God Will Watch Over

May you find a reason to sing today.

Advent Reflection VII: Pay Attention

Are we almost there?
How much longer till I'm safe in bed at home?
How much money do I owe for what I own?
How much left to pay?

Chorus:
Pay attention
Pay attention
This is it, more or less
Who would ever guess
This is the best of times
This is the worst of times
And it's passing
Pay attention.

Is it over yet?
How much longer does the hidden road go on?
How much farther till I cross the Rubicon?
How much toll to pay? (Chorus)

This isn't where I thought I'd be --
I ignored my own design.
But if you're here, if you're with me
I like it fine, I like it fine...

Someone tells a joke
Someone marries, someone else is giving birth
Someone's praying, someone's buried in the earth
All of us will pay -- (Chorus)

Words/Music copyright 1994 D. G. Bly

Listen to it here. buy it here: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/themiserableoffendersdeb

RIP Deborah Griffin Bly. Miss you already.

God Help Us

Deborah Griffin Bly and Ana Hernandez used to sing together as The Miserable Offenders. Their album God Help Us is now available as a digital download from cdbaby.com: here: God Help Us

If you prefer, you can get it here:
http://www.amazon.com/God-Help-Us/dp/B005SZROA6


It's also available on iTunes, but not in the original CD order (which we actually thought about): search for God Help Us or The Miserable Offenders.

We make the most money if you use cdbaby, but if you can pass these links around to your friends and rate the CD, more people will be able to find God where they are. Thanks for being our athletic supporters. And yes, Virginia, we're toyin with the idea of making more music, but haven't decided anything past dinner so far. We're thinking Thai. I'm having what she's having.

Entering Life's Rhythms: Drumming a Way into Sacred Time

I wrote this article for The Witness magazine in March 2001. WARNING: It's long. I'm posting it here because I was thinking of my indebtedness to Don Campbell, author of The Mozart Effect and the brand new Healing at the Speed of Sound, who has end stage pancreatic cancer. He encouraged me at a very low time in my life, and turned me on to the world of music and healing. He was also the person who suggested that Ruth Cunningham and I should sing together, which we currently do as the eponymous HARC.

Entering Life's Rhythm's: Drumming a way into sacred time

God set the sun to rise and set every day, and put the earth into orbit. The moon makes it around the earth every 28 days or so, the locusts come back every seven years, Advent comes before Christmas, Lent before Easter, Sunday before Monday, and work comes before play -- a really bad idea. We eat, sleep, and brush our teeth, our hearts seem to pump without any prompting, and many other events and phenomena seem to repeat themselves in the same order and at the same intervals through time. We start out riding tricycles, graduate to bicycles, and, if we're lucky enough to reach enlightenment, we get to view it all as one big interconnected unicycle. Through it all, we are rhythm.

The first thing we recognize on this earth is the vibration of our mother's blood through her veins and arteries, and later on, the sound of our mother's heartbeat and breathing while we are in the womb. The ear being the first sense organ to develop, somewhere between the fifth and sixth month of gestation, we begin to actually hear these internal rhythms. By 28 to 30 weeks, we can also respond to both the internal and external rhythms (by kicking or changing our heart rate). After we are born, there aren't many opportunities for such a nice rhythmic massage.

Rhythm is the most powerful organizational tool we've got. Since the ancients, rhythm has been used to mark communal events. The earliest drummers were women, using frame drums for liturgy. Look what rhythm did for King David, and the Benedictines; we're still hooked on the psalms. Armies still use drums to boost morale and energize tired troops (maybe if more people drummed, we wouldn't need wars), shamans use rattles like white noise, to scatter thought, and there's nothing better than Motown or the Poulenc "Gloria" to clean by; believe me, a clean house is a successful revolution. Rhythm has been used to celebrate, to warn of a storm coming, to ensure a good harvest and to accompany farm work. Dancers clap, stomp on the floor, make mouth noises, wear ankle bells or use their bodies as percussion instruments.

