“Servant and master am I; servant of those dead, and master of those living…Through me spirits immortal speak the message that makes the world weep, and laugh, and wonder, and worship. I tell the story of love, the story of hate, the story that saves, and the story that damns. I am the incense upon which prayers float to heaven. I am the smoke which palls over the field of battle where men lie dying with me on their lips. I am close to the marriage altar, and when the graves open I stand near by. I call the wanderer home, I rescue the soul from the depths, I open the lips f lovers, and through me the dead whisper to the living. One I serve as I serve all; and the King I make my slave as easily as I subject his slave. I speak through the birds of the air, the insects of the field, the crash of waters on rock-ribbed shores, the sighing of wind in the trees, and I am even heard by the soul that knows me in the clatter of wheels on city streets. I know no brother, yet all men are my brothers; I am the father of the best that is in them, and they are fathers of the best that is in me; I am of them, and they are of me. For I am the instrument of God.”
That writing is called I Am Music. It’s author is unknown and featured in the 1960s collection The Treasure Chest published by Harper and Row.
In one of the early tales of J.R.R Tolkien, author of Lord of the Rings, he envisions the creation of the Universe beginning with the sweetest musical note ever heard, and then a harmony in the chorus of angel voices that join in…One simply cannot imagine the beauty in that music.
MacDonald wrote, “Better to have the poet’s heart than brain, / -feeling than song; but better far than both, / to be a song, a music of God’s making.”
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Don Jackson
