, young and old? Growing up I always wanted to play an instrument but lacked any encouragement as my house was flooded with marijuana smoke (older brothers), cigarette smoke and beer cans. I feel it hindered any growth in the musical aspirations I might have had but one thing I DID have? My Holly Hobbie record player where I would sit in my room and sing my heart out listening to music of the day.

I trained my voice early on by listening to the likes of Barbara Streisand and Karen Carpenter, two of the greatest singing teachers I could ever ask for. My musical likes were influenced by my older brothers (Beatles, Clapton) not necessarily my parent's music (Sinatra, Patsy Kline) and my likes in later years would turn out to be a mix of them all. I have four brothers so the music spanned many generations from the early sixties until today where my tastes have grown like a vine climbing the tree.

It’s amazing how times have changed and technology allows you to teach yourself amazing things instrumentally. Grace Vanderwaal, twelve years old, taught herself (via YouTube) how to play the ukelele and if you don’t know who she is, now it is my turn to say, get your head out of the sand! She is the America’s Got Talent winner of one million dollars and a contract with a recording label.

As you all may or may not know, I don’t watch television so how I clicked this child from a rare visit to YouTube is beyond me but I connected with this little girl the moment I saw her cherubic face, seeing what happens when your family surrounds you with love and nurtures your blossoming talent.

I may have missed the mark on a singing and dancing career but music, was well absorbed into my soul from a very early age. I wonder if that is the reason I write poetry? Is it a form of music to my soul via words? Hmm now that’s interesting, isn’t it? 

Music whether instrumental or filled with words touches the soul! I do believe since the beginning of time a simple hum filled the humans and they had to get it out of their system so they began designing instruments. While the age of a musical instrument may be off since some believe the earth to be 6,000 years old, either way, music has been around since the beginning of time.

Biblically we know as early as the book of Genesis the singing and instruments were alive and on the scene. Imagine that, we were created to bring forth music from the very beginning, I wonder if it was the first form of medicine, psychologically speaking.

Gen. 31:27 “Wherefore didst thou flee away secretly, and steal away from me; and didst not tell me, that I might have sent thee away with mirth, and with songs, with tabret, and with harp?”

1 Sam. 18:6 “And it came to pass as they came, when David was returned from the slaughter of the Philistine, that the women came out of all cities of Israel, singing and dancing, to meet king Saul, with tabrets, with joy, and with instruments of musick.” 

I can honestly say that had it not been for the healing properties that music has brought to my life, I would not be the woman I am before you today. Poetry, singing and writing, (I no longer dance because of my disability) are my outlets to the musical healing, while I have SEVERAL friends who play the guitar, piano, keyboard, drums, flute, violin, and a husband who plays the sax or they are avid singers professional or otherwise. Is it coincidence that God surrounded me with this palette of friends? I don’t believe in coincidence! 

So let me tell you of healing that takes place via music. Whether praise music, hymns, rock, country, soul or jazz each avenue is an outlet if internal healing that you WILL carry with you AFTER death.

Music Divine

Divine is the dancing pirouette of sound. 

Bathing in the luminosity of space. 

A bastion of baubles blazing boldly. 

Rhythm masking in the ticker-tape of time. 

Reverberating in reverent chime. 

Compliant to the composer of conceit. 

Fastidious to the feasible feast. 

Notorious notes nourish in sync. 

Melody meets a measure combine... 

Divine is the dancing ~~ pirouette of sound!

Copyright ©joni zipp

A Wellspring of Imagination

On days like this, where the wind is howling, a late spring snowstorm is sweeping across the state, and a mug of coffee in my hand, this is when I have a wellspring of ideas. In this setting, the birds have risen early and are all scattering about getting caught up in a wind gust, the sun is refusing to come out and play and school buses are plowing through the snow-covered roads filled with children wishing they could have just stayed safe at home.


It’s mornings like this when I look out the window and see the trees come alive, eerily walking in the cornfields only to realize it is the wind sweeping branches across the field and the crane hiding within them for a brief break from the gusting winds.

It is at this time my imagination is full of ideas wandering into a different realm that normal man and women dare not go. But writer’s, we’re of a different caliber; we see a story in every waking moment. Upon every tragedy that faces the nation we climb into our imagination box and create a story. Hiding within every triumph and selfless attitude that shake the people’s psyche to the core, a story is born.

Inspiration is the doorway to the Wellspring of Imagination. While normal (or not so normal) folk gripe and grumble of each aspect of their lives that bother them, the writer instead digs in and finds a story to tell. While journalist go out and seek a story to give to the people, the writer need only to open his eyes at sunrise and see a story unfold right out there window of inspiration.

As a writer, you know full well that the story is right there, tumbleweeds roll, thunder claps, lightning blazes across the sky, houses topple, trees sway, the music is words that have come alive in your imagination which sends you to the keyboard, tapping out a tale for readers to catch a glimpse of in the quiet of their day.