So what is it about rhythm that energizes us? What is the hypnotic effect that can happen with any kind of music, from the beginning of "She Loves You," by the Beatles, to a Bach fugue, to the latest sounds coming from the DJ's booth above the dance floor? The scientists say that it is the nature of rhythm to turn on the switches in the limbic system (or what used to be called the "visceral" or "reptilian brain"). The adrenaline starts to surge (bringing up our emotions and feelings), the information is then processed by the neocortex, and we are moved in myriad ways. Or something like that. I can never pay attention long enough to figure it all out; I get distracted somewhere around "She Loves You, yeah, yeah, yeah, YEAHHH..." In her book, When the Drummers Were Women, Layne Redmond says: "Scientific studies have shown that our moods, emotions, thoughts and bodily processes are rhythms of chemical energy. The Puerto Ricans call this fundamental rhythm that marks how we walk, talk, and interact tumbao. It is an expression of the totality of our personality." The verb tumbar means to knock down, to knock over, and is used figuratively in the sense of mixing somebody up, taking the senses away from you, or messing with your whole sense of being.

Rhythm can also calm and soothe us. It's no accident that one of the basic forms of meditation consists of counting the breath. If you're trying to get the kids to sleep, lullabies work like a charm by helping to slow the breath, relaxing them, and sending them to never-never land. Think of the tune "Silent Night," and breathe with it. We are all made of the same stuff. We all breathe the same air, the same air that people have been breathing since the dawn of time. I like to think that all of my favorite people have breathed the same air throughout history. Make a date for you and your breath, and put it in your book. Take a moment, find a quiet place to breathe, and think of all of the people whose air you are sharing.

Rhythm is more like dancing than knowing. We don't have to control or even be aware of what's going on for it to have a profound effect on us. It's our body that hears where to go next. When my uncle was in the hospital a few years ago for an angioplasty, the nurses were worried that his oxygen levels weren't improving a few days after the surgery. They were watching his monitors, and as they watched, his oxygen level rose to normal. A nurse asked, "What are you doing?" He said, "I was just lying here singing John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt in my head." She said, "Well, keep singing it, because your levels are great." The body hears where to go next.

I first began drumming around 1990. I had a Djembe from Ghana, in West Africa, and had been told that it was used to invoke the divine spirit and its healing power. Then, while on vacation, I was in a beautiful park in Ithaca, N.Y., with some friends, picnicking on the lake. A man walked by and said "Drums for Sale." I couldn't believe what he had in his arms: four rectangular boxes with slits of various lengths and widths cut into the top that looked like tongues. I called him over and asked him to show me these "drums" he had made, which he called "slit drums." The sound took my breath away. I needed a slit drum. He volunteered that he had "more in the van," so I went for a peek, and found one that I really liked. I proceeded to drive my friends crazy all the livelong day, banging away on that drum.

I started to do some research on slit drums. According to Adrienne Kaeppler (in Mickey Hart's Planet Drum), "Slit drums ... are believed to represent ancestral voices which encourage the living to dance into a state of communal ecstasy in order to banish personal preoccupations and bring those dancing into communion with collective forces passed on from the dead to the living and those still to come."

Whoa! One world at a time, please! But I do need to banish personal preoccupations, who doesn't? Wondering about those collective forces, I looked up "spirit": geist, ruach, geest, spirare, esprit. Why had I never noticed that they all either mean ghost or breath as well as spirit? What else was I missing?

I decided to check out the effects of the drum on myself first. I started with the heartbeat rhythm, because it is the thing we all share. I found I could drum myself right into a trance if I kept the beat at about twice my heart rate. Years later I learned from Don Campbell (author of The Mozart Effect and expert on music and healing) that if you drum a simple eighth-note rhythm at 120-140 beats per minute for more than three minutes, it balances the brainwaves, and you start going into a trance. (Kids and people with blood pressure problems, do not try this at home! Talk to your doctor first. There are very real physical consequences when you mess around with your natural rhythms.)

The heartbeat is still the first rhythm I teach in drumming workshops. Along with our breathing, it is the most fundamental aspect of our lives, and just one of many basic things we do not pay attention to. It's also simple to learn, and anyone can do it. Close your eyes, place your hand on your heart or wrist, and feel your heartbeat. If you have trouble, don't worry, you're not dead yet. Imagine the rhythm of your heart. Now, begin to vocalize the rhythm with your voice. When you feel comfortable sounding out your heartbeat, try playing it on your drum, using your hands or a mallet. Try it for five minutes, and see if you don't feel both relaxed and energized.

