It may seem absurd to believe that a "primitive" culture in the Himalaya has anything to teach our industrialized society. But our search for a future that works keeps spiraling back to an ancient connection between ourselves and the earth, an interconnectedness that ancient cultures have never abandoned.
I'm working my way through The Creative Call, by Janice Elsheimer. I love what she said in her introduction:
I recall memorizing Beethoven's "Fur Elise" for a recital when I was nine. That hauntingly beautiful music taught me why learning a piece by memory was called learning it by heart: Only after I had committed a piece to memory was I free to explore the emotions elicited by the music. Until I knew a piece by heart, I could not put expression into it, expression that came from my heart, that breathed life into the notes and turned my playing from an exercise to an art. I often wondered how my friends who didn't have music or writing in their lives handled their deep feelings. What did they do "by heart"?
This image made perfect sense to me! In college I never wanted to perform a piece of music on the flute until I had it memorized. This has shed a whole new light on memorizing God's Word.
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