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Use with care, use with care, use with care.

This song is listed as being generally Native American – which is likely all that the STJ commission could find at the time. A link to the source material, Songs for Earthlings, is now dead.

However, I did a search for the lyrics and discovered that one musician/environmental educator, Hawk Hurst, identified this as being from the Hupa tribe of northern California. There are additional verses in the version he’s printed, including two to grandparents,  and planets and animals showing up too.

The Earth is our Mother, we must take care of her;
The Earth is our Mother, we must take care of her.

Chorus:
heyyunga hoyunga, heyyung yung;
heyyunga hoyunga, heyyung yung

Her sacred ground we walk upon with every step we take;
Her sacred ground we walk upon with every step we take;

Chorus

The Earth is our Mother, she will take care of us;
The Earth is our Mother, she will take care of us;

Chorus

The Sky is our Father, we will take care of him;
the Sky is our Father, we will take care of him.

Chorus

The Sea is our Sister, we will take care of her;
the Sea is our Sister, we will take care of her.

Chorus

The Forest is our Brother, we will take care of him;
the Forest is our Brother, we will take care of him.

Chorus

And I say use with care because the last thing we need to do in our congregations is use this without acknowledging the culture from which it comes. I’ve talked several times throughout this practice about cultural appropriation and the use of music from cultures that are not our own; it’s a danger to just use pieces like this as spectacles – something we drag out once a year – just as it’s a danger to use them without acknowledgement or change the meaning or intent. We do a disservice to these rich cultures that have already been badly treated, and we throw mud in the eye of our first principle. So just… use with care.

Musically, I’m neither here nor there with it. I don’t love this piece, nor do I hate it. It honestly just doesn’t speak to me, despite my high pagan days. I think even then I wasn’t attracted to the native American traditions – I leaned toward the Germanic and Celtic (not surprising, since I’m German and English).  It’s easy to learn and can probably be done in sort of a round style, with the chorus being the second part of the round.

A programming note: tomorrow is the last day of Hymn by Hymn.

I know, right? How did that happen? It seems simultaneously like it was just yesterday and a hundred years ago that I started this spiritual practice. We’ll celebrate our last hymn tomorrow, and I’ll have a wrap up on Thursday, with a preview of what’s next.

—-

Image – ubiquitous view of the coastline of northern California.

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Way way back on December 16, 2016 – back when this practice was still new – I wrote these words:

I wish I could make sense of this one.  No, seriously. I mean, I get that the lyrics are a rain song, and thus appropriate for a section called The World of Nature. I also get that we want to include voices beyond white men, and thus the hymn led me to learn about Joseph Cotter, Jr, who was an African American playwright and poet who died of tuberculosis at age 24.

But seriously – this too, too simple German tune? … MAYBE this tune sounds okay in a round, but certainly not in a song about dry earth and ancient (I assume native American) drums.

Everything just seems wrong about this.

Well, howdy. I didn’t realize until literally a minute ago that – much like his work on How Sweet the Darkness – had written a much better, much more appropriate tune for these lyrics.

On the dusty earth drum beats the falling rain;
now a whispered murmur, now a louder strain.

Slender, silvery drumsticks on an ancient drum
beat the mellow music bidding life to come.

Chords of life awakened, notes of greening spring,
rise and fall triumphant over everything.

Slender, silvery drumsticks beat the long tattoo —
God, the Great Musician, calling life anew.

The tune that Jason wrote (and which the hymnal commission put together as part of their quodlibet), does echo some of the chant styles we think of as coming from native American tribes, but even without that, the minor key and complexity of the canon works a lot better.

And yet.

I’m not sure even now that I would use it, given the weird conflagration of European American composer, African American lyricist, and sacred imagery that belongs to either (or maybe both?) Native American or African traditions. No offense to Jason, of course – his composition does a whole not more to honor the text than the German-washed-in-the-blood-hymn setting we find in STLT. But even now, I feel uncomfortable as a European American myself considering the use of this without a serious and perhaps belabored content warning.

