Now I understand that there are two melodies playing,
one below the other, one easier to hear, the other

lower, steady, perhaps more faithful for being less heard
yet always present.

When all other things seem lively and real,
this one fades. Yet the notes of it

touch as gently as fingertips, as the sound
of the names laid over each child at birth.

I want to stay in that music without striving or cover.
If the truth of our lives is what it is playing,

the telling is so soft
that this mortal time, this irrevocable change,

becomes beautiful. I stop and stop again
to hear the second music.

I hear the children in the yard, a train, then birds.
All this is in it and will be gone. I set my ear to it as I would to a heart.
~ Annie Lighthart, “The Second Music” – author of Pax

So many themes run through our daily existence. Usually we can only attend to one thing at a time, most often the loudest. Yet if we listen and look closely, there is a softer telling just discernible under all the noise. Sometimes, like a fugue or canon, the themes trade places, one softer which becomes more apparent and insistent, then fading to soft again.

I want to hear the heart beat of the river of life that flows through me. May I never forget what is underneath all the noise.