The point of using the heartbeat is so that you can begin to get acquainted with your internal rhythms, and also to help you feel more relaxed. Try it with a partner, facing each other. It is a good exercise to enhance listening skills, concentration and intimacy. With your eyes open this time, each begin to play your own heartbeat rhythm. You will soon find that you are in synch. This synchronization is called entrainment, the force that brings two or more bodies vibrating with similar rhythmic cycles into alignment. Go into a music store, and strike an A tuning fork, and all the A strings on all the guitars along the walls will begin to vibrate in sympathy. Place two pendulum clocks in a room and come back a day later, and they'll be in synch too. Sit in a drum circle and lay out for a second, and your drum will still vibrate. That many things happen without my "help" was a huge lesson.

Drumming has been a positive revolution in my life. Like most of us, I grew up in that either/or, right/wrong worldview. Let's just say I did not flourish there. I see more possibilities on the margins, and luckily, in a drum circle, everyone's on the margin. The people who come to a drum circle are the ones who are supposed to be there, to energize the spirit and explore unity through music. No words are needed. If you are six or 90, broken or whole, happy or depressed, tuned in or out of touch, blind, deaf, lame, too smart for your own good or not too bright, a democrat, republican, anarchist or atheist, you have a place in the circle. You are a part of the community. Rhythm is a universal language, and you are the rhythm. I like the image of a circle, because it speaks to the mystic in me. In a circle, everyone is equidistant from the center. There is always room for anyone to come and go. All the members are equal in the circle, each with a voice that can be heard by everyone else. Everyone takes turns leading the transitions to new rhythms. The kind of music that is made in a circle is based upon that circle's relationship with itself rather than any externally imposed expectations.

Since I've been practicing drumming without a license, I have witnessed drumming cure headaches and relieve the pain for a woman with a brain tumor. I've seen the faces of many lighten and radiate the joy that was secretly lurking. I've seen bodies that were stiff become fluid, and people who are shy come out to play. I've seen angry people find a place to work it out. People have told me of their lowered blood pressure and of their reduced stress and anxiety. I've also seen how giving people a rhythm that they're not ready for looks exactly like test anxiety. There's a lot of shallow breathing and tense faces; heads go down, people get timid, stop listening, and withdraw from interaction.

I used to be affected by the rhythms of everything and everyone around me. It was distracting and depressing. I felt out of "synch." We often say that when we're getting sick. Trying to play to another's rhythm isn't healthy if the cost is ignoring your own. Drumming has enabled me to hear my own rhythms amid the noise and haste, helps me to find and maintain my balance, and helps to keep my blood pressure down. The increased awareness of my breathing has helped me to throw away both cigarettes and asthma medicine. Drumming has also enhanced my ability to listen, increased my level of patience, helped to work through grief and frustration, and given me a much more relaxed and positive outlook on life, because of its unique ability to ground me and bring me into the magic place of sacred time.

What We Need Is Here

More often than one might think, a simple tune is the perfect vehicle for people to learn how to negotiate, re-mind, and re-claim the gifts and skills they already possess. What We Need Is Here is the most perfect simple song I know; its five small words pointing to the heart of gratefulness. Written by Amy McCreath, What We Need Is Here sprang from her reading the poetry of Wendell Berry.

The Wild Geese

Horseback on Sunday morning,
harvest over, we taste persimmon
and wild grape, sharp sweet
of summer's end. In time's maze
over fall fields, we name names
that went west from here, names
that rest on graves. We open
a persimmon seed to find the tree
that stands in promise,
pale, in the seed's marrow.
Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear,
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye
clear. What we need is here.

By Wendell Berry, from Selected Poems of Wendell Berry

I've been teaching Amy's song for a couple of years now, and although I don't use it the same way every time and the people are always different (even when I use it twice with the same group), it always elicits beauty and astonishment as people experience themselves falling into a group growth mind-set they hadn't noticed, believed existed, or paid much attention to. I hear about it a lot, after the fact. Here's the latest shout out from Michael, who attended a retreat in Idaho:

"I've been talking quite a bit about the experience. I taught the choir "What We Need is Here" just to see how they would respond to stepping outside their comfort zone with harmony and in learning something without music. I could not believe the response. The harmony and movement were amazing, and they ended together automatically. The looks on their faces were priceless.

