Diversity and the One -- and Song

My friend Anton has reminded me that it would be well to take another step in my comments (in my last post) on the importance of cultural diversity. The beauty of multiplicity in life and spirituality is that all can be seen as expression, the activity of That One which knows no diversity and indeed, cannot be described. This "Mysterium Tremendum" might be said to be the Essence, the Light to the variegated patterns of peoples, cultures, religious beliefs, and the arts which decorate our evanescent world.

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In his book The Wayfinders (Toronto: Anansi Press, 2009) , Wade Davis describes the Aboriginal people of Australia. These people, with their nonlinear way of thinking, live a very sophisticated cosmology. At the heart of the Aboriginal world are the primordial ancestors. To quote Davis (p. 148): "The Aborigines accepted life as it was, a cosmological whole, the unchanging creation of the first dawn, when earth and sky separated and the original Ancestor, the Rainbow Serpent, brought into being all the primordial ancestors who through their thoughts, dreams and journeys sang the world into existence."

A favorite picture that I keep in my bedroom shows a perfectly shaped maple tree, bare-branched, silhouetted against a vibrant orange sky. Under the image is printed this version of Psalm 50:1 (I don't know which translation this is from): "God the Lord speaks, and summons the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting."

Canadian philosopher-metaphysician Kenneth G. Mills, when asked why singing has such magic to it, replied ". . . It says that the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and it could not have helped but be a sound or a song, because in essence it was vibration." (from Question and Answer Encounters with Kenneth G. Mills, Toronto: The Kenneth G. Mills Foundation, 2008; p. 38).

Across multiple cultures, what an exquisite mystery!