Resonance and Reverence

I can't remember the first time I heard about Aeolian harps. Maybe it was when I was in high school; maybe in college.  I do know, however, that I was fascinated with the idea from the very start.  Imagine a musical instrument that would play without the touch of any human hand, needing only a breeze to vibrate its strings, creating enchanting tones!  That is what Aeolian harps are.  Despite my fascination with them, I did not realize how Aeolian harps could be a key to understanding the West's struggles with science, Nature, and spirituality ever since the Scientific Revolution.

Their name (fascinating in itself) speaks of ancient Greek culture and mythology.  The Aeolians were people who settled in central Greece around 1100 B.C.E.  Aeolus was the god of the winds, his name derived from the Greek aiolos, meaning "quick-moving."  Although the winds in ancient Greece may have moved quickly, the image evoked by Aeolian harps has usually been that of peace and sensitivity.

Although Aeolian harps (sometimes called "wind harps") are ancient, they captured the imagination of many Western poets, particularly the Romantic poets in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, who had a love for Nature.  Ralph Waldo Emerson hung an Aeolian harp in his open window.  They were drawn upon as a metaphor by William Wordsworth, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Henry David Thoreau, and Thomas Hardy.  Most famously, Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote a poem titled "The Eolian Harp."

In that poem, Coleridge addressed an ongoing concern of himself and other poets of the Romantic era.  Namely, in an age in which more and more knowledge and control of Nature has resulted from science's treating Nature as inanimate objects that can be manipulated, how do we restore  a more intuitive way in which Nature can touch our souls?  Similarly, in an age in which God is getting shoved back to the beginning of time as the Maker of natural laws that seem to allow the world to operate mechanically, how can we again come to sense the Divine as immediately present in the natural world?

Here is where the Aeolian-harp metaphor of resonance with Nature's breezes came to be useful.  What if we could tune our hearts and imaginations to resonate to the beautiful subtleties within Nature?  And what if we could perceive a Living Spirit present behind all life?  Coleridge daringly asked a similar question in his poem: "And what if all of animated nature / Be but organic Harps diversely framed, / That tremble into thought, as o'er them sweeps ...one intellectual breeze, ...the Soul of each, and God of all?"

These efforts to restore a harmony in our sensibility towards Nature were also efforts to restore a split within our human selves.  That idea was expressed in a poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, in which he also expressed a role for reverence:

"Let knowledge grow from more to more,

But more of reverence in us dwell;

That mind and soul, according well,

May make one music as before."

~~~

Are there occasions in which you feel a special resonance with Nature?  When?

(The Coleridge lines are from "The Eolian Harp" [1796], lines 44-48.)

(The Tennyson quatrain is from "In Memoriam" [1850], Prologue, stanza 7.)

Following the Sun

In the 2013 PBS Nova special "Earth from Space," NASA satellite photography was combined with computer graphics to show the unseen currents on our planet.  One animation I particularly remember was how commercial airplanes, in order to expand the time they fly in daylight, more often travel toward the sun during daytime.

I recalled those airplanes "following the sun" in a quite different context -- one that brought much greater meaning to the imagery of that phrase.  I was watching a gentle 1941 Japanese movie, a soft-spoken romance titled Ornamental Hairpin (Kanzashi), directed by Hiroshi Shimizu.  The emotional weight of the story surrounds the character Emi, who takes advantage of her having lost an ornamental hairpin to return to a country hospice to retrieve the piece of jewelry, and to apologize to the young man who was injured when he accidentally stepped on the hairpin in the deep water of the communal bath.  Through Emi's conversations with a woman friend who follows her to the countryside to try to retrieve her, we learn that Emi is trying to find a way to separate herself from a relationship with a man back in Tokyo, a relationship she finds stifling, perhaps even repressive.

It is during one of those conversations that Emi speaks the line about following the sun.  The friend had at first judged Emi as being irresponsible.  But the friend's attitude changes as Emi conveys how her time vacationing in the countryside has given her new life.  Emi describes how she has been spending her days outdoors, strolling and chatting with the young man and a pair of elementary-school boys, but also washing clothes in the river, hanging them in the sun to dry.  Emi also points out how outdoors her skin has become less pale.

"but at least while I'm here
every day in the sunshine"

Responding to her woman friend's query of what she will do next, Emi says, "I don't know what the future holds, but at least while I am here, every day in the sunshine, the sun will show me the way."  All of the world's faith-traditions contain encouragements to have courage in the face of an unknown future.  We can never be certain what the next day will bring.  But as the earth turns, we can face the next day, following the sun, and following the light we can see.

Reflecting now upon the film, I think about how Emi's words must have had additional meaning for a Japanese audience in 1941.  Their nation had been at war with China for four years, and was now on the verge of being engulfed in the even larger World War II, which had already been expanding in Europe.  It had to be a frightening and uncertain time for many Japanese people.

Hiroshi Shimizu's touching movie closes with two wordless scenes expressive of the presence of beauty in situations in which humans follow a hard or uncertain walk of faith:  The beautifully appareled Emi, carrying a parasol, walking alone up a steep incline of steps.  And Emi walking on a very narrow footbridge across the river.

~~~

Is there something that helps you face each day as it comes?

(The still photos are from the movie Ornamental Hairpin,
directed by Hiroshi Shimizu, © 1941 [based on a novel by Masuji Ibuse], and are used under Fair Use.)