 

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Sometimes the universe likes to prepare you in advance for something you will need. In some cases, it’s the impulse buy that comes in handy later that month, or a song you hear that the choir director asks you to sing a week later, or in my case, it’s a conversation on Wednesday that leads to your mentor looking for a different word and stumbling upon Dictionary.com’s word of the day, “quodlibet,” then talking about how it’s probably something I learned in music theory classes when I was young but have forgotten the term for…. and now here we are, a quodlibet set before us.

“But Kimberley, it’s a short chant. How can it be a quodlibet?”

Well, it’s….

“Hate to interrupt, but what the heck is a quodlibet?”

I’m so glad you asked. You see, a quodlibet is “a composition consisting of two or more independent and harmonically complementary melodies, usually quotations of well-known tunes, played or sung together, usually to different texts, in a polyphonic arrangement.” Dictionary.com suggests it is humorous, but I don’t think it has to be – Ysaye Barnwell leads communities of singers in quodlibets of spirituals, and those are quite moving.

Anyway, the whole reason this comes up is that there’s a note at the bottom of this chant – a traditional Navajo prayer – that reads “all of the earth chants, numbers 1069-1072, may be sung at the same time.” And handily, they are all in the same key (C), with the same number of bars (8), and honestly with the same basic theme (connecting to earth, sky, and spirit).

What I love about making a quodlibet out of these songs is that it blends themes from various traditions, along with imagery and language. Not all is gendered – although I totally get why some of it is. Some is true chant in that there are only a few words (like today’s). Others in this set are chant-like but have multiple verses. But all of them are easy to learn and easy to blend.

Today’s is a simple but powerful piece invoking the feminine divine; it’s up to you to decide if it’s about the earth, or about god, or about something else entirely… but it is powerful and beautiful.

Ancient Mother, I hear you calling.
Ancient Mother, I hear your song.
Ancient Mother, I feel your laughter.
Ancient Mother, I taste your tears.

You can hear a version of it by Libana from their album A Circle is Cast here.

Update: In my rush to get to a meeting, I neglected to address the need for care on this piece (thanks to Kristin Grassel Schmidt for noting the oversight):

This chant is from the Navajo tradition, a people who lived in the area we now know as New Mexico. They suffered centuries of colonization and conquest from Europeans, but unlike many native American tribes, they still live for the most part on their ancestral land.

The chant we have above is more than likely part of a much larger religious event called a ‘chantway.’ According to NavajoIndian.net,

The Navajo culture is big into ceremonies and rituals. Their performances are usually four days, two days, or one day. Although some chants could be as long as nine days and require dozens of helpers. The most important ceremonies are the ones for treatment of ills, mental and physical. The Navajo are also very big into nature, so almost every act of their life is a ceremony of nature, including their building of the hogan, or the planting of the crops. All the Navajo culture ceremonies are included with songs and prayers.

In the Navajo culture and traditions there are over 24 different Chantway ceremonies performed by singers, and over twelve hundred different sandpainting designs that are available to the medicine men.

I think it’s important to keep in mind that this chant is distinctive to the Navajo, and that we must use care to not assume a ubiquitous “native American” tradition. Just as the Irish are not the Scottish are not the English, the Navajo are not the Hopi are not the Iroquois.

—

Painting is by Navajo artist Tony Abeyta. Learn more about his artwork here.

 

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I’m sure there is someone who loves this piece.

I’m sure there is someone who isn’t bothered by gendered language.

I’m sure there is someone who thinks four verses makes a chant.

I am not that someone.

Children of the Earth,
we have come to
sing to each other,
Sister to Brother,
songs of our Mother Earth.

Children of the Earth,
Autumn soon will
breathe her last breath and
quick will her death bear
witness to Winter’s Birth.

Children of the Earth,
can you feel the
air getting cold as
darkness takes hold and
sleep covers Mother Earth?

Children of the Earth,
we have come
to sit in the darkness,
breathe in the silence,
think of our Mother Earth.

Now don’t get me wrong; it’s not the pagan flavor that bothers me one bit. I often talk about the spiritual journey 1992-2004 as my “high pagan days.” I know that my religious experiences in that time – from the solitary to the communal – inform much of who I am today; it was in those days that I learned the ‘year and a day’ of spiritual study and practice that sparked Hymn by Hymn. I learned a great deal about shared ritual, the power of chant, the richness of the elements.

