And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.
– Roald Dahl

It’s been a crazy month, and yesterday I hied me up to Bellingham – my spiritual home – for a much needed recharge.

As I was walking along the path to Boulevard Park – on the edge of Bellingham Bay – I ran into a man with a sitar. I asked him about his instrument and he talked to me a bit about how a sitar is put together and why it makes the unique sound it makes. He let me touch the strings and run my hand over the smooth kaddu ka tumba. He’d found this sitar in Texas and had learned how to play it from a master sitar teacher in San Francisco. The sitar had been in an Indian family for seven generations before it came into his hands.

He didn’t want his face photographed – and I respected that – but he let me record his hands bringing out music from the strings.

I told him he had no idea how much I needed his music just then, and he said, “Oh, I do.” And then he played for me. I closed my eyes and opened my hands to whatever came to me – opened my thoughts up to the beauty and magic of that moment, and felt myself enveloped in harmony and peace – surrounded by a universe of Love.

Ancient sound. Ancient music.

I took a deep breath and he played the last note as I opened my eyes. The music only lasted a minute maybe – but it was all I needed.

I brushed the tears from my eyes and thanked him. He said, “Bless your heart.”

I went a little further on my walk then. On the way back I looked for him, but he had disappeared. And somehow that felt right to me – it made the moment when he played his sitar for me more magic somehow.

Mental melodies and strains of sweetest music supersede conscious sound. Music is the rhythm of head and heart.
– Mary Baker Eddy

Sitar in Bellingham