Multnomah Falls
I wrote this post two weeks ago; I typed and placed it in the lineup a week ago! It’s still timely and keeps that question of listening to our/my true voice wide open. I think growing in our lives begs us to continue to keep asking that question. Am I really hearing; am I really listening? Hopefully, we keep evolving and sometimes the answer we hear changes and sometimes it is the same. Sometimes the truth we hear is not easy to accept, but to be true to ourselves, the process needs to go on! For me, the process is continuing! The stimulus, an impromptu audtion.
It brought me to my knees! Well, mabye not literally, but most certainly mentally and emotionally. Why, I wonder? Do I know in my heart the true answer? Is it that pesky authentic voice screaming again, I ask impatiently? Really, I am smiling and shaking my head.
I remember about thirty-five years ago, I was the alto soloist for a Messiah performance in South Florida. The tenor was a pediatric othmologist with a professional quality voice. He told me he was in medical school with the intention of being a neurologist. He had not been able to go to a concert or sing for a year. When he finally went, he sat and literally cried; he realized at that moment that he had to pick another speciality which would allow him space to sing and perform. He realized in his moment of pause that, literally, his voice needed to be heard and he acted upon that need. He truly listened to his authentic voice.
Lately the Universe has been sending cues and I am trying to understand and interpret what that voice is saying. I can believe that it wants to sing forth from the depth of my being. I hear that loud and clear, for better or for worse. Whether I have the courage to accept that challenge and tackle the BIG evil, Fear-of-Failure, I do not really know. That is the real truth of it.
Hearing on You Tube, the very elegant singing of Sarah Horn’s duet with Kristin Chenoweth, at the Hollywood Bowl, did bring me to my knees. That audition of a lifetime, stirred very deep and profound emotions which I cannot ignore. Whether that voice coming from within is hope of what can be or grief of what has past remains to be seen and it may ultimately be up to me to decide. It must and will be my own choice. The seed has been planted! I have heard! As Robert V. Taylor said in his best selling book, A New Way to be Human, “Without breath you are voiceless, and without voice, you block the flow of the breath of life bringing you fully alive.” Could it be that I have been blocking the flow of my own voice?