🤎 songs for transitions 🤎

For the moments we need to feel held, connect, sink in and feel resourced. I use the lyrics earth, sea, tree, sky, stars, but please use as a zipper song and ask your participants to bring their ideas in to the mix. 

Lyrics: 

The earth holds me
so I can hold others,
yes I can hold others,
these arms are strong.

In this version I add in:
Sea, tree, sky, stars, sun, etc...

© Heather Houston
02/2021
All rights reserved
https://heatherhoustonmusic.com

Heather Houston's Album

The Earth Holds Me - Heather Houston, All Parts

Breathe breathe breathe in 
Breathe breathe out

Let it go, let it go, let it go

Trust in what's coming
Trust in your knowing
It's deeper and wider and holy


special thanks to Jess & Dan Pelberg Berlin for lighting the spark to find this song in me

Breathe

Leave Your Troubles at the Water

Wild and Free

This song came through while preparing for a weekend grief retreat and feeling around for just the right song to begin our time together. None of the songs I already knew quite captured the sense of calling in and coming together that I was longing for, and so this song was born.

It is intended as a "zipper" song. In the recording I use words like "hope, courage, tears, our fears...", but the intention is for those singing to "zip in" the words that are true for them, whether joyful or heavy: What are you arriving with? What is with you that we can invite into the center?

lyrics:
we gather with *hope*...
in the presence of all who hold us
we gather with *hope* in the presence of love

we are not alone here, we are not alone

...courage, tears, our fears...

song + lyrics + vocals: Joanna Laws Landis

Gather / We Are Not Alone

This one (chorus) came through in Northeast Missouri while singing with a couple people and (verses) in California outside the house I grew up in, standing at the foot of a great Monterey Cyprus tree (not a Redwood!) and watching some vines climb up the brick outside of the house.

Chorus:
Sister you are not too far holding
I need your strength to carry on

Verse 1:
Our bodies are bound like the vines on the side of a house somewhere deep in the heart of the earth

Verse 2:
Our roots intertwine like the Redwood tree somewhere deep in the soil in the soul of the earth

Sister, You Are Not Too Far for Holding

we are good.
we are flawed.
we are the breath of an imperfect god.

returning to self. returning to source.
god is change. god is growth. the process, in all it's beauty and all it's mess, is god.

collage art by Chani Nicholas

we are good we are flawed

I wrote this song inspired by this quote from the Apocrypha, Book of Enoch (9:7) “The angels taught the daughters of men incantations, exorcisms, the cutting of roots, and revealed to them healing plants.”

The angels revealed to us healing plants (x2)
The angels taught the daughters the cutting of roots (x2)

Erez v'ezov
Levanah v'rimon
Shaked v'tamar
peygam v'shoom

Cedar and hyssop
frankincense and pomegrante
almond and date palm
rue and garlic

 I love this quote because it speaks to knowledge acquired through direct transmission, through relationship, specifically to “the daughters of men” (which we know means anyone without access to institutional power/gender non-conforming/trans/femmes) –  people who are identified by who they belong to and who are clearly transgressing by hanging out with and learning from angels.  It also suggests that this knowledge is always/still available to us; that even though it can feel like the healing wisdom and practices of our ancestors have been lost or purposely hidden from us,  we can access this knowledge by connecting with “angels.” Who are these angels who reveal and teach this stuff (and can I follow them on instagram and take a workshop?) I don’t know, but in my dreams sometimes they are the trees and flowers themselves, generously sharing their magic and beauty everywhere we look. (fyi, originally, in the Apocrypha, this was not actually a celebration of learning about healing from angels as you can imagine!)

you can read more about jewish plant magic here: https://dorimidnight.com/resources/jewish-plant-magic-rooting-in-resources/?fbclid=IwAR1edzpNKBZMTcivRU6TsePiQuoUGNrzxBMsButomfTNbErAHO2D1aqQc3A

Erez V'ezov

Bele Mama - From Cameroon, in West Africa

This is a great ice-breaker of a song! The perfect opener. It gets your group singing in harmony in a matter of minutes. Possible meaning is "Mama come out and play!" When I first learned this, I learned that it was from the Torres Straight Islands and that it meant "Beautiful Earth." The more research I do, the more I find that it's actually from West Africa and has traveled and traveled far and wide. Enjoy!

This song is in the public domain
Arrangement by Heather Houston

To learn the individual parts to this song, please visit my Public Song Library:
https://heatherhoustonmusic.com/sisters-in-harmony-song-library/

Lyrics:

Bele mama, bele mama ee ay
Bele mama, bele mama ee ay
Bele mama, bele mama, bele mama, bele mama,
Bele mama, bele mama ee eh

Bele Mama - All Parts

Come Darkness Come Light - 7:2:19, 11.27 PM

Artist: Laurence Cole
I learned at the 2017 Rewild Conference from Rose and Heron Brae.

Sung at a (mini) song circle on August 1, 2019 on Chinook land/Portland, OR.

Lyrics:
Trees grow slow
And trees grow strong
And trees sway with the wind
Their whole lives long

And trees hold the ground
As they reach for the sky
And fallen trees still feed the seeds
They cast before they die

Trees Grow Slow (Laurence Cole)

Artist: Miner
I learned this song at Let My People Sing 2019.

Sung at a song circle on September 15, 2019 on Chinook land/Portland, OR.

Part 1:
Let the wave wash over me
Let the wave wash over me
I am already under
Let the wave wash over me

Part 2:
There will be better days

**Photo credit: Sarah Snyder!

Let The Wave (Miner)

Origin:
Words are based on a poem by Wendell Berry
Melody is by Plum Village
This is a recording from NSP's Yom Kippur Community Singing Session in 2019

Words:
And when I rise
Let me rise
Like a bird, joyfully
And when I fall,
Let me fall
Like a leaf, gracefully,
And without regret

Singing Team - YK Melodies

When I Rise

'Please bring positivity into my life, everyday. Please bring only joy and peace, and everything that is love.'

www.BeautifulChorus.com
Produced for Beautiful Chorus by DiViNCi of SoS

Positivity

recorded by Aly Halpert, Sol Weiss & Margot Seigle

I believed in solid ground until I saw the earth in motion,
in the winds of steady change and in the ever-rolling ocean.

All moves on in perfect, perfect motion.
All is change and ever-rolling ocean.

from Annie: 
Blessed Motion is a 4-part acknowledgement of the nature of Life as an unpredictable, ever-changing movement toward itself. The melody came squatting on a rock next to a fast moving fork in the Trinity River, where salmon were in their first week of journeying to their spawning sites in northern California. Martin Prechtel said after surviving the Guatemala earthquake of 1976, during which he witnessed the ground beneath him rising up and swallowing people and villages whole, that solid ground is a myth believed by people who live on the earth rather than in it. This idea has stayed with me through the years and provided partial inspiration for this song. This is a big song! It travels through two dimensions, the first, a three or four part set of repeating lines, the second, a layered riff topped with a solo section.

Blessed Motion - Annie Zylstra

Artist: Coco Love Alcorn
I learned at Adamah (Jewish Farming Fellowship) in 2014. The song was brought to the Isabella Freedman community from Let My People Sing; Batya and Noam taught it, and they learned it from Lia at a morning water ceremony at Standing Rock.

Sung at a song circle on February 22, 2020 on Chinook land/Portland, OR.

Lyrics:
Water heal my body
Water heal my soul
When I go down, down to the water
By the water I feel whole

Trees Grow Slow (Laurence Cole)

Ary Solomon

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