Do you have one of those songs…?
….. one that can just create a sense of wide open space or ‘peace’ within you?

It’s as if everything falls away and this sense of calm and respite fills you. It’s almost like nostalgia but without the ‘ache’ because you feel content…home.

{Nostalgia- a wistful desire to return in thought or fact to a former time in one’s life, to one’s own home or homeland; A sentimental yearning for the happiness of a former place and time. From Greek: n`ost (os) a return home}

My song today is Alexi Murdoch’s Orange Sky. For me, it’s a spacious landscape within which I can find nourishment and an expanded sense of peace.

Thought falls away

In my cells I can effortlessly feel everything connected. There is no above or below, greater than/lesser than…..
All connected, all in floating balance, all breath…..
A vibrant feeling of contentment, not desiring more or less….

I think many of us have these songs, these moments….
So of course I imagine what it would be like if each of us could live in that experience for a few minutes simultaneously. What would it be like for each of us to have that feeling of peace all at once?

And I wonder to what degree that sense of ‘home’ or that yearning for it (’nostalgia’) might vary or be the same for each of us wherever we live? What is this feeling as humans for a return to ‘home’; a yearning for another time where we felt a perceived sense of contentment? (And are there ever times we know that it lives inside of us and not in some other time or place.) Is this a universal experience?

What a curious phenomenon….nostalgia…..being human….

I have witnessed my own relationship to ‘nostalgia’ and ‘home’ unwind/shift over the years so that when the song ends….the feeling doesn’t disappear (because the song didn’t ‘create’ it). The minutes of the song serve like a small ‘retreat’ time to recharge, recount and remember. It reminds me that whatever I feel in those minutes dwells within me; that every breath is my ‘home’. And that the practice is to live each present moment with an authentic sense of contentment……every moment a balance of the blessing and challenge…….every moment a ‘song’.

And so I smile and push ‘repeat’……..