It isn't very often that I read a phrase in a book, and come to a screeching halt as if I have been hit by lightning. But that happened the day before yesterday. I am reading (or trying to, it's dense!) the Occidental Mythology volume of Joseph Campbell's The Masks of God series (Penguin Books). On page 25 (and I am loosely paraphrasing here), he basically says, despite the monotheistic and Greco-Roman attempts to rise above female and nature-based religions, it was not entirely successful. That a mystery moves beneath these "'higher' systems -- as though speaking silently, to say, 'But do you not hear the deeper song?'"
"The deeper song." These words hit my heart and I burst into tears. If I were to write my autobiography today, this would be the title, although a quick search shows me that other authors have used the phrase, perhaps in different contexts. My brain immediately took me to John Rutter's "What Sweeter Music", and I joined in with King's College, Cambridge choir's performance of the Christmas tune, doing what I have done for 60 years to records, then cassettes, then CDs, and now online -- singing along with the men and boys at King's. Singing, from half a world away, a deeper song? A counterpoint in time and space? It is a deep, resonant longing to be part of a specific family of musicians I couldn't be part of, at least not in this lifetime. And a deep longing to sing and speak in other arenas and be listened to respectfully. There's lot of hurt in me that still needs mending, although opportunities to do just that, I am grateful to say, are happening more often these days.
And of course, to look at the bigger picture, the earth has been singing since time began. The Universe is probably, ultimately, "just" a song, a great aria of love energy sung out into space. The Goddess never stopped singing; we, perhaps, just stopped listening. What deeper song would we hear today, beneath the bombs and the flow of refugees and the slaps on the faces and the rising world temperatures and the persistent spiking of COVID around the world? What is the sweeter music, the sweeter message, the deeper truth, the deeper song? If we stop everything and listen carefully, maybe we'll hear it.
I've been practicing when I water indoor plants. If you stand still afterwards, you can hear the water soaking into the soil. The "deeper song" has many verses, but water soaking into dry soil has to be one of them.
