The Flute Player

Wow - it's been a long time since I blogged!  Well, here's something, anyway...

The song scattered on the breeze, each note sailing aloft on invisible wings, alighting and reassembling so that each listener heard something a little bit different, something unique to their ear. Without a word, the simple wooden flute and battered old guitar wove a captivating story ...

Pretty girls in white dresses danced in the moonlight, their ruffly skirts swirling and swishing to the music. A few guitars sang, the pretty girls danced, the moon and stars shone all through the night. It seemed as though the air could not possibly hold anything more, as though the sights and sounds must have filled it to overflowing. But, no, the night wind swept up and down every street, in and out of every open door and window, dropping its gentle burden of sweetness. Out on the desert, las reínas de la noche chose this June night to unfold their matchless blossoms. The pretty girls twirled to the music, and their white dresses looked like flowers; the cacti opened their petals to the moonlight, and their flowers looked like white dresses.

The flute player knew that some people cannot smell the queen of the night's perfume. This made him sad; it must be like a deaf man watching an orchestra play an unmatched performance. Some of his sorrow slipped into the notes of his song, and his friend's guitar echoed their grief. But sorrow is only the dormant season when life's trees gather their energy to break out in new leaves, branches, and delicious fruits. And so it was with the song ...

Joy trembled through its branches and new life leapt forth. The pretty girls, now clothed in red and yellow and orange, danced their beautiful patterns around red and yellow and orange leaping and swaying fires. The music itself caught flame, and now the story was of a thousand guitars singing burning harmonies into a blazing July night. In the distance the mountain-jagged horizon flickered with lightning, and dull rumbles of thunder joined the concert. A summer monsoon swept across the thirsty desert, a song of rain and a new season. Now the lightning danced all around in angular leaps and skips contrasting to the pretty girls' swaying and swirling. Thunder clapped a new drumbeat while the wind swished and swept sheets of watery life over the waiting crowd. And there came on the wind a new expression of an ancient fragrance - the freshness of thousands of square miles of soaked creosote bushes.

The flute and the guitar felt the change, joined it, expounded its new theme ...

God was lightning, dancing in his world, among his children. His hand-claps and footsteps rolled a thundering new rhythm that ruled the dance. The wind and the unforgettable fragrance it bore, were nothing more, and not a bit less, than the swishing of his heavenly robes spreading the perfume of his royal and sacred garments.

And again the player was saddened. He knew that though there were many who knew a lot of facts about wind and rain and thunder and lightning, not many understood that God danced upon storms. And though there were many who knew a lot of words about God, not many believed that from time to time he danced into his creation. Not many who heard musical stories too grand for mere words. Not many who could smell las reínas de la noche on their single night of bloom, nor many who recognized the fragrance of God's robes when the wind blew full of the incense of wet greasewood ...

But the song refused to turn solemn. This was not a time for mourning, but for dancing. The greatest Dancer of all was himself leading the festivities. The pretty girls spun and soared as never before. Countless guitars sang out in melodies and harmonies and rhythms never before found by fingers on strings. The scents of flowers and rain and life filled lungs with a richness and health that felt more satisfying than oxygen.

Tears streaked freely down the player's face, and in some dimension they shone different colors - gray for sadness, purple and blue and green for joy, red and yellow and orange for passionate longing to join the dance, to hear the numberless guitars in chorus, to weave among the pretty girls, to drink the potent añero mescal, to inhale the incense of las reínas del la noche and greasewood. Was this, then, his vision of heaven?

"No," he smiled, a gentleness that flowed into the now-ebbing strains of wordless song. This song was not of heaven, it was of earth. It was as earthy as a song could be, for it was the song of an earth the way its Creator intended it to be. A song of the cosmos celebrating every footstep of her dancing King when he pays a visit. The player set his flute down. He would never touch it again, for he built it specifically to play the one song he heard in his heart. Now, that song, and the sounds of his flute, suggested new melodies and rhythms and harmonies and daring turns and leaps and spins. He would build a new flute to play this new song, and when that was done, he would lay it aside for another, and another, and another, until one day his work of building flutes and shaping music would be done. In that day, and forever after, he would always say that in his life he built only one flute, and played only one song. That each instrument he fashioned and every song he played were only single steps toward the creation of the next.