Sing, my tongue; sing, my hand;
sing, my feet; my knee,
my loins, my
whole body.
Indeed I am His
choir.
by St. Thomas Aquinas
When I rest in body awareness, I allow the field of experience which is my body to speak to me. I hold the intention to listen with gentleness. This morning my neck felt dense and tight, my heart felt expansive and tingly, my skin was alive with cold and my head felt painful and contracted.
What would it be like to let each of these not just speak but sing to my listening awareness? Something about singing raises the possibility of harmony or disharmony, but it also enlivens my heart.
Then, with the final words – Indeed I am His choir – somehow the possibility of disharmony dissolves. I no longer ‘own’ my experience, instead it is part of the music and rhythm of the universe.
How do you feel about the word His? I don’t doubt that it resonates for some and jars for others. For me, although it does jar initially, I find I can look beyond it and see it as a signpost pointing in the direction of my ever-changing and evolving sense of ‘something greater’, for want of a more eloquent way of saying it…
Of course, I am not a Catholic, not Italian and not born into a noble family to become a spiritual master – all of which Saint Thomas Aquinas was. So, when I read this poem, I receive it across an unquantifiable gulf of difference. And yet despite this, I experience the poem as landing unimpeded into my practice and delivering a profound lesson with concise elegance. I hope that St. Thomas Aquinas would be pleased that his universal wisdom is still being received (in a hopefully recognisable form!) 800 years after he wrote it down.
PS. If you’d like to explore together the Power of Awareness during a practice day on the 20th of November, have a look Mindfulness Practice Days for more info…
Photo by Jeff Sheldon on Unsplash