The Reflective Life

"Henry David Thoreau once wrote: 'If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away.'

Something about being in rhythm with the music makes us feel good and whole and connected to something larger than us. Maybe that is something of what I felt as a young boy trying to keep pace with my father's steps.

Everything we do, we do rhythmically, which is to say, musically. When we walk, there is a cadence to our steps. When we dance, there is a music to our movements. When we throw a baseball, we do it with a rhythm of winding up, throwing, and following through. Whether it's a baseball player pitching or a ballerina dancing or a custodian sweeping, if they do what they do well, they do it in sync with a certain rhythm.

When they don't, the level of discord increases, and with it, their chances of failure. The ballerina may gracefully leap into the air, but if her timing is off on the way down, she may fall flat on her face. The same is true of the farmer who is in sync with the planting season but maybe out of sync with the harvest. If he is late in getting to the fields, the crop may be ruined. If we want to live in harmony with the universe as God has ordered it, we must live our lives in response to those rhythms.

But there are other rhythms at work in the universe.

From the heart of God comes the strongest rhythm - the rhythm of love. Without His love reverberating in us, whatever we do will come across like a noisy gong or a clanging symbol. And so the work of the human heart, it seems to me, is to listen for that music and pick up on its rhythms."

From The Reflective Life, by Ken Gire.