Single drop

April 27.

Here I am in this body.

There is a wood dove cooing outdoors; this bird song is one of my favorite sounds. It brings back memories of moving to Hamburg, Germany when I was seven years old. One of the first things I remember about the spring of 1963 is the doves that would sing in the Jenisch park, which was located just across the street from us as the dove

 flies. 

That sound has served as a leitmotif throughout my life for places that touch the soul in a unique and hidden away. For example, there are many doves in the forests of the Yucatan; at one of my favorite retreats, San Jose Cholul, their song drifts through the timelessly romantic ruined walls of an old henequen plantation. To arrive there and hear the doves is to hear the call of the heart; to awaken suddenly in an ancient place of great beauty—and realize that somehow, one has actually been there all along.  

Doves have a haunting sound to them. A pure, tiny drop of God’s sorrow is placed in every dove’s heart at birth: paradoxically, it emerges as a mournful joy. Everywhere it’s heard, The Perfection is expressed. The doves carry it on wing from place to place as witnesses.

The organism I am in was meant to receive these impressions. That is its primary purpose; to see, to hear, to sense, to feel. To take in life as a sacred substance. All of the intellectual and social material of my life is allowed, for a moment, to take a back seat to this. It’s there in me; but compared to Being, it has very little mass, even though it takes up an enormous volume that is quite distinctly separated from my Being. 

It’s good to clearly sense that difference, for now. It puts things in perspective.

The stillness is present once again; and this time is the only time. For now, this place is the only place.

Soon enough that will change and I’ll have to put this impression aside in order to be quite ordinary and do my work for the day. 

Yet I can always carry the impression of the difference between what has gravity in me, and what does not. 

The gravity of Being itself concentrates a droplet of the divine on the tongue of my soul; and that, in turn, does not just remind me of the song of the doves. It helps me pick up the note and repeat the sound within, like the fading vibration of a brass bell. 

As it becomes less and less audible, it seems not to cease, but to go deeper and deeper into Being, searching for a secret place where it will continue to resonate forever, underneath all things. 

That single note of Being sustains life, even as it passes.

Go. and sense, and be well.

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.