A MUSICAL MEDITATION
Welcome to Stanford!
We are glad you have joined us here in our beautiful town! As you peruse all that Stanford has to offer, we would like to give you the opportunity to pause, reflect, and be. A Musical Meditation is a selfguided, experiential retreat combining music, nature, beauty, architecture, and social immersion in four stations around Stanford.
Contents
Soundtrack for Stanford.......5
Station 1 - Main Street.........7-8
Station 2 - The Mill.............9-10
Station 3 - Walking Path.......11-12
Station 4 - The Terrace........13-14
The experience will consist of moving through four stations:
• Main Street
• The Mill
• Train Station & Walking Trail
• The Terrace
This journal contains all the information you will need for each. At each station, you move through four phases: Play, Pause, Stop, Record. Below is an overview of each.
Plan on spending around 30 minutes at each station. You can work through these stations in order, all at once, or you can mix it up, only do the one that calls to you, do one a day, etc. Feel free to change key, adjust tempo, to find God’s rhythm and join it. This experience is about you meeting with God and working things out. He may have a different score written for you. Be open to His Spirit. Do what you need to do, even if that means just finding a quiet place to sit.
When you start each element, you will find a quote or two, followed by the Playlist. Read through the quotes, the written word may cause you to pause before listening to the music. Then settle into the music. Ruminate on it; allow it to sink into your bones. Ask the Spirit to reveal to you what God has for you right now, in the moment. Look around, or close your eyes. Let the beauty of your surroundings mesh with the music, and let God reveal Himself to you.
A Musical Meditation
While listening to all the songs or just one, move to Pause. Read through the questions you find there. Some will jump off the page, others will slide away, unnoticed. If you find yourself drawn to a question, take the time to think it through. Engage it. You have the time, so take it. If you feel yourself resisting a question, definitely work on it. Often in our resistance lies the area of our heart that God most needs to deal with. Be open to dissonance. Today is the day you wrestle with those minor keys in your heart.
When you are ready, read through the Scripture found in Stop. Take your time here. Often it seems that we skip through the Word at times because we have read the passage so often, it is overly familiar. Don’t allow this to happen. Even if you know the passage by heart, read it anew. Read it with the backdrop of music and beauty.
Then, begin to Record. Write down your prayerful response to what God is showing you. Pour out your anguished cries of abandonment if you feel God is distant. Create a marker, showing what God has done or will do. Record a thought, sight, sound, anything that will remind you of everything God is showing you.
Once you are ready, move to the next station. Remember, this is only a suggested outline, there is no special formula. Be open to God keeping you at only one station. He knows what He needs to get through to you. Let Him work.
Playlist
The playlist for this experience is setup in Spotify. If you have a premium account, you can use the code to the left.
If you don’t have an account, you can sign up for one free via the smaller code to the right. In that case, don’t use the code, as free accounts shuffle songs in a playlist. Use the codes on each station page. They will still be shuffled, but only the songs for that station will play.
You can also re-create the playlist in any music service you subscribe to.
Community - Main Street
I am from clothespins, from Clorox and carbon-tetrachloride.
I am from the dirt under the back porch. (Black, glistening, it tasted like beets.)
I am from the forsythia bush the Dutch elm whose long-gone limbs I remember as if they were my own.
I'm from fudge and eyeglasses, from Imogene and Alafair. I'm from the know-it-alls and the pass-it-ons, from Perk up! and Pipe down! I'm from He restoreth my soul with a cottonball lamb and ten verses I can say myself.
I'm from Artemus and Billie's Branch, fried corn and strong coffee. From the finger my grandfather lost to the auger, the eye my father shut to keep his sight
Under my bed was a dress box spilling old pictures, a sift of lost faces to drift beneath my dreams. I am from those momentssnapped before I buddedleaf-fall from the family tree.
- Where I'm From, George Ella Lyon
But some of us have moved away and they are the ones who miss this street the most. They will always belong here even when they think they no longer do.
- Water Street, Crystal Wilkinson
PLAY
One - U2
Forever Young - Bob Dylan
You’ve Got a Home - Christa Wells
Changes - David Bowie
What a Wonderful World - Louis Armstrong
PAUSE
Where are you from, who/where are you now, where are you going/who are you becoming?
Who are your people?
If you were walking down a street that represented your history and community, what would you see?
STOP
Romans 12:12-18
Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.
Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse.
Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited. Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone.
If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.
RECORD
Rewrite the poem Where I'm From to tell your own story. As little or as much as you would like. Use your own journal or the pages at the end of this one.
Vision - The Mill
A maker’s mind must like making, and must smile on what it makes, even if it’s treacherous, or frowned uponby people too polite to feel the pleasures of the truth and laugh.
- The Lord God Made It All: A Boogaloo, Maurice Manning
The greatest need of our time is to clean out the enormous mass of mental and emotional rubbish that clutters our minds.
- Thomas Merton
PLAY
A Country of My Own - Thad Cockrell
The Longing - All Sons & Daughters
Be Thou My Vision - The Scottish Festival Singers
One Day Like This - Elbow
PAUSE
What would you do with the Mill? What could this place be? What parts of your life are ripe for rebuilding?
Where do you want to go?
What do you want to build?
What broken narratives do you need to retire?
If your focus is not to “prove” but to “improve”, what is available?
STOP
Habakkuk 2:3
For still the vision awaits its appointed time; it hastens to the end—it willnot lie. If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay.
RECORD
Rest & Beauty - The Terrace
When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
- The Peace of Wild Things, Wendell Berry
In a world of noise, confusion and conflict it is necessary that there be places of silence, inner discipline and peace. In such places love can blossom. - Thomas Merton
PLAY
Trusty and True - Damien Rice
Meet Your Maker - John Mark Pantana
Running For So Long - Parker Ainsworth
The Lord is My Shepherd - Paul Zach
Redemption - Maximilian & One Hope Project
Beautiful Day - JJ Heller
PAUSE
Is it easy or difficult for you to find rest? Why?
Where do you go when you need rest?
Where are you finding beauty? If you are not, where can you look?
What does Sabbath mean to you? What place does it have in your life?
STOP
Hebrews 4:9-11
There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works, just as God did from his. Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will perish by following their example of disobedience.
RECORD
Movement - Train Station & Walking Path
It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings
- Wendell Berry
I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way.
- Carl Sandburg PLAY
All The Road Running - Mark Knopfler, Emmy Lou Harris
Give a Man a Home - The Blind Boys of Alabama
Dreams Come True - Brandon Flowers
Don’t Carry It All - The Decemberists
You’ll Never Walk Alone - Marcus Mumford
PAUSE
What is your next step?
What clutter is in your way, what is slowing you down?
Can you see the path before you? Where is it taking you?
STOP
2 Peter 1:5-8
Make every effort to support your faith with goodness, and goodness with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with endurance, and endurance with godliness, and godliness with mutual affection, and mutual affection with love. For if these things are yours and are increasing among you, they keep you from being ineffective and unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
RECORD