But I also learned that by and large, pagan chants leave me wanting. I’m not sure why, but there are only one or two that I think of with affection or even remember. And this one is not one of them.

I mean, it’s not a bad song. Phillip Palmer offers something interesting in the middle of his song, but it ends with a thud, and no amount of beautiful arranging by Jeannie Gagné can fix a thud like that.

But let’s not kid ourselves: this is not a chant. A chant is a short musical passage that is repeated. This is a song, with four verses. Yet because of the misleading title, countless winter solstice service coordinators – myself included – tried to figure out of how to use this as a chant, and it just doesn’t play well that way.

Anyway. I’m feeling curmudgeonly about this one. To the person who loves it, sorry.

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What is old is new again…

Back in March, we sang these words, written by English poet Rachel Bates. We know the hymn from STLT as When Windows That Are Black and Cold – a misleading title, which I note in the post about it. We sang it to Danby, a lovely Ralph Vaughan Williams tune that at the time – and still does – seem to me too cheery, too lush. Especially when you consider that Bates very likely wrote this during the Blitz, when blackout conditions in England were so strict a candle flicker would elicit a citation.

Now at the time, I leaned into the stillness of this lyric, not thinking at all about when it might have been written and what it might have been in reaction to. I waxed more poetically about the lyric being “reminiscent of those too-infrequent moments of real quiet without the ambient noise of 21st century motors and currents” and rather missed the point in the third verse, “when the sky is swept of wars.”

Fortunately for us, Jason Shelton didn’t.

When Jason read these words, just after September 11, 2001, he saw them afresh and felt their meaning keenly. Because while we didn’t black out our windows, we did feel terror in those days. We did struggle the day passenger jets started flying again. We did wonder if there were more to come. And we were willing to give up a fair bit of freedom for security.

Jason wrote a choral anthem with these words but with a new tune, one that sits in that slightly unfinished, pensive version of the 5, a 3/2 + 2/2… this kind of five count isn’t jazzy, it is mournful.

As it should be. Jason named the tune Mauro, after a family friend, Dorothy Mauro, who died in the World Trade Center that terrible day. Knowing about Dorothy, knowing the original meaning from Bates, knowing that Jason’s keen artistic sense connected them to create this gorgeous, haunting piece… makes me love this even more.

When windows that are black and cold are lit anew with fires of gold;
when dusk in quiet shall descend and darkness come once more a friend;

When wings pursue their proper flight and bring not terror but delight;
when clouds are innocent again and hide no storms of deadly rain;

And when the sky is swept of wars and keeps but gentle moon and stars,
that peaceful sky, harmless air, how sweet, how sweet, the darkness there.

The tune is fairly easy, as long as folks aren’t expecting a fairly predictable shape note song (because as much as I love them, lets face it: they have a form and are fairly predicable). When talking about war, and terror, and remembering, and peace, I don’t think you can get a much better hymn than this one.

(Also, thanks, Jason, for naming it correctly!)

 

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Happy New Year! In the words of Colonel Sherman Potter (M*A*S*H), “may it be a damn sight better than the old one.” If today’s hymn is any indication, it will be full of beautiful reminders that there is a love holding us.

This haunting song, composed by David Zehavi, is based on a poem by an Israeli hero I’d never heard of but am excited to learn about. This is the opening paragraphs from Wikipedia (there’s a longer bio at J*Grit, the Internet Index of Tough Jews):

Hannah Szenes (often anglicized as Hannah Senesh or Chanah Senesh; Hebrew: חנה סנש‬; Hungarian: Szenes Anikó; July 17, 1921 – November 7, 1944) was a poet and Special Operations Executive (SOE) paratrooper. She was one of 37 Jewish parachutists of Mandate Palestine parachuted by the British Army into Yugoslavia during the Second World War to assist in the rescue of Hungarian Jews about to be deported to the German death camp at Auschwitz.

Szenes was arrested at the Hungarian border, then imprisoned and tortured, but refused to reveal details of her mission. She was eventually tried and executed by firing squad. She is regarded as a national heroine in Israel, where her poetry is widely known.

Wow.

That definitely puts this poem, written in 1943 – just a year before her death – into some perspective.

