Being the Beloved - A Monthly Blog from CFDM Northwest
By Lisa Alteio, CFDM Spiritual Direction Faculty
I have been slowly savoring The Sound of Life’s Unspeakable Beauty, a beautiful book by German author and luthier, Martin Schleske. Schleske shares stories from his life as a violin maker — a luthier — making deep connections to the spiritual life. He tells of the adventures he and generations of luthiers have had finding their own “singing trees” -- trees that luthiers know have the best wood for making violins.
”The heart of a violin maker comes to life when he searches, with all his senses attuned, for the wood for his own violins,” says Schleske.
He describes the posture needed on your search as, “the Law of Grace, which says: you are powerless to create the essential things, you can only receive them. But you can make yourself receptive.”
To find a singing tree, one must venture into difficult climates — to mountain forests at high altitudes where the soil is thin, and the tree growth is dense. The singing trees which can grow for more than two centuries grow very slowly. This is a pre-requisite for wood that makes beautiful music. Growing in thin soil where water is sparse leads to trees that are strong, creating resonance in the wood. Dense growth results in trees whose branches start high on the trunks as the darkness caused by the tightly packed trees forcing “singers” to grow higher in order to reach the light. The same darkness results in the lower branches dying off. This allows for taller trunks without branches, branches which cause knots which impede the sound of the wood.
Schleske’s recounting of the search for singing trees offers many rich metaphors that continue to tumble around in my heart, inspiring and encouraging me. Reading about them reawakened my desire to live with a receptive heart, senses alert, paying attention to God’s activity in my life. Perhaps you can relate to growth that is, at times, imperceptible, the fruit of time spent in the dark that results in the dying off of things that no longer serve me or others.
The difficult conditions that grow singing trees into wood capable of the most beautiful music invite me to see through a different lens. As I reflect on the heartbreak and losses through which I walk even now, I can view them as experiences to strengthen and serve the purposes for my life, rather than disqualify me from them. As you reflect on the experiences this year has held for you, I hope you, too, are encouraged. I pray you notice the ways your life is making beautiful music.
Co-director Terry Tripp introduced me to this poem years ago. It reminds us that, like the story of singing trees, our own slow processes of growth in grace, our road of difficult conditions, can lead to a life that sings.
Prayer of Teilhard de Chardin
Patient Trust
Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through some stages of instability—
and that it may take a very long time.
And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.
— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ
excerpted from Hearts on Fire
What books, media, activities are nurturing your heart, soul, mind, strength in this season as we are loving God and our neighbor as ourselves? Post in the comments below or hop on over to our Facebook page and share with one another.