Notes from a different drummer
Learning the unforced rhythms of grace
Learning the unforced rhythms of grace
The practical How.
The notes from the drummer have reached your inner ear. You are waking up. Now what?
Don’t panic.
You’re not going mad, although it might feel like it. Some might even say you are rocking the boat. After all, there is the adjective different before the drummer whose music you are tuning into. And although there are days when you wish that your soul has never been stirred and things could be just as it was before, a seed lying dormant for years has cracked the soil.
Of course, you can choose the business-as-usual-route. You can play it safe and don’t let your life be disrupted. You can pull out the new seedling by its roots and turn the volume way down, silence the notes.To stay in your comfort zone is a very tempting possibility. Millions of people do it.
But if you want to live, you’ll have to tend to the new life that has sprouted in your soul. It is a gift that says something of who you really are and what you deeply long for.
So please, don’t panic. You’re not going mad.
The Journey
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.
Mary Oliver
George
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