Imagine a nation of people suffering from a low-grade hypnosis, or maybe a selective amnesia is the right phrase. And then through this dulled population a group of 60 people are on a tour, going from city to city, where thousands of these people are told about a terrible danger that they all share. And the message is carried by singing and shouting, and the people are thrilled to have their memories restored to a vivid state, even if what they are remembering is deadly scary — because the performers take care to color their messaging with moods and barks and dramatic harmonies.
And then it is over and the people return to the hypnosis that was artfully vanquished for those couple of hours. And this gathering and then dispersing back to everyday life happens 18 times over 5 weeks across the continent. And the 60 people in the performance troupe, tearing down the sound system and packing the trucks, with their lead singer and the musicians and grips and cooks and truckdrivers, none of them know for sure whether their artful message is still ringing within the bodies of their audience as they mount the freeway. Their guess may be that the music of loving the Earth – has begun to fade, but how the tuneful themes blend into the city is a mystery.
The message of ‘love earth tour’ is to receive the love from a conscious living Earth and return that love to the giver, but then all the life around us is the Earth, in a myriad of guises, and all of what surrounds us is ready for love, whether rocks or herons or wind in the trees or a friend sitting in the dark feeling pain. We are supposed to keep the economy of love going round and round with all our heart.
The ‘love earth’ might fade very quickly in the souls of uncaring sophisticates who bought the tickets on a whim, but then love may find new, serious hosts as it goes, like the infection we all want, love penetrating from person to person. The concert-goers may spread across the city or converge. One ticket-buyer walked down the street humming one of the songs and then fell into a harmony with a passerby who also had the back of the last night’s seat rubbed in her jacket, and (I was told about this actually happening) this second person was humming the same song. The harmonizers might have started laughing or crying or staring at each other, remembering, because they may have already applied the song’s love in different ways, and they stand there wondering what the other one does with that song.
Or the two might separate their notes by thirds or fifths, and jazz up the melody and so strengthen the love of the earth in both singers. The concert may go into the city and change the buying of a house, or uplift a soprano in church or make the honest confession of love to finally bring a couple to a kiss, the full force of the love earth songs brought to the lovers in a moment of fond empathy.
The two harmonizers might walk into a third love earth singer and a fourth. How full can the echo of ‘love earth’ play back through the listeners who went back to living? The performers, speeding away from the experience they caused, feel the harmonies of their message echoing through the crowds and recognized by the trees and on and on the love goes, always returning to the Earth..
Rev. Billy