I have been trying to get this group to understand their talent for a long time. I've told them repeatedly how the music they say they can't sing is not beyond their ability but simply beyond their comfort level. I think they are starting to get it, thanks to what I learned."

Someone once said, "Most things aren't difficult, some things are just unfamiliar."

I say we know things we don't even know we know, and if we quieten ourselves, listen deeply, and allow ourselves to play with one another, we begin to hear them, and they will become more familiar and useful to us. As loving people. As a species. Even in a room full of people.

Thanks to Michael, his choir, and all the people at the Idaho retreats; to Wendell Berry for the last three sentences which remind me that abandon is a place we might be able to access in a group, that how far we go depends on our ability to cultivate quietness of heart and clarity of sight. Special thanks to Amy McCreath who has an uncanny knack for discerning the most important words and setting them to songs that turn out to be both simple and truly expansive. A fine gift.

Tune copyright Amy McCreath. If you'd like to use it, please ask.

A New Year Blessing

Beannacht
For Josie

On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.

And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.

-John O'Donohue

Just buy the book. Really. Go ahead. You'll surely get good use out it.

The Lord is My Shepherd: The 23rd Psalm

Ten years ago, Beliefnet.com asked to license a recording of mine (Mother Ann's Song) to accompany an audiovisual meditation on The 23rd Psalm. It was their first video, my first licensing deal, and was the most popular meditation on their home page for years. It's been a long time since I thought about it, so when it popped into my head this morning, I went to find it. At first I had a hard time, wading through so many ads, navigating down and in, but I finally arrived at the Christian Inspiration page, where lo and behold, there it still is, in front of God and everybody. The visual design was done by Kaeshi Chai, an award winning designer and belly dancer. More than 2000 people have "Liked" it on Facebook (who knew?), and God-only-knows how many people have watched it so far. Check it out, you'll like it, too. If you know someone who's having a hard time this week, you can share it with them.

All blessings of the season to you and yours.

This is Evocative of Christmas

I wonder that "evocative" is the first word reviewers said about my Christmas music, both in 1993 and last fall. Evocative of what - some feeling they can't put their finger on? I don't get it. It's always seemed pretty simple and straightforward to me. Nevertheless, I'd love it if you would take a minute out of your busy life and buy my Christmas music. It's unlike any other Christmas music you've ever heard, it's beautiful and fun, and I need the money 'cause I wanna be rich! Well, not really rich, but I would like to pay January's rent, so, please get out your wallet and start clicking those links. Not only am I nothing without you, I've got nothing without you. Make believe we're next door neighbors and Support Your Local Sacred Musician. Let me help you to dive deeper and smile broader. That's why God put me here. Besides, it's no fun at all to dive deep and smile broadly by myself.

An Unexpected Christmas was recorded last year with the Virginia Girls Choir. You can buy the CD from the Girls Choir directly (click the title), or use the pretty blue link to your right for both downloads and CDs. The Virginia Girls Choir is a diverse group of almost two dozen girls from one dozen schools, 10-15 years old, and so freaking adorable I can hardly stand it! They are directed by the sweet and inventive Dan Moriarty, with whom I collaborated on this project. It was a labor of love, and we know you'll love it. Everyone else does. 75% of your purchase supports the girls choir program, which teaches the girls skills that will serve them their entire lives, and 25% supports me. If you're not yet convinced to take out your wallet, here's the deal from The Description Writing Department (it wasn't me): "The recording contains one gem after another of new and old, imaginative arrangements, fresh accompaniments using instruments often not heard in church (ever seen an udu?), sweet singing by the girls choir, and the warm sound of Ana Hernández's voice and guitar. “The Little Drummer Boy” will fascinate you, the Pachelbel Canon in “The First Nowell” will surprise you, the dances at the end of “Break Forth, O Beauteous, Heavenly Light will delight you, and you’ll be touched by the beautiful simplicity of “Silent Night”. Don’t miss Shirley Erena Murray’s text “Carol Our Christmas” about how New Zealanders experience the season and the lovely Welsh lullaby “Suo Gan.” You’ll discover more . . ." You really will discover more.

