A couple weeks ago, Allen, my granddaughter, Emma, and I were invited to a house concert to hear a musician visiting from Ghana.

The musician was Kasiva Mutua, and she is a young professional drummer who was in this area thanks to an annual event that brings together percussionists from all over the world. Kasiva was staying with a friend here in Saluda before heading back to Africa, and she graciously agreed to spend a beautiful evening with us.

Kasiva told us her story of growing up in rural Kenya. She loved her grandmother, who was a wonderful storyteller.

Kasiva spent hours listening to her grandmother’s stories. As you might imagine, her grandmother got a bit tired of telling those stories, and she probably had some other things to do, so she told Kasiva to go down to the goat pen to listen to the stories that the goats would tell.

Kasiva went down to the goat pen, listened for 10 minutes, and then ran back to her grandmother to tell her that the goats did not say anything.  Grandmother sent Kasiva back to the goats, with instructions to listen more carefully and stay longer. She listened for 30 minutes the time, then ran back to grandmother with nothing to report.

Grandmother sent her back again, with instructions to listen harder and longer. The next trip was an hour, and still Kasiva heard nothing.

At last, grandmother told Kasiva to stay and listen until she heard the story that the goats had to tell.  So Kasiva sat, and she sat, and she listened.

She began to really listen patiently with no preconceived expectations, and she began to hear and feel the rhythms around her, from the goats and the birds and the trees and the wind and all the tiny creatures moving around her — rhythms and sounds that she had never heard before even though she had lived close to that spot all her life. She began to hear the patterns of the rhythm, different rhythms coming from different sounds from all around her.

It was that experience that nurtured Kasiva’s love of drumming, of melding those rhythms together to create an atmosphere of feeling and connection.

As I lie in bed in the mornings, before rising for that delicious cup of coffee, I’ve been listening to the birds outside our bedroom window. There are so many sounds and rhythms of the different birds, each with a different voice, and the wind, and the leaves rustling in the wind.

So many of you are in air-conditioned houses with your windows closed; modern convenience has taken this simple pleasure away from your daily experience, unless you make a point of leaving your modern comfort zone and go sit on the porch, to simply sit there without a newspaper or computer or telephone.

This morning, when I was listening to the sounds outside our window, I noticed how much easier it was for my ears to hone in on the sounds of the traffic on the interstate or Allen on his exercise bike downstairs, or the clock chime, or the gurgling of the coffee maker.

All those sounds must give us a subliminal signal that maybe we need to perk up; maybe we should be doing something. Not paying attention to those sounds is hard, but not impossible.

You may not have a goat pen, but you can probably find a place close to home where you can sit and not be inundated by the man-made sounds.

It might mean leaving your cell phone on the kitchen counter for a little while. Go to that place and sit, and sit, and sit some more, and then begin to feel the rhythm of the sounds and those minute vibrations underneath it all.

Just take it in; feel it. Let it bring you a peace beyond all understanding.

And you won’t have to do anything. There is great comfort in knowing, and feeling, that we are simply tiny creatures in a magnificent universe.

Listen and be part of that rhythm.