If you march to the beat of a different drummer, I thought during one recent afternoon meditation, then I can march to the music that I hear. One reason I love Fate is that she is always listening to her own music, marching to the music that only she hears.

Me too.

The music that I hear has never been the same music most people hear, and that has always separated me from much of the world, and left me outside of the tent, peering in.

If I can’t march to everyone else’s music, I can be true to mine.

I used to think, like most people, that no one else felt the things I felt, or was as far outside the tent that I was. I know now that there is nothing unique about me, or what I have felt or feel, we each have our own battle, we each have our own music to hear, and to bear.

I suppose we all think at some point that our troubles are unique, that we have some kind of patent on suffering. If we open our eyes and ears, we soon learn that is farm from the truth. Everyone has it worse than me.

Henri Nouwen once wrote that spiritual discernment means  “to listen to God, to pay attention to God’s active presence..When we are truly listening, we come to know that God is speaking to us, pointing the way, showing the direction.”

I love Henri Nouwen, but I can’t do it that way, since I’m not sure what God is, thus I can’t believe he can show me the way. I need to do that.

I do believe that I need to keep my ears open. Discernment to me is a life of listening to a deeper sound, and marching to a different  beat. When it comes to spirituality, I am all ears, I will listen to anyone or anything that helps me hear my music.

I recognized Thoreau’s ghost in Nouwen’s reflections, I have been listening to him all of my life.

“Why,” he wondered, “should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.” (Walden, Chapter Eight.)

My little dog from Wales can do it, and so can  I.