Reading John Stebbins’ fine biography of the Beach Boys’ late drummer Dennis Wilson, who accidentally drowned back in 1983. Today, while looking at the flowering crabapple trees and forsythia bushes, and breathing in the clean fresh air that seems so much a part of the annual rite of spring here in New England, the following Dennis song came to mind. It’s called “Be Still” (co-written with poet Stephen J. Kalinich), from the Beach Boys’ highly-underrated 1968 album, “Friends”:

You know, you know you are
Be still and know you are
Your life is meant for joy
It’s all so deep within, oh

Your life is beautiful
A seed becomes a tree
A mountain into a sky
This life is meant to be, oh

Now is the time life begins
Take that simple path
And love will set you free
Live in harmony
And love will set you free, oh

You know, you know you are
Be still and know you are
You know, you know you are
Be still and know you are

In the words of a banner that once hung on the walls of our church when I was growing up: “Once in the stillness, you will know”.

May the world come to know in it’s own troubled soul the peace and stillness it so much longs for.