My name is Laura Kirk. I am a 25 year old sacred sound practitioner, children’s educator and minister, peace activist, and community organizer.
This is the story of how Sacred Sound Circle began.
As a young girl, my favorite feeling in the world was sitting in the vast space that was the sanctuary of my church. I loved how still I felt, how connected and embraced. I savored listening to how rich the silence was, and how quickly the silence could become so full, resonating with cascading organ tones and voices.
Sacred Sound Circle was founded because, for me and so many others, sound, music, and dance are fundamental to who I am.
Sound sparked my initial yearning to connect with something greater than myself, and it pulled me into spaces of community, connection, and transformation.
Sound was also my doorway into the many religions and traditions that have shaped my understanding of identity, divinity, and purpose - changing me forever.
Raised in the Christian tradition, the psalms I chanted and hymns I sung imbued me with the sense that divinity was not a distant entity, but an intimately present reality, actuated through service, justice, and peace work.
This calling led me into teenage activism - violence prevention, environmental and racial justice, community service - until the weight of human suffering I encountered brought on spiritual crisis.
I realized I carried the same fear and anger I was trying to heal in the world. Overwhelmed and disillusioned, I resolved to seek a new way.
I began practicing meditation, contemplation, and prayer - and learned that inner work to still fear and judgement is required to change the world. (Who knew!)
Owing to my growing passion for exploring new spiritual practices, I fell in love with cultivating interfaith understanding and friendship. I founded the first interfaith club on my college campus for sharing wisdom.
While it was daunting to imagine myself attending the services of religions I did not grow up in, I felt far less trepidation towards attending musical gatherings. I did not need any special knowledge to participate—I just had to be willing to listen.
In my early days of this musical exploration, I came across a practice called kirtan, originating from Indian religious traditions. In this practice, individuals or groups sing the names and qualities of God to cultivate devotion, love, and compassion. With my mind centered in the music, I found myself experiencing profound inner love for all others, for creation, and for the vast unknowable.
My life was never the same. From then on I knew, with a knowledge beyond comprehension, that sacred sound was my path.
Kirtan was totally new to me, but it didn't feel like it. In fact, it felt deeply familiar. To my utter surprise and delight, this practice had family everywhere I looked: ancient and contemporary - Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, and Sikh - indigenous, religious, spiritual, cultural, scientific, and secular.
It came in every form imaginable: worship and praise music, mantra and chant, sound baths and meditations, song circles and drum circles, sound healing and ecstatic dance.
The list is, quite literally, inexhaustible. Name a category, and therein you will find a communal, participatory form of sound based spiritual practice.
I participated in these practices at every chance - and with each new experience, my realization grew that sacred sound practices hold unique and stunning power.
They transform the hearts and minds of practitioners. When practiced together, they connect individuals with a mysterious degree of profundity; music naturally opens us to those around us, sowing seeds of friendship and community. Music also tends to convey the philosophical underpinnings of its tradition with dexterity and clarity, facilitating rich interfaith and intercultural understanding - no scholarly study necessary.
In awe and joy, I recognized that this sacred mix of of inner transformation, community connection, and interfaith bridge building holds extraordinary potential for those seeking to build a better world.
I knew that if we could foster networks of connection, communication, and outreach for sacred sound, we could bring profound benefit to all beings.
There was just one problem. No matter where I looked, I could find no such networks. I knew that the need for a network had become urgent. It’s not that communities don’t exist - quite the opposite (there are many!). They are just difficult to find.
Take my experience searching for kirtan communities as an example. I first discovered kirtan through books and playlists. Finding an in-person community to practice with was far more difficult. My initial Google searches turned up nothing near me. Knowing no where else to turn, I was at a dead end. Only by a stroke of luck did I stumble across a yoga studio with a small group of practitioners. It was through them that I discovered there was a sprawling network of groups all around me, connected via Whats app groups, email lists, and text chains. If I hadn’t found someone who knew, I would have never found the groups that would open me to a world of nurturing, loving, and supportive communities.
The solution began to feel unbearably simple: an online social networking platform, equipped with community building and logistical support tools, would revolutionize the accessibility of scared sound practices.
It felt unimaginable for me to continue sitting on the sidelines as a passive recipient of these practices. My experience in service and community organizing work provided a framework of action. Sacred Sound Circle was born.
None of these experiences are unique to me. For so many of us, an encounter with suffering awakened us to a life of spiritual practice and service. And for many of us, the path to finding our practice was confusing, long, and often times lonely. Each of us here have undoubtedly encountered a practice community that was the answer to our prayers, and would move mountains to serve the flourishing of that community.
Now is the time. Sacred Sound Circle is more than a platform—it is an invitation. An invitation to serve the flourishing of the communities that have changed our lives, and to help make them more easily accessible to all those who are searching.
You are invited — practitioners, seekers, organizers, dreamers, and lovers of humanity — to join us in building this movement. Together, we can amplify voices of compassion, cultivate networks of belonging, and unleash the profound power of sacred sound to heal, to unite, and to awaken a better world.
There are so many ways to support this work. I hope you will consider finding a way to join us.