Have you watched a drum line perform and found yourself moving to the powerful cadences?
There’s a pulse, a rhythm to life, and the sounds of synchronized drumming somehow seem to stir us to recognize the marvel of that.
And there’s more to the beating of drums than meets the eye (or ear). Researchers studying the effects of drumming acknowledge that an involvement with stimulating rhythms supplies us with health benefits.
And apparently the drums themselves are optional!
Waves breaking on a shore, raindrops on a tin roof, as well as footsteps hitting the pavement during a morning run are all stimulating rhythmic patterns. They, too, can be life-enhancing cadences.
What makes captivating beats so beneficial? Could it be that the audible patterns that enrich us echo a deeper, spiritual lilt that has a divine origin?
I believe they do. While performing music myself, or listening to the musical performances of others, I’ve found it helpful to acknowledge the “spiritual cadence”, or underlying truth, that each measure of music might represent.
Here is what I’ve seen.
First measure: Principle governs every moment
The principle of music insures the order and synchronization of each performance. Just so, God is in charge of the harmony of our lives. The divine Principle keeps us healthy and productive.
Prayer helps us prove this. It helps sync us with the divine. In other words, exchanging a physical focus for one that’s more spiritual, allows mind and body to better reflect the divine order and balance.
Second measure: Spirit is the source of health
Just as the beauty and harmony of musical works exist before they are ever heard, those beneficial cadences exist even before the drumsticks first hit the drum skins.
The recognition that these cadences exist before the physical action makes their presence felt points to a similar truth I’ve learned in relation to health. It already exists in Spirit, God, and the more we understand and trust this, the more naturally health and healing follow in our bodies. Just as the drum brings those hidden cadences to life, so prayer to understand the divine Principle that governs all animates and awakens us to the practical nature of spiritual life and its harmonies.
Third measure: Principle keeps you well, so act like it
That’s what a woman, who noticed something wasn’t right with her pulse, eventually discovered. Lindsay wrote of her experience in the Christian Science Sentinel.
She said, “I was having spells of a racing heartbeat as if I had just done strenuous physical activity, although I hadn’t.” The spells first lasted for hours and then days.
Lindsay had prayed about other physical troubles with good results and was confident this condition could be healed, too. Yet, she was afraid. Indeed, the fear was so overpowering one morning that she stayed in bed.
She was waiting for her body to give her a signal that all was well. But then she had second thoughts, based on her understanding that she was made “in the image and likeness of God”, as the Bible says.
“It dawned on me that I had it backward. If freedom was really a part of my nature, then I could start acting that way now and expect the body, as they say, to ‘get with the program’; to ‘follow suit’; to ‘get in line’ with the spiritual facts. I didn’t need to take unnecessary risks, but I could insist that my freedom wasn’t an abstract concept—it was mine to experience right then,” Lindsay wrote.
Inspired by this idea, Lindsay got out of bed and went to help her husband fix dinner. Before she got to the kitchen, she felt completely free. She wrote, “No more fear, and no more racing heartbeat. I was so grateful—I didn’t dance, but I could have!”
Lindsay explained that the condition briefly tried to make a comeback a few months later, but she stood by what she had spiritually discerned and, again, the body got in line with the spiritual facts.
She concluded, “That issue has never again returned in the decade or so since.”
Fourth measure: You can find your rhythm
Waves break, drums are beaten, and we thrive because Principle establishes the profound harmony and health that physical functions and formations only hint at.
Because divine Principle is ever-present and constantly expressed, the rhythms of our lives can be affirmed as safe and sound in God’s care.
– Keith Wommack is a Syndicated Columnist, Christian Science practitioner and teacher, husband, and step-dad. He has been described as a spiritual spur (since every horse needs a little nudge now and then). Keith’s columns originate at: KeithWommack.com