If you've already got a copy, please think of someone who, if you give them a copy soon, will be moved to buy copies for all of their friends. On the off chance you're still not convinced, listen to some complete tunes (5, 11, 12, & 13) here.

Those of you who think I peaked in 1993 (Keepin' the Baby Awake: Music for Advent and Christmas) will be pleased to know that if you download The Greatest Hits of The Miserable Offenders (for the low, price of $9.99), you will find my tune for A Stable Lamp is Lighted (text by Richard Wilbur) along with a dozen other cool hymn arrangements, both Christmas-y and not. I'm as surprised as the rest of you, having missed the fact that the MO's had even one "hit", much less an entire album of them! Yes, Breathe on Me, Breath of God is there, too. Tell your friends.

If you don't know about The Miserable Offenders, the following tutorial is brought to you by The Description Writing Department (still not me): "The duo of Deborah Bly and Ana Hernández, known at The Miserable Offenders, created imaginative and enduring music together. Their short-lived but powerful collaboration leaves an archive of performances and recordings that remain examples of how the ministry of two dedicated musicians can instill a liveliness to music the church has long sung and yet maintain a depth of spirit and message.

As always, please forward this info to all your friends, and thank you from the bottom of my heart for your support.

Come, Come, Whoever You Are

Come Whoever You Are led by Ana Hernandez from All Saints Company on Vimeo.

Greetings of the Autumn, dear ones.
I've been way too busy to write, but here I am again with too much time on my hands. Click on the arrowhead to see and hear this stunning tune by Dale Zola, with text by Rumi (pacing up and down by Ana). I taught this in Ottawa in August at a Music That Makes Community Conference. It was taught without black dots on paper ("the music"), because I've found using the music to be both help and hindrance in teaching this tune. It took longer than what you see here, but every time I teach it with the music (and the readers always beg for it), it goes from being a little insecure, but very musical, to being stiff and lacking in anything resembling musicality or community. All the heads go down, never to be seen or heard from again. What's the use of having strong singers if their heads are buried in a book? Alice Parker once said (or maybe she's said it a thousand times:) 95% of the music is not on the page. What's worse than singing the words "Come, come, whoever you are" than singing it to no one at all and not meaning it? Don't forget to pray the things you're singing, otherwise you're missing a huge piece of the pie.

Now that I mention it, there is one experience I had this year that struck me as the worst musical disconnect I've been a part of in a long time.

I was sitting at a round table with about a dozen people, one of whom was a very famous teacher. He turned on a CD and asked us to listen, learn and sing a chant as a centering meditation. The text was something like "wherever you turn, there is the face of God." I listened, marked, learned and inwardly digested the recording, and then opened my eyes to sing and see the face of God, expecting to be able to play with the people around the table, but not one person opened their eyes to look. This went on for more than five minutes! What is up with that?

Pay attention, people. Life's short. Get out of your heads, Come, Come again! Come! Let the singing move you to action. Build a well, Occupy Wall Street, visit the sick, feed the hungry, clothe the naked. We can do it all while singing, and the world will be better for it.

Directions for Chanting (stolen from John Wesley and modernized for the 21st.c)

Ya know how sometimes you pick up an article that you haven't read in years and realize that the first time you read it, some mystical information was passed directly into your soul, and then you realize that you are the way you are NOW because of what you allowed inside THEN? Here's something that was hard-wired into me about thirty years ago. I happened to open The Sacred Art of Chant: Preparing to Practice this week for no reason at all and there it was. Feel free to post it where singers, choir directors, and members of your local garage band will be sure to pay heed.
*********
*********
...It was originally published as "Directions for Singing" by John Wesley in his 1761 collection Select Hymns. I found it on a bulletin board in a choir room long ago, and have adapted the language to be a little more modern. I've tried to be faithful to the spirit of the original.

