Sharing a bicycle song yesterday made me think of an old one. The first verse of it I composed on my bicycle over twenty years ago. It seemed to me then to express an important feeling – about yearning toward Spirit and trying to figure out how to move with that yearning in the day to day world. I felt the second verse should offer some kind of insight into the question the first verse stated. I tried for years to find it, but couldn’t. Then in December 2004, I found the words to complete it. I wrote it for and to my sister, since we were gaining great spiritual insight on our bicycle rides together.
I felt, at that time, that my growth in understanding had given me the insight I needed to finish the song. I remember thinking, I didn’t know this then, but I know now. Funny, I still find myself saying that. I guess it’s a function of infinite Spirit that it unfolds ever fresh, so that I’m always thinking that I have finally found the secret, and there’s always more.
Paradigm Shift
A bicycle song for Jennifer
I don’t want to just preach to the choir
There’s got to be something here sweeter and higher
Something’s got to ignite with this new fire
Before the sparks expire
It’s a long way down
And it’s easy, though unbroken
To fade to ineffectual
Before the truth is spoken
And the thing I need to give
And the thing I must receive
Will hold what it means to live
And to believe
Well life tumbles its lessons but the words are terse
And those bursts of insight somehow seem to disperse
And here I am waiting for the second verse
To go deeper than the first
If it’s heaven now
Then your life can be my mirror
The crystal singing sound of it
Will ring me ever clearer
For the light I see in you
Will show forth what is my own
So while whole, unique and sovereign
We will not be alone . . .
I don’t need to just preach to the choir
For the yearning is of universal desire
Like sparks we go flying up higher and higher
And our fireworks inspire.
©Wendy Mulhern
December 2004
December 2004