As you, the writer, are filled with inspiration from the previous days events, the glorious sunrise that puts shadows across the fields, the chaos communities endure places you smack in the middle with a story to unfold. You are going to write a fictional story or non-fiction that sheds a new light in the wells of darkness sweeping the earth.

You writer, have the Wellspring of Imagination right at your fingertips waiting to be expelled. There is no need for you to be dismayed because you can express what you imagine other people are feeling at the moment. The wellspring of imagination opens up to you just as a new day dawns each and every morn.

On April 18th, 2013, the snow blowing in has caused me to be inspired in ways you cannot imagine. It has awoken in me the need to write, relay the anxiety people are feeling with such  storms in supposed Spring. This is the season where trees burst forth seed, plants come alive; life, as we know it takes on new meaning. This is the season earth has taken on new tragedies, new eruptions of turmoil. This my friends, is the Season of the Writer!

A Day of Compassion?

“Compassion is not religious business, it is human business, it is not luxury, it is essential for our own peace and mental stability, it is essential for human survival.”
~ Dalai Lama

Compassion is not much unlike the emotion, love. Compassion fills your heart, warms the spirit and guides you into a blissful spin of the universe in your soul. What, you’ve never felt this before? Then truly you need to get out into the world that is in dire need of YOUR compassion.

Can you imagine, billions of people uniting in one compassionate act a day? Can you imagine a day set aside where we are made aware of such an event taking place? Have you ever had a compassionate act move your heart so much you went out and did something compassionate yourself?

I sure hope you answered yes to all the above questions. Compassion needs to move the human heart and I do believe what the Dalai Lama said, “it is essential for human survival.”

In a world where there is global devastation, like Earthquakes and tsunami’s, hurricane’s and tornadoes all wiping out and leveling the human spirit, has anyone noticed the one thing that rises from the ashes/dust/turmoil? Human compassion!

While we grieve for the dead, we reach out to the living. We shroud ourselves in compassion and forge through the barriers of devastation and bring to life the art of compassion on grand levels that actually shift the tides in the humans capacity.

I have been a receiver of such human compassion. Two years ago when we were basically forced to move to the state of Nebraska, we wondered how all of this would come together and sure enough, when we arrived after the compassionate brother and sister came to Texas and helped move us north on the ten hour trip, we arrived at a house, that had food, supplied by a church that we had no affiliation with, money, to help get us started, and love welcomed us with open arms.

As the two years pass, not without struggles, it is the human heart of compassion that carries us through our days and nights and never releases us from its clutch. Still not having the means to give compassion on a grander level than I’d like, I sit and pray for the   souls that cry out for help. I share the Word with people who might not even read the Book, except when they are in dire straits and turn to the Holy One, to help ease their pain.

Sure enough, my heart is a compassionate heart on many levels. Levels that heal, levels that make a difference. And you too can make a difference in the human fluctuation of events just by having compassion on one person!

Don’t make ONE day, a day of compassion, just like Valentines Day is marked as a day of love, I think these things should be in our arsenal on a daily basis. Not just one day a year. Think about that and act on it, you’ll be relieved that you are a part of a greater whole.

Love and Compassion walk hand in hand through the sands of time. Embrace them.

Inspiration?

Job 32:8 But there is a spirit in man: and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding.

***

What? No blog post today?

That is what happened on the way to my scribbling pad this morning. I sauntered in here, only to be empty of anything to write. So I decided to look for inspiration.

Where does one get inspiration to write, you might ask? Well it is not too hard if you go looking in the right places. Say, someone’s facebook page? I’m finding writer’s links everywhere in that place. My friends write some really good stuff and post it for everyone to see, then I find myself inspired to write!

One word can trigger a heaping helping of inspiration for me to work with. I saw the word ‘bling’ today, and not only did it draw a giggle but it had me thinking of days gone by, in my past when I was young, wild and carefree. The whole comment went like this, “You can tell the cool cattle, because they got the bling.” It was a comment on the cow pics I posted.

There I go, off on a cruise of my past thinking of when I ‘thought’ I was cool but really, I was just fitting into society. Then I grew up to be not so cool but I became an inspiring person, one who shares all the positive things that there is in life. “Keep going on,” I say.

As I read a friends story titled “Colors” I immediately wanted to write a poem on the colors of life. It is just amazing to me to realize how one word can trigger inspiration in the mind. My mind is like an ocean, thoughts come in waves, sometimes they crash on the shore only to be pulled back out to sea, while others keep lapping the shoreline frothing until it becomes one with the sand.

For inspiration, all you need to do is drink from the sea of life. The sea is never empty, never half full, it is always at a continuous flow. That is what inspires us to write, the continuous flow.

Go out today and look at the sky. Allow the funny shaped clouds to inspire you to write. Listen to the different birds playing on the lawn or in the yard, they’ll bring the song of inspiration to your heart. Run your fingers along the bark of a tree, taste the cool moist air playing like a feather on your cheek.

What I’m saying is this, the simplest things can inspire you to write, to feel, to love. All we need to do is be an open air wave ready willing and able to pick up the reception. It is there, my friends, allow life to inspire YOU!