Directions for Chanting

1. Learn each chant thoroughly; take it to heart. Learn as many as you please this way.

2. Listen closely and try to sing the chants as they are taught, without altering or mending them at all.

3. Sing often with others, as frequently as you can. Don't decide to pass up a chance to chant with others because you're tired or stressed out. Go anyway, sing with your whole soul, and you will find it a blessing.

4. Chant with your whole body, and with good courage. Be careful not to chant as if you are half-asleep; lift up your voice with strength. Don't fear the sound of your voice, and do not be ashamed of its being heard by others. Aim for a unity of spirit. Your voice is a unique gift from God, given for your health and happiness.

5. Sing modestly. Don't bawl, or try to drown out your neighbor who doesn't sing as well as you, so you can be heard above and distinct from the rest of the group. Chant with the intent of making harmony, and strive to unite your voice together with other voices to make one clear, melodious sound.

6. Sing in time. Make an effort to identify and stay with the group pulse. Listen to the leading voices and breathe with them so you don't fall behind the group beat. This will help to entrain the group energy, and build a sound community.

7. Above all, sing spiritually. Have an ear to God in every word you sing. Aim at hearing God more than pleasing yourself or anyone else. In order to do this, attend to the sense of what you sing, and see that you don't get carried away with the sound, but offer your song to God and the group continually.

Bobby McFerrin Being Interview

Click on the title to see Krista Tippett interviewing Bobby McFerrin on improvisation, creativity, his upbringing, and life in general. This is one very rich and lovely hour for your life.

A Day in the Life...

Today has been a fairly representative day in my life, so here's a glimpse.

Wake up, clean the kitchen, make coffee. I don't always clean the kitchen in the morning, but I was too tired to deal with it last night.

I realize I'm still tired after 8 hours of sleep because I just spent two days in the recording studio singing Christmas carols with the Virginia Girls Choir (Project No. 1), and it's only August. I think that will make anyone tired.

I start reading emails and am reminded to submit a tune list for Sunday night's Lifeline at Park Avenue Christian in the city (project No. 2). Do I teach a new tune, or go over the last two new tunes and a couple of older tunes I don't want them to forget? Hmm... thinking goes on, which I ignore while

I pour coffee and talk to a friend on the phone. While on phone, am reminded that I'm expecting a phone call from the West coast about next Saturday's Community Music Making workshop (project No. 3) in Portola Valley, CA (wherever that is), somewhere near SF. At least I know one person who lives there, and that makes me happy.

Think about breakfast. Sounds good. More coffee first.

Forget about breakfast as I read new tunes in my email. The one person I know in Portola Valley is also working with me on project No. 4, a hymnal revision called (goes off to look up name of title, which I really must learn soon - ah) One Heart and One Song. It's a revision of a hymnal called Music for Liturgy. 

Start to sort mail from the last three days, most of which is submissions for project No. 4, which had to wait until after I finished singing most of Christmas. I'll have more Christmas in September, and I've already had Christmas arranging in May and Christmas recording in June (most days over 100 degrees). I prefer my Christmu-sez in December.

I find a few lovely new tunes, some dull things, and a few things that don't fit the criteria at all for the hymnal revision. We're looking for unaccompanied music for congregational use. That means no instruments, just three or four-part interesting things to sing. Think Sacred Harp, Sweet Honey, Georgian Singing, Sardinian pastoral singing, Hungarian Women. The links are cool, people. Imagine you showed up at church and it sounded like that. You'd be on a spiritual bender before you knew it.

I sing at my desk for a couple of hours and realize it's time for a late lunch. No putting it off. It's almost 2 PM, and I forgot breakfast. Time is an artificial construct, unless I start to get cranky. Then I know it's time to eat.

More tune reading. Lots of fun. It's good sight-reading practice. More correspondence. It's funny how much correspondence I've had in the last week - the deadline for submissions must be in a few days. People have even been sending me their friend's tunes, so I've even been getting in touch with people to make sure they'd like to submit their submission (Song alert: I just dropped in to see what condition your submission was in.).

I love my life.

Wake from my song stupor when the phone rings about 4:15. Lester McKenzie from project No. 3. We've never met. Seems nice. We find a good page and climb on, so now we're on the same page. Great. Gonna have fun next week.

