Listening for the music

"We rarely hear the inward music,
but we are all dancing to it nevertheless,
directed by the one who teaches us,
the pure joy of the sun,
our music master."

--Rumi, A Year with Rumi (May 14)

The high school on our island may be smallish (around 300 kids in each of the four classes) but it actually has two amazing photography teachers, one for film and one for digital. So photography plays a big role in the annual student art fair at the high school, and I get the wonderful job of judging the color images and awarding monetary prizes for best work on behalf of our local gallery.

Yesterday was judging day, and I brought my photography-major daughter along for the experience -- though I confess I was a little worried we might come to blows over the award decisions, as she is a young woman of strong convictions, and her tastes and mine don't always agree -- certainly she shoots completely different stuff.

But we had a blast, and found it surprisingly easy to concur on which photos were great and which were not. It seemed, despite our differences, that we nonetheless held common values -- which makes me think of Plato, and his conviction that there exists an Absolute Truth and an Absolute Beauty: objective and transcendent realities that have nothing to do with any individual perceptions or opinions.

It seems a very short step from that concept to Rumi's idea of a music master; that whatever variations there may be among us we are all dancing to the music of a single master. So then you have to wonder, what if we all made time to stop and listen to that inward music? Would we then be more in tune with one another? And what a wonderful world that would be...