Day 142g: To render the Now attainable … (September 18, 2019)
“When one eye is fixed upon your destination, there is only one eye left with which to see the Way … And so it is that there seems to be an echo of walking – like two choruses singing a psalm in alternate verses, each on a single note; a practice that makes it possible to both chant and listen in seeming simultaneum. Its main effect is one of repetition and alternation that St Ambrose compared to the sound of the sea: when a gentle surf is breaking quietly on the shore the regularity of the sound doesn’t break the silence, but actually structures the same and renders it audible. Psalmody – like pilgrimage – in much the same way, in the to-and-fro of alternating responses, produces a joyous tranquility in the Soul. Both the echoing chants and the ebb & flow of waves recall the alternating movement of walking legs – the pilgrim’s syncopated footfalls. None of them shatter the silence, but instead make the world’s presence palpable and keep ready time with its pulsings. And just as Claudel once noted that sound renders silence useful, it ought to be similarly said that walking renders presence accessible.” ~ inspired by Joe Hyams & Frederic Gros
;