When I was in Sedona two winters ago, my friend Nancy and I both bought Native American flutes at a local trading post. They were simple pine flutes, made for beginners like us.
With the flute came a book and CD of instructions. Over the winter, I used the book and CD to learn to play the flute. It was an excellent set of instructions, and before long, I was able to play simple melodies and do a few trills, etc. But the real excitement for me began the day I went out on a hike with my flute, and just let the beauty around me inspire me to play a spontaneous melody. I really felt as if the Spirit/wind was blowing through me. I remembered the chorus of a song my sister Judy and her husband Len used to sing: "Spirit of God in the clear running water, blowing to greatness the trees on the hill; Spirit of God in the finger of morning, fill the earth, bring it to birth, and blow were You will. Blow, blow, blow till I be but Breath of the Spirit, blowing in me."
For me, playing the flute has become a way of praying and meditating. I understand why it was so important in Native American spirituality. I learned recently that in days of old, the Hopi nation had many clans, and one of the leading clans was called the Flute Clan. They had important ceremonial functions, and it was believed that the fluting they did helped the crops to germinate and grow. That reminded me of something I read years ago in the classic book "The Secret Life of Plants," published in the 1960's. Experiments done in many different places with plants and whole fields of crops revealed that plants exposed to beautiful harmonious uplifting music (like the classics) thrived in obvious ways more than plants exposed to no music, and that plants exposed to music like hard metal rock and the like did not do very well.
That does not surprise me. Music is vibration, and everything responds in some way to the vibration of sound.
I also recently discovered that the ubiquitous figure named "Kokapeli" which adorns innumerable T shirts, mugs, etc. here in Sedona is based, actually, on the figure of a human playing a flute left by the Hopi in their migrations on the walls of caves, cliffs, etc. This figure, called by the Hopi Kokapauli, was a symbol of the Flute Clan, and wherever the Flute Clan of the Hopi wandered, they left this sign of their presence.
Last winter, a dear friend, Donna, helped me purchase a beautiful cedar flute in the nearby town of Jerome. This inspired me to keep on playing, and when I was in Michigan this summer, I had the joy of playing it at church as a call to worship, and also with friends at a Full Moon drumming group that meets monthly in the Saugatuck area. Playing the flute spontaneously in the prayerful context of a drumming circle made me feel as if the drums and prayers were carrying me into a spiritual dimension beyond words.
This winter, through the kindness of a friend I met here, I was able to get a beautiful turquoise inlayed double flute. Playing it makes my heart open wide, and others who hear it say the same thing. It is magical! I am now learning to play it in various ways. And as I pray with my flutes, I feel sometimes that I am in some small way continuing in the tradition of the Hopi Flute Clan, whose presence is still so strong in the area where I live.
As the sun rises each morning, the people in the hot air balloons that often float over the land near Sedona Shadows at sunrise might see, if they looked down, a small human figure on a hilltop, playing the Zuni Sunrise Song on a native american flute. I think you can guess who that would be!
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