THE HILLS ARE ALIVE

By: Fransiskus Borgias M.

Today (14 April 2011), very early in the morning, I read in the Face Book of my Friend, a short quotation from a well known musical film from the Seventies, Sound of Music. I like almost all of the songs in that film; but I live very much one of those songs. Its title is The Hills Are Alive. The song goes like this:

“The hills are alive
with the sound of music,
with songs they have sung
for a thousand years,
the hills fill my heart
with the sound of music,
my heart wants to sing every song it hears.
My heart wants to... (I forgot this particular part)...
like a ........ (I also forgot this particular part)...
My heart wants to.... (I forgot this part)
that fall over stones on its way....
My heart.... (I forgot this part)...
that flies from a church on a breeze...
........ (I forgot also this part)...
To sing through the night,
like a lark who is learning to pray,
I go to the hills,
when my heart is lonely,
I know I will hear,
what I have heard before,
my heart will be blessed
with the sound of music,
and I’ll sing once more.”

Again, what a nice and beautiful music and lyric, and song it is. It describes the mystical-cosmic experience, experienced by the writer and the singer. It tries to describe a very close experience to the elements of nature, in their very ordinary life. In nature s/he sees his or her own way of life; his or her struggle for life through the banalities. Even s/he also wants to learn to pray from the lark. Yes, the nature gives us many inspirations for religious and spiritual life. The beauty of nature inspires us to pray, to praise the Lord, the Creator of the Universe. The Nature, the hills, the trees, the rivers, the mountains are full of songs and melodies, that can enforce us also to sing, sing of praise and worship. Mystical cosmic experiences are always possible from time to time.

I remember once that, the writer of the Book of Daniel in the Old Testament summons all the elements of universe to praise God the Lord. For example the writer of the Book of Daniel mention the elements like water, sun, moon, stars, rain, dew, wind, fire, heat, cold and freeze, snow, ice, day and night, light and darkness, lightening and cloud, mountains, plants, hills, ocean and rivers, the leviathans, birds, the wild animal and the cattle, human being, Israel, and priests. We see that almost all the elements of nature are mentioned and called to praise the name and the existence, and also the presence of God the Lord.

Later on, in modern time of our common era, St.Francis just put the word brother and sister in front of these natural elements, and also summons or invites them to praise God the Lord. When we read his well-known poem, Canticum Solis or Canticle of Brother Sun, we will find the fact that almost of all those natural elements mentioned in the Book of Daniel are mentioned and invited once again in the cosmic poetry of Saint Francis himself. For example we will see the elements of earth, wind, fire, rain, sun, water, moon, cloud, soil, plants. Of course there are also elements that are not mentioned in Francis’ poem but presented in Daniel’s book.

But there is one element that very unique in the poem of St.Francis; it is the element of sister death. This is the very new element in the cosmic poetry of St.Francis. He calls death as a sister. It is wonderful. I remember once Abraham Yoshua Heschel said that there are three ways for human being to confront the fact of death: mourning, silent, and sing in praise. St.Francis, I think was already in this third condition or stage of life-realization: sing in praise to greet the coming of sister death. Again it is very wonderful. In the modern time, we have this present writer with his sound of music, with his The Hills Are Alive. Again and again, this is really wonderful, because all of these are full of wonder.

Yogya, 14 April 2011
Computerized and broadened and reedited on 21 July 2011.