“Praise ye the LORD. Praise God in his sanctuary: praise him in the —firmament of his power.  Praise him for his —mighty acts: praise him according to his —excellent greatness. 

Praise him with the sound of the trumpet: praise him with the psaltery and harp.  Praise him with the timbrel and ———-dance: 

praise him with stringed instruments and organs. Praise him upon the loud cymbals: praise him upon the high sounding cymbals. 

Let every thing that hath breath praise the LORD. 

Praise ye the LORD.” - Psalm 150

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Last week we looked at music from an —internal— perspective. 

We saw it as an aesthetic concept that classifies our hearing of certain sounds as being “pleasant”. 

We saw deeper physical and spiritual connections bound up with our “human-ness or person-hood “ —- the way we perceive our reality, and the very real concepts of unity, harmony and consonance… a goal of spiritual relationships!!!

To understand why certain things are “pleasant”, man dug deeper…. and today we know that our minds are trained to pick up patterns… patterns in time (rhythm), and patterns in tone ( pitch or melody ). We feel happy when tension ( moving away from the fundamental pitch or key of a melody ) is resolved by the melody resolving, or coming back to, and sounding, the fundamental or root note.

So we have a “telescope” ( microphone to be exact ) that lets us hear our our universe. What do we hear? Is there music —-externally——?

Or to be very precise, are there sounds/pattens that exhibit similar patterns of tension and resolution, rhythm and tempo… that please us or move us, that is not human-created/independent of man?

Among non-living phenomena …. The sound of rainfall, the sound of a waterfall or waves breaking on the shore, trees rustling , thunder, the howling of the wind, fire crackling… Living things make a wide variety of sounds, though not all may be “musical” to our ears. Birdsong is pleasant, the mating calls of elephants, a little less so! 

You may say that this is just the normal “noise” or vibrations of our universe that we are hearing, and that is a very interesting perspective. 

Everything in this universe is indeed moving/vibrating in space and time, from atoms to spiral galaxies, and we sense these vibrations AT OUR SCALE OF PERCEPTION.

The universe is filled with Light ( electromagnetic vibrations ) and our eyes can pick up a “slice” of those vibrations. We see all the colors any human will ever see in a rainbow… from red to violet, but ultraviolet and infrared are beyond our perception, as are radio waves.

Sound is a vibration. We can hear a bass drum ( low ) or a tinkly cymbal ( high ) , but bats and whales have us beat with sonar.

Vibration brings a sense of time, and Our sense of time is governed by the sun ( days , and seasons ), hours, minutes, seconds to nano seconds (musical tempo is expressed in beats per minute…..).

Now when we see patterns in these vibrations … we go… PRETTTYYYY !!!!… whether you are looking at a galaxy in Infrared ( James Webb Telescope pictures ) , or hearing the pulse of rotating star , or listening to a symphony!

Everything is moving, everything can be even be said to be DANCING …. because all is moving in harmony and perfect time together… from the atoms in your body, to the beating of your heart, to the spinning of this ball called earth as it careens around the sun, drawing close, and pulling away, giving us the sights, sounds, and colors of winter, spring, summer and fall!

Sure, all of this exists “only in the mind of the beholder” doesn’t it? This could all be a hallucination? Yes, and no.

Our perspective is human-scale, there is no question about it. The patterns we see, are based on our ability to see/perceive whatever we “can” see and perceive. But we are ALL seeing the exact same things…. so our insanity has company ? , we are not alone !!!

However we got here, the fact of our existence is praiseworthy in and of itself.

If you know the ONE that created all of this…. now you are operating at the next level. ? 

He is the Author of beauty, truth, harmony, motion, flow. 

Even discordance serves a purpose in the Symphony and Poem that He composed and blew into existence from the beginning of Creation!

Such a One is to be praised by every created thing, especially the living ( everything that has breath ) !! Praise Him!!

Hallelujah!!