Heaven's Orchestra Defined

Dear Reader,

I need to give you a little background.  When I wrote yesterday about the orchestra in heaven, I had two lenses in mind.  First, the backdrop and metaphorical imagery of my thoughts were draw from Tolkien's metaphor of the orchestra in heaven as he described it in the opening of the The Silmarillion.  Second, in terms of the specific interpretation of that metaphor, I had in mind the names of God revealed to us in prophetic tradition.

One of the great obstacles we face as a collective, global, human family is that we have a hard time achieving the breathtakingly beautiful harmony of unity.  And yet, this is our God given collective mission that we must achieve at this stage in history.  One of the primary things that holds us back from unity is that we stumble over each others differences.  We are not good at realizing the potential for unity in and through diversity like instruments blending beautifully in the orchestra.  Instead, we hear the stringed instruments say to the wind instruments, "you are not expressing enough through the concrete manipulation of solid objects, let me show you how to play music the way I do."  Meanwhile the wind instruments say to the strings, "no, that is not right, you must focus more on your breath; music is not all produced through your fingers, air is just guided through them."  And thus we fall into discord.

"But what," you might ask, "are our musical instruments?"  I will tell you.  They are the names of God that we are called to make manifest in our own lives.  None of us will manifest all of the names of God equally.  As we spiritually develop, we all reflect God's light, but at different wavelengths with different colors.  I reflect God's name THE OPENER or "Al-Fattah" more than His other Names.  That is who I was designed to be in the circumstances of life that formed me.  Like unto this name are the names of God that reveal to us that He is THE CREATOR and THE ORIGINATOR.  I can offer myself up to God easily in these ways as well that He may Will and Work through me to poor out his life giving nature to Open, to Create, and to Originate in this world (For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure. Philippians 2:13 KJV).  These are the Names of God I was designed to have breathed through my life.

However, not everyone has to manifest the Names of God that I express and reflect in my life more strongly than God's other Names.  God has many Names.  I encourage you to explore them online as there are many resources to help us such as this one:

http://sufism.org/foundations/ninety-nine-names

From that website, and from my own knowledge of the Bible, I will share with you some quotes illustrating what the three most important Names of God in my life mean to me.  When I wrote yesterday that I meet someone recently with whom I feel a deep kinship in so much as I believe we will sit next to each other in the orchestra in heaven, what I meant was that she was able to play beautiful notes for me expressing the same Names of God that I live into the most deeply in a way that helped me tune my instrument, so that I could be relaunched all the more firmly on the path with and into God that I am meant to walk.  I hope you enjoy the quotes I am copying down for you below to reveal for you more fully what the three most intuitive Name of God for me mean to me.  Feel free to search for you connections to the Names of God and to share them with me too.  You will find 96 more names in the Sufi tradition, and 97 more names in the Baha'i tradition.  These below are just three:

Al-Fattah: The Opener

Isaiah 22:22 (KJV) -- And the key of the house of David will I lay upon his shoulder; so he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open.

James 4:13-17 (NIV) -- Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil. Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.

Revelation 3:8 (KJV) -- And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write; These things saith he that is holy, he that is true, he that hath the key of David, he that openeth, and no man shutteth; and shutteth, and no man openeth;  8I know thy works: behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it: for thou hast a little strength, and hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name. 

Al-Khaliq: The Creator

"God has the power to will anything"
God is He who has created seven heavens,
and, like them, the many aspects of the earth.
Through all of them flows down from on high, unceasingly,
His creative will, so that you might come to know
that God has the power to will anything,
and that God encompasses all things with His knowledge.
At-Talaq 65:12-13, tr. Asad

Al-Mubdi: The Originator

Who is it that creates all life in the first instance, and then brings it forth anew? And who is it that provides you with sustenance out of heaven and earth? Could there be any divine power besides God?
An-Naml 27:64, tr. Asad

1 Corinthians 13:8-12 (NIV) -- Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.