This is one way you can wend your

way into a miracle of music as it circles people,

streams around balconies, reveals new vistas of spirit,

your heads bobbing, your beings light as balloons.

Your ears are sacred passageways

into a world that brings everything

to the fore as if it is new.

The upwelling of sounds, playful, resonant,

are both diviner and divined. The melodies breathe with you.

With unexpected force in reach of synapses,

notes flee instruments in search of you and you,

your deep eyes blazing, small hands answering beats.

You become bigger, bolder in this moment

as you bloom inside new love;

you dive into the currents, come up joyous.

You know how to do this, how to be happy.

I was a child like you, yes, and born to the music.

Fearless, I jumped right into the middle of it,

embraced good humor of tubas, glitterings of harp,

bared soul of viola and cello, a crescendo of timpanii,

lithe dance of flute and acrobatics of oboe,

the dignified ways of French horn

that made me long for more.

It was a momentous time as I came to know the world,

a treasure, a beacon. It carries me now, graces my life

as I follow the flight and fancy of each note and measure.

So today you are presented the same in this

chapel made for mysteries of sound:

we hear the firmament profess a desire

to lift, fill, free and gift us more,

and to gather you into rhythms and harmonies,

a kaliedoscope of delights.

You lean in, amazed. Right at home.

The fact is, your blood knows this way, it answers

becasue it has travelled from great grandparents,

grandparents, far ripplings of family.

From your mother, a baby who sang with doves.

You are one of us, music makers, soundscape dreamers,

your own voices now an echo, a key to new songs.

I see you claiming the birthright,

clapping, bouncing and grinning

and a wash of tears slips down my cheeks.

May the music love you as it has loved me.