a song is worth two prayers

This is a song to which I often turn for comfort in difficult times. I like to lead it at these times and it was one of the first songs I was able to lead.

I filmed this a couple of months ago, before my current bout with anemia, still in summery weather, still looking and feeling good.

Sometimes when I sing [what to me are] the most intense and deeply meaningful Sacred Harp songs, I smile a lot. This is not because I am necessarily feeling happy about an event or situation; rather because I feel free from the constraints of being human, because I love to sing with a free voice, and because I love to sing along with my compatriots.

Grab your book (if you are a reader here and don’t have The Sacred Harp yet, you really need to get one for your first New Year’s resolution) and sing along. Page 448 bottom. Let’s have at it.

Read Full Post »

wading in the troubled waters of the human condition

I always have words. The trick is to quiet the mind, to let stillness house itself in my being, in the space before thought. Thought is mostly words by the time it reaches the level of my conciousness, but can I find the peace of no words, of non-doing?

I think of a couple of other posts of mine to which I turn for guidance.

I tried to sing a couple of my favorite, most powerfully comforting Sacred Harp songs, but I am not too well and my voice is shot, so I’ll settle for not singing to you right now.

I will settle for hearing my daughter (in our tiny house where every room is next to every other room so one can hear everything from room to room), I will settle for hearing her sing Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream after I played Sweet Honey in the Rock singing Wade in the Water. She has known the [former] song since she was 3 years old.

And so we keep teaching peace. And we keep fighting for the good and the right and the clear blue truth, even if no action comes of it. We wade in the troubled waters of the human heart.

I know there will be no peace for the families of the victims down in Connecticut, but I wish them peace.

This video is not for the families. This is for us. Sometimes you have to choose sides. Let not their deaths be in vain.

 

Read Full Post »

anniversary of my father’s death

My father died on this date in 1985. This is not news. I’ve mentioned it before, even last year on this day I think.

Don’t worry, this is not a poem, just some scribbles….hopefully I won’t be removing it soon.

8/6/12 anniversary

wanted to be quiet today

counting something on my fingers
the hollow wind that rings
along a cement corridor

when I was looking for the word wind
I lost track of another word
it was on the tip of my mind

pre-frontal cortex
gray matter
does gray matter?

serving up the need
for shutting down

my mother is unraveling
the small bones
27 per hand

I still want to be preserved in salt
camphor to mask my scent

 

Read Full Post »

I tell my sorrow to the stones (William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus)

When we were in Truro a couple of weeks ago, on one of my trips down to the beach, I began to dig in the sand at what promised to be a beautiful, black, smooth rock. The kind you find on the shore all over the beaches of New England. I love these smoothed-out ocean rocks and bring some home on every trip. I love all sorts of rocks, really, and with too many to count to choose from the practice is one of seeing, choosing, letting go, non-doing, randomness, and contemplation.

I am part of a larger whole, I am smaller than nature, I am one with nature, I am part of nature, I am perfect, I am beautiful, I am imperfect, I am flawed, where I am is by chance, who finds me, who finds me beautiful, who holds me. I am subject to forces beyond my control.

I dug the smooth black rock out of the sand. As I walked and held it, rolling it around, moving it from my right to left hand and back again, my palms began to turn an orange-y rust color. AHA! This was not a rock, but some sort of iron ore or a shot. The strange thing is, it does not smell like iron and only a slight undertone of rust is visible in it.

I have looked up iron ore on google images, and what I’ve found is definitely rust-colored and not uniform in shape.

I looked up images for cannonball and for the most part, what I found there is much rounder than what I’ve got.

My mother, who grew up during WWII in Nazi Germany with a violent, drunken father, is often in a state of high alert. As she advances in age, I notice that this state of fear is harder and harder for her to recognize and to release herself from. Still, when I spoke with her on the phone yesterday and she said I was really afraid, I knew she had more legitimate cause than usual.

My brother lives in a suburb of Denver and has been to the movie theater where the shootings occurred. I did not for a minute think that Dan was anywhere near the theater the night of the rampage. He is planning a trip to China right now, packing up many belongings for long-term storage. He is cautious with his time, he does not go to many movies. He is not the type to go to a late-night screening of the latest block-buster.

I know you are in a state of bewilderment, same as I am. I know you know that mentally ill people should not have access to guns. I know you love your family and your fellows.

I know you know about human nature and you know that I know, too.

I know we are all in a state of grief even though our lives go on and that we need to stick to the tasks at hand.

Good grief, people. I hope none of you lost someone in Colorado.

Read Full Post »

Music Monday–The Sacred Harp #288 “White”

Read Full Post »