There was much more to my day, like writing a grocery list for the shopping trip that never was, sending Christmas carol files to Virginia, talking to another friend (whose helpful husband went wild with the weed-wacker and cut down her herb patch. O.M.G!), talked to my mom while looking for my sister Janet (who, it seems can't stay in her bed while in the hospital): Me: "Where's Janet?" Ma: "In the HOSpital." No one can make you feel foolish like your mother, even when you've already called the freaking hospital and no one has answered Janet's alleged phone. I told my mother about my friend and the herb patch debacle, and she just said " That's the Stupid Gene. They've all got it." Me: "All of them?" Ma: "Every last one. If I've taught you anything, it's that they all have it to a greater or lesser extent." Me: Really? Ma: "Yep." I called my friend back and told her what my mom had said about every man that ever was, and she laughed and said "She's right. I'm hoping my son doesn't have it, but it may be too much to hope for." Who knew?

The women in my life make me laugh. A lot.

Try calling my sister again, who's wandered back to her hospital bed and who sounds better today (Woo Hoo!). I decided to celebrate Christmas a little early and have a glass of wine, looked at the clock, and it was almost 7 PM. Never sent that tune list for Sunday (Project No. 2). Sh**!

The email men deliver a batch of tunes to look at. Print and read through. Look at the clock, it's 8:30. Who knew?

Time to think about dinner...

We All Need a Simple Tune

I spend a lot of time on the quest for a simple tune, hummed while washing the dishes or driving the car. A simple tune, humming me to the place that has been calling as long as I can remember. A simple tune, breathing me in and out, over and over, renewing my strength, bolstering my resolve. A simple tune, simple enough to be sung by everyone – simple enough so we can all forget for the moment about how we came to be humming this tune at this time. A simple tune that seems to be humming us toward the places we’re feeling called to. A simple tune, one that you can just sing because it gets you there, wherever you intend your “there” to be. Enough simple tunes for everyone, drawers filled with simple tunes showing up like mismatched socks – for the long line at the grocery store, for the waiting room at the hospital, for all of us at work, for getting the flu shot, for giving the flu shot, for rowing a boat, for the picket lines, for the library (a very soft, simple tune), and for taking out the garbage (accompanied by trash can lids). Tunes for unexpected guests arriving at inappropriate times (I think the beginning of that one is “Where have all the towels gone?”). Tunes to usher us in and out of all the transitions, big and small: tunes for the births and deaths, the long healings (maybe a nice, slow, green tune), the not-healings, the uncertainties, the not-having-a-clue-what-to-do-next-times. A tune to give us the guts to speak the truth to power, another to help us hold our tongue when we are about to blow it by speaking that last terrible thing, and one to help us stop and make ourselves rest before we run out of emotional, physical, and spiritual gas.

A simple tune that calls forth the vibrations around us and brings me out of myself to experience them with you. A simple tune to help me pray and to help me to help you pray and another for when we’re apart (and maybe one or two that you only share with God). A simple tune to help me hear through your pain and anger to what you are trying to say, and another to help you to hear through my pain and anger (maybe that’s the same tune, or maybe we just sing it backwards and meet in the middle). One to assuage guilt and shame. A simple tune to help us manifest our sweetest selves. Another to help us settle down and listen to the wind in the trees, one to sing along to the rhythm of the waves, one in thanksgiving for the beauty of the rivers, one for the lakes, and one to hum with the owls (or the dog, or the cat) as we drift off to sleep.

         

A simple tune to help us all reach the place where the world is breathing, has been breathing since before breath and spirit were the same thing. A simple tune to renew our spirits, tune us up, find our balance, and keep us attuned. A simple tune to make you laugh. A simple tune to calm the babies before they sleep (there are a lot of these around already – may desperation drive us to song in other situations as well). A simple tune for the bad dreams, to ameliorate them and restore us to our sweet selves (this one might be a four-part chant, but “rain, rain, go away” comes to mind).

Sure, simple tunes can be hard to come by in this world that seems so often out of tune. But a wise man once said, “Sometimes heaven is just a new pair of glasses.”

Excerpted from The Sacred Art of Chant: Preparing to Practice, by Ana Hernández ©2005, Skylight Paths Publishing, Woodstock, VT