Eli, Eli shelo yigamer l’olam,
Hachol v’hayam,
Rishrush shel hamayim
B’rak hashamayim,
T’filat haadam.
Hachol v’hayam,
Rishrush shel hamayim,
B’rak hashamayim,
T’filat haadam.

And the English translation:

My God of all, God’s love shall never end;
The sand and the sea,
the rush of the waters.
The thundering heavens,
the prayers of our heart.
The sand and the sea,
the rush of the waters.
The thundering heavens,
the prayers of our heart.

Wow. I might have found a hero to study in this upcoming year – a year where we need faith, grit, a moral center, and resolve.

Musically, I will say that I was  a bit anxious entering it, as I don’t know it and it seemed to go in unexpected places. But then I found this gorgeous version online, and suddenly the song made sense to me both musically and lyrically, even though I don’t know Hebrew. I leave you with this blessing:

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This might be my favorite song in Singing the Journey.

It’s not my favorite congregational hymn – in fact, I’ve yet to encounter a congregation that’s even tried it as a hymn. But every time I hear a duet or choir sing it – or every time I sing it with someone – I weep from its beauty and its truth.

Our piece is composed by friend and colleague Beth Norton, and is based on a Transylvanian folk song and saying. As the UUA Song Information page notes,

This setting of the blessing is a “partner song” with the text in Hungarian in one part and in English in the other part. It was composed for the choir of First Parish in Concord, MA on the occasion of their Musical Pilgrimage to Transylvania in the summer of 2002. The song is dedicated to Concord’s partner congregation in Székelykeresztúr and to the musical pilgrims of First Parish in Concord.

The gorgeous, haunting piece weaves languages and melodies together to connect us to faith and to the Mystery. Even if you don’t believe in God, per se, there is connection.

Hol hit ott szeretet;
hol szeretet ott béke.
Hol béke ott áldás;
hol áldás ott Isten.
Hol Isten ott szükség nin csen.

Where there is faith there is love;
where there is love there is peace.
Where there is peace there is blessing;
where there is blessing there is God.
Where there is God, there is no need.

What I especially love is the idea that love isn’t the end – we often rely on love first and last, helped along by our Universalist assertions that God Is Love, and thus ultimate. No, in this understanding, love leads to peace leads to blessing leads to God/Mystery. But it begins with faith. Simple, impossible faith.

Yeah, that’ll preach.

—

The image is of hand-made needlework, made by Unitarian artists from Szentlaszlo Unitarian Church in Transylvania. It was an offering for the 2016 Goods and Services auction at Unitarian Church North in Mequon, WI – blessings to the member who won!

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One of the Facebook memes going around right now is about memories – namely, asking for people to post memories of you, with a fair bit of delight at the answers. If my friend and colleague Ashley DeTar Birt were to ask, I would be hard pressed to pick just one memory, as our friendship, which began the first week of seminary and continues to this day, is full of great moments.

But the moment I would choose right now would be hearing her sermon “The Prism and the Paint” wherein she used Genesis 1 to search for better ways to talk about light and dark, white and black, good and evil. Using acrylic paints, crystals, and a lamp, she reminded us that the creation story calls day and evening “good” because it is not “void.” As Ashley reminded us, white is the sum of all colors when using light, and black is the sum of all colors when using paints. Light and dark are fullness. Light and dark – whether about the natural world, or our souls, or our skin colors – are good.

This Taizé song, by Jacques Berthier, expresses the fullness of darkness, where we can find sustenance for the journey.

Spanish:
De noche iremos, de noche
que para encontrar la fuente,
sólo la sed nos alumbra,
sólo la sed nos alumbra.

English:
By night, we hasten, in darkness,
to search for living water,
only our thirst leads us onward,
only our thirst leads us onward.

French:
De nuit nous irons dans l’ombre,
car pour decouvrir la source,
seule la soif nous éclaire,
seule la soif nous éclaire.

Italian:
Di notte andremo, di notte,
per incontrare la fonte,
solo la sete c’illumina,
solo la sete ci guida.

German:
In Dunkler Nacht woll’n wir ziehen,
lebendiges Wasser finden,
Nur unser Durst wird uns leuchten,
nur unser Durst wird uns leuchten.

