🤎 songs for transitions 🤎

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

This song came in while sitting with the first gate of grief (as taught by Frances Weller in The Wild Edge of Sorrow - http://www.wisdombridge.net/the-wild-edge-of-sorrow.html):

Everything you love, you will lose - The Grief of Abandonment

---
This is a teaching track for community singing.

Lyrics:

Part 1:
I will allow my heart to be broken
I will allow this river to flow
I will allow my soul to be opened
Breath by breath, steady and slow
Breath by breath, steady and slow

Part 2:
Breath by breath, I grieve you
Breath by breath, I'll know
You will always be here
And I can let you go
Yes, I will let you go

Music and lyrics by Juliana Murphy

This song is intended to be shared freely and sung both individually and in community. If you plan to perform or record it with the intent to sell, please contact me for permission.

Breath By Breath - All Parts

Grateful My Hands Both Parts

This song was born on Wintu Pom (Northern Wintu) & Nom Sus Wintu land (trinity alps // swift creek // mumford meadows). I was preparing for a four-day earth-communion time of solitude & fasting. I laid down at the place where two rivulets came together, watching a spider weave between blades of grass, feeling in myself this question: 

"Toward where is the Golden Thread tugging me now? What is my heart asking for? What do I KNOW?"

Lyrics:

At the place where the waters meet 
Spider weaves a web
Casting a Golden Thread to the center of your knowing

At the place where the waters meet
Spider weaves a web
Ze (she/he/they) say(s)
"Be still & wait. It will all become clear."

I am still breathing this in. Spider invites me to stay; to keep going -- keep weaving, Ze says. Trust that what you need will come. Prepare for the known unknown even though it has not arrived yet. Weave. Trust. Listen. Do your work, cast your spells, & then wait. It will all become clear. Somewhere in you KNOWS -- Knows what is on its way +++ 

What in you KNOWS? Where is the Golden Thread tugging you? Where can you surrender to trust a little bit more?

---

Recorded with Lisa Littlebird & Karisha Longaker.

The Golden Thread

Can't get enough of you DEMOTAPE (Mastered with Aurora at 50pct)(2)

Round House Song Sessions
July 23rd, 2016
Millerton, NY

recorded by: Aly Halpert, Shelby Handler, Beck Gross, Batya Levine & Margot Seigle

lyrics:
I am grateful for the unknown blessings already on their way 
I am grateful for the unknown blessings already on their way 

I will not 
Look back in anger
Or forward in fear
But around in awareness

The Haudenosaunee believe that words of gratitude come before all else that should be said in a conversation, and the initial words of this song are credited to them.  Sarah Thompson learned this song, which expands on that concept, while doing ecological social justice work with Joanna Macy. Batya heard it from Sarah while they sat in the red tent during Passover in the Desert with Wilderness Torah.  The version recorded here is Batya's crafting.

original words:
We give thanks 
for the unknown blessings
already on their way (2x)

We will not
look back in anger
or forward in fear
but around in awareness...

We give thanks

AV - I Am Grateful

*for all the tender hearts <333*

hey, you're doin okay
it's gonna take time
it's gonna take time

the heart is a muscle contracting, expanding
feel the waves and learn the lessons
time, it's gonna take time

artwork by Tobe Fonseca

Lessons of the Heart

A song for these uncertain times. Inspired by one of Joanna Macy's talks at a Bioneers Conference.

© Heather Houston
All rights reserved

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

Lyrics:
And we will care for each other
As the world around us unravels
And we will tend to the spark
of hope that lives within our grieving hearts
And we are here now, in this present moment
Lifting our voices and hearts
And we are here now, we have come together
We are tending the spark hope
Oh may it grow
And we will care for each other

Tending the Spark by Heather Houston

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

A slow song brought to you by the waters of the Webatuck swamp - Schagticoke / Mahican land. 

Water provides life. From the rain, the dew, the ocean, water heals and holds, and sings so many songs through us. I am grateful to the waters for being such a teacher, and invite you to honor them with this song.

The hebrew at the end is the traditional prayer said for a Mikveh, ritual immersion or bath:

Barukh atah Adonay Eloheynu ruach ha-olam, asher kidshanu b'mitzvotav v'tzivanu al ha-t'vilah.

Blessed are you, source of creation,  of the universe, who sanctifies us through mitzvot and has shown us immersion.

lizard popping bubbles

Great Waters

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)

This song came from a desire to sing words I wish to hear and feel more often. I often seek a deeper solace and remembering of life's safety and wellness, inside a world that so often feels so far from well. 

My wish with this song offering is that it be sung and shared not from a place of complacency, willful ignorance or false positivity... but from that deeper substrate of being that truly knows this life and world is safe to explore, safe to leave and safe to love.

Original song by Lisa G. Littlebird with beautiful guitar arrangement and recording by Zan Moore.

For lyrics, teaching notes, individual part tracks and more, visit: https://thebirdsings.com/alliswell/

All Is Well by Lisa G. Littlebird

'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

Singing circle tune I wrote inspired by a feeling that safety matters, hearts and minds can open when we feel safe in ourselves and in our communities of loved ones.

painting by Megan Duncanson

Lessons of the Heart

Batya Levine

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