“Las Posadas” is an old Mexican tradition enacting the effort by Mary and Joseph to find a place to stay on Christmas Eve. Actors depicting Mary and Joseph wander from “inn” to “inn” asking for a room, with a singing candlelight procession following them through the town. Here I offer my own words for the tune:
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You were my blue humming bird.
Called by the nectar of my flowering heart, oh you could not linger long.
And I remember the time by the great riverside, when you taught me to dance, to dance in the storm.
I’ve been facing alot of challenges this month – I don’t know about you.
The turmoil of election season – and its results – challenged me. Deeply.
The surge in racially-motivated violence in the United States had me fear for the safety of many whom I love – including my own family.
The book I collaborated on received a scathing review from an influential website of professed siblings in Spirit.
Don’t get me wrong: It’s been a good month, too. Beautiful connections with family, friends, and loved ones. A great time at AAR/SBL in San Antonio – a gathering of over 10,000 religion and spirituality scholars who really care about the difference faith and scholarship makes in the world.
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The Christmas poem, “Immanuel: God Within and Among Us” was written for the Centennial Christmas Cantata to celebrate the centennial of First Congregational Church of Long Beach’s historic building. Below is a the video of the performance.
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When you live in nature, in the scent of flowers, in the blessed light of the day and the sweet dew of the morning, you don’t have questions, you simply live and joy together with them. Your heart opens, you cry, cry, and your eyes are wet with dew. This is how this song was born, when your body, mind, and soul opens, God steps next to you in an unguarded moment, and pours her treasures into you.
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This album best captures the timeless serenity of the solo Native American flute. R. Carlos Nakai’s music speaks to the spirit with a simplicity that transcends place and time. Includes original compositions, traditional Athabascan and Omaha melodies.
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My Dear Friends,
I recorded this song as tears streamed down my face.
Something about this melody and rhythm drew the emotion out of me through the tears. In this time there is so much heaviness in the world that we are exposed to, and I sometimes feel overwhelmed with all that is happening and how we are treating each other and the earth. It sometimes feels like a deep pain that I can’t explain with words.
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I stand on a bank of a running river, immersed in a flow of my own called life
Sad, happy, fearful, calm, and joyous awe-filled waves lap up all around me
1. Winter is the season of the revelation of basic structure. If I was to strip away all the paraphernalia of my life what form would it have?
How many of the things which I do are related to the roots
of my spirit.
2. Winter is the season for hibernation. What rhythm do I have for reflection as well as action?
What frequency and length of time do I need in solitude in order to facilitate the growth and quality of my spirituality?
Like the falling of the leaves security in life lies in the process not in the fixed points.
Without harvest there can be no seed time.
Without death there can be no new life, no new beginning.
1. The fragrance of Spring lies not in judgement’s intervention but in love’s nurturing of the interior goodness.
2. Spring is not so much a moment as a movement, a manifestation of the sometimes hidden but always present life-force of God.
The flowering of summer is only eclipsed by the flowering of the human spirit.
Flowering has no permanency – only the process remains. Indeed the flowering only exists for the continuation of the process.
First in-city music, art, sacred community and social transformation festival with a progressive Christian framework. Leaders from around the world join us to co-create a deeper vision for the future and share practical tools to heal ourselves, our communities, and the planet in on-going ways moving forward. We hope to see you there!
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Coming home to community, we come home to our better selves.Coming together as community, we can live as our better selves.
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When I was told that the framing devise of Boston’s SpeakEasy’s current production of “The Scottsboro Boys” is a minstrel show I was aghast. Employing a defunct and racist American theatrical form – where black face makeup used by white performers is its signature – to narrate a horrific travesty of justice, on surface, you don’t expect it to trickle your funny bone nor to entertain you.
However, John Kander and his collaborator and lyricist the late Fred Ebb, have pushed theatrical boundaries by subverting the minstrel trope to highlight gearing forms of racism and discrimination in our judicial system.
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Members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, over 200 Tribal Nations, and thousands of allies from across the United States and the world have been taking direct action since April 2016 to call attention to the violation of their Indigenous rights, desecration of their lands and waters and the threats to their ecosystem engendered by the Dakota Access Pipeline.
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YAIMA is an old word meaning “that which water runs through”, -a conduit for diverse musical languages.
Their sound is rooted in the the rich depth of tradition through biological beats, folkloric storytelling and mystical melodies. They reach towards our compelling, technological future by weaving live instrumentation and vocals
over lush electronic layers, seamless soundscapes, and body-blooming bass.
“For Simrit, singing is not a performance, it is a sacred worship of the Divine. Her voice, her music, and her teaching, reflect this devotion which seems to come from her so effortlessly. This devotion is a gift, a talent beyond any, that will lead thousands into the lightness of being and awareness that is so vital to humanity in this day and age.”
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