The Harmony First Prayer is as follows: "Be still as the silence/At the heart of the note/As it swells to fill the song." This is thought to mean that one should seek first to ascertain or understand, then respond to or harmonize with influences and forces in the world outside the mind.
Musical references abound in Harmony writing and thought. Zen influence is thought to be heavy, too, particularly in the lack of concrete dogma. Pythagorean concepts, such as the Golden Mean and The Music of The Spheres, are thought to affect Harmony thinking, along with such abstruse referents as the sciences of acoustics, quantum resonance, and fractal analysis of real-time object-events.
One might think of Harmony as a state of being, fragile or sturdy depending upon the individual weaknesses or strengths. One might also think of the Harmony religion as the human ad-libs required to maintain that state of being no matter what the world brings. This is perhaps the gist, although each Harmony sect tends to emphasize different elements in the seemingly myriad influences that contribute to the Harmony religion as a whole. The consistent element is the translation of the musical idea of harmony and harmonizing into real-world human events and actions.
In short, Harmony thinking has, as it were, "harmonized" diverse systems of thought, from science and philosophy as well as from many theologies. This somehow stable mix owes itself, it is thought, to the unschooled yet intense erudition of the church's founder, whose intellectual curiosity was apparently matched only by his spiritual longing for everyone and everything [to] get along in the same world, damned or divine may it or we be."
And then, in 2032, a planet later to be called Haven was discovered, and a few years later the acrimonious dispute over the new world's habitability exploded. When the lower court decisions favoring the Cal Tech/MIT University Consortium were overturned by a CoDominium Council in a closed session, it meant not only that CDSS Ranger Captain Jed Byers and his Science Officer Allan Wu had to be paid finders' fees for having found a habitable world, it also meant that such fees had to be paid within certain time limits.
Such fees are, literally, astronomical, so naturally the media followed the proceedings avidly. Also, so much fuss, and so many outrageous public claims were made during the various levels of litigation, that the whole thing played more like a holodrama than an actual lawsuit.
The CoDominium Council's word, however, was final, akin to the old-style Supreme Court decisions. And Cal Tech/MIT University Consortium was suddenly faced with having to pay out more money in one lump sum than they normally alloted for six months or more of operating budget. Worse, University trust fund officers refused to allow capital to be touched; the monies would have to be raised by outside means. And all this because the Consortium had officially set aside Byers' marginal moon, Haven, as "reserved for study", a vague classification many members of the lower courts had fought against for years as being too vague, too academic, and entirely too static.
"Study how?" Allan Wu said during one of many public appearances and press conferences. "They've got no people willing, or qualified, to throw away two years in round-trip travel and an unknown number of years on the ground studying the moon, so how can they study it?" And Jed Byers stepped in to add: "And if they can be there all that time studying, then surely they've demonstrated our contention that we've discovered a habitable world, right?"
The Consortium tried to counter with arguments such as the following: "It is our considered opinion that several years at the minimum of programmed remote sensor scanning, mobile robot unit topographic mapping, spectroscopic atmospheric and geologic sampling and analysis, trial vegetable and animal survival experiments, biohazard controls, and other telemetrical exploration is necessary before the ultimate consensus opinion can be given as to whether this insignificant, far-flung chunk of rock is actually habitable in any way but by the most extreme, deep-space life-support system methods."
Into the fray stepped Garner "Bill" Castell. He made an offer to pay the finders' fees, as well as other, unspecified costs which were called, at the time, "good faith payments," a phrase now thought to have been a rather ironic pun masking other machinations having little to do with faith in any but the most venal sense.
Indeed, rumors surfaced that Consortium efforts to raise the required monies were being sabotaged by CoDominium Intelligence agents, although no specific allegations ever came to trial. Speculations also linked CoDominium Intelligence agents with Garner "Bill" Castell himself, whose past, after all, was not only a closed but a lost book.
And then members of Castell's own church began objecting to his actions.
Despite all this, in 2036 Haven was unilaterally declared habitable, and the very next year Garner "Bill" Castell bought the license to colonize the place he christened Haven. He died that same year, on the steps of his Fortress of Harmony in Austin, while having a shouting match with church members who charged him with having looted church coffers to finance a pie-in-the-sky promised land that only a chosen few might see.
In retrospect, it is now thought that perhaps Castell's church was given the license to colonize Haven precisely because he had not only the money to pay for the privilege, but the people ready and waiting for a new place to go.
When Garner "Bill" Castell died, his son, Charles, a scholarly man of thirty-six Earth Standard years, took over the leadership of the church, and actually led the group called The Chosen to colonize Haven, which his father had literally died to give them.
I
They say Charles Castell knelt and kissed the ground when he arrived on Haven, but I know better because I'm the oaf who tripped him. My name's Kev Malcolm, and at sixteen standard years of age, I stood beside our leader in the open side hatch, half proud to be one of the reverend's acolytes, half scared to death I'd do something clumsy.
Sure enough, as the freighter's shuttle was winched against the dock, I somehow got my foot in the wrong place.
Castell smiled, I remember that. His gaze scanned the horizon of Haven, his world, his church's place of salvation. "Eden," he whispered. I looked up at his face so serious and serene, with its strong nose and jutting chin. Just looking at him got me giddy. Power was ours, I knew, because we were blessed. We knew the key-note of the Cosmos, and we Harmonized fully, our bodies and souls as one with the All.
Fishy freshwater breezes entered the hatch now, wafting away some of the stench of the transport.
The fast leg of our journey had been accomplished in a freighter, with us as piggyback cargo. At nine hundred souls, we were too few to justify, or to afford, hiring an entire transport, which can carry, they say, up to fifteen thousand people. I'd hate to imagine such crowding, and turned my attention back to my immediate surroundings.
We heard sounds of water lapping, a lone bird or something calling out in harsh joy, and the murmur at our backs of the nine hundred Chosen, each eager for a first glimpse of the new, the promised, land. With darkness behind us, we stood in the hatch in orange light, squinting.
I studied Reverend Castell's eyes, seeking a clue. Did he see his destiny as he absorbed the first sights of his hard-won, costly last chance? Did he smell on the chilly air a cornucopia of plenty, or the stench of decay? Were any of his senses of this world, or all?
Someone said our First Prayer, "Be still as the silence/At the heart of the note/As it swells to fill the song," as if intoning a hymn, and Reverend Castell broke his pose to step forward. The shuttle bumped the dock.
The next thing I knew a look of surprise crossed his face and he sprawled forward onto the dirt levee on which the dock was built.