One of the things I love about the music of the Taizé Community is that it’s meant to be sung in the language you choose; in a Taizé service, you will sometimes hear the words of many tongues crossing over one another in the same rich harmonies. It’s a beautiful thing to experience. And I am glad our Hymnal Commission offered the words in five languages here.

It is beautiful, haunting melody, perfect for a Winter Solstice vespers. (If only I’d gotten to this one last week, cry my clergy friends who led solstice services last night!)

It is beautiful, haunting, and full.

It is good.

—
For your listening pleasure:

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Let us live in peace… let us die in peace.

Wow.

The song’s origins are, not surprising, found in the years following the attacks on 9/11:

This song is the inspiration of a Muslim residing in the United States, Samir Badri. Samir recruited the composer(Ted Warmbrand), a Jew, to set his words to a tune, after they both were featured at a Peace rally in Arizona before the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan and then Iraq.

As a song of peace in time of war, it is simply perfect.

And to me, considering how many are fighting ‘the wars at home’ – poverty, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, sexism, ableism – it is in fact a perfect song for today too.

Daoona nayeesh beesalaam;
daoona nayeesh Beeamaan;
daoona nansij;
Ahlaam;
daoona namoot beesalaam.

The English translation from Arabic:

Let us live in peace.
Let us live in inner peace.
Let us weave our dreams together.
Let us die in peace.

Imagine if we sang this with energy at marches and protests against discriminatory laws and tax scams. Imagine if we sang this as a lament at our vigils for transfolk being murdered, for people of color being denied justice, for what will now be a growing number of people dying from poverty and lack of health care, for families torn apart by deportation.

Imagine if we actually lived and died in peace.

—

Some useful musical/performance notes from the UUA Song Information page:

This song can been shared in different ways: Energetically, meditatively, with audience singing along (as echoes after each phrase), and/or with instrumental breaks allowing for English translation during the piece. It has been sung in 3/4, 12/8, and 4/4 time. Sometimes the composer adds the one word ‘tag’ “aHlaam” (dreams) only at the end and sometimes the song fades out with it. At other times he uses it as a bridge to return to the verse. When unaccompanied or with only percussion “aHlaam” can become a descant under the melody. It was put there to assure people could sing at least one word in Arabic. A pause can be added before the last line, “let us die in peace.”

—

The image is from Pixabay contributor Gerd Altmann – even though Pixabay offers royalty-free photos for editorial and non-commercial use without attribution, I wanted to name the photographer in this case because it is such a striking image.

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About 12 years ago, I was honored to be one of ten people asked to pilot a new credentialing program through the UU Musicians Network; it was so exciting to be part of this group, to be deepening and learning and seeing a possible future serving our faith in this way. Among the ten was Widdy, a joyful, funny, and caring music director from Wisconsin, who made me feel welcome even though I’d only joined the UUMN a year prior.

Thus, it made me sad when only a year in, he announced he would be leaving the program to enter seminary – I was going to miss him a lot. Of course, I had to drop out myself, a only a few short months later due to health concerns, and then of course found my own way into seminary a couple of years after that. But I always felt great fondness for him, especially when singing this song. Widdy – known to most as Rev. Ian Riddell – doesn’t know this, but just seeing his song on the page and rejoicing in our friendship does as much for my feeling peaceful and at ease as does this graceful setting of a Buddhist meditation.

May I be filled with loving kindness. May I be well.
May I be filled with loving kindness. May I be well.
May I be peaceful and at ease.
May I be whole.

May you be filled …

May we be filled …

I have used this in so many different settings and for so many topics – because we need the reminder. Over and over. Between this and Sarah Dan’s Meditation on Breathing, we have the makings of a chant cycle to get us through all of these hard times – times when we need to be brought back to ourselves and reminded of our interconnectedness.

May we all be whole.

—

The image is the not-yet-updated seven principles wheel; Ian had developed this new way of examining the principles and handwrote it. After he shared it on Facebook, I set it graphically. There are some updates to be made, and one day we’ll get it printed on things, but for now, it is what it is, and I’m glad Ian let me play with his grand idea. I will say this: it preaches really well, this new way to look at the seven principles.