Greetings from Fancy Gap, Virginia.
My friend David has a beautiful cabin here, and let me hide out for a few days to write. Sometimes it takes getting away, especially when there is a big project to work on, like a book, and I am so grateful to have a place to be that is not only quiet and comfortable, but beautiful and serene.
I have done some impressive procrastination while I’ve been here, and some urgent things from the outside world have broken in (working on welcoming an asylum seeker family to my home town, for instance, and preparing for the upcoming national APCE conference with my co-leaders), but I have also really made some progress on both the content and the concept for this new book I’m working on, and I finished up the song below, as well as the lyric for a hymn I’ve been commissioned to write for the NC Council of Churches’ 85th anniversary celebration this summer. So this has been well-spent time, on the whole.
The new book is tentatively titled, Harmony: What Music Can Teach Us About Peacemaking, and it is based on a TEDx talk I did a couple of years ago in Asheville. I’m having fun putting it together, though books are slippery things, and certainly do take a lot of time and focus.
I’ve worked on a couple of other songs this week, too, and I’m excited to be writing again, largely due to the commitment I’ve made to the Patreon community that started up a couple of months ago. If you want to know more about that, and maybe be a part of it, follow this link.
Thanks for being interested in what I’m up to. I hope you’ll enjoy this new one!
Here & Gone
Brushstroke blue heron glides graceful and low
Negative space on the cool morning gray
Turn of a feather and up she will go
Fade in the fog, and she’ll fly far away
I’m standing watching alone on the shore
Holding the taste of her grace on my tongue
Savor the moment just one moment more
Memory and mist will burn off with the day
Memory and mist will burn off with the day
Gone
Not gone into nothing, but gone into everything
Gone
But here with me now like the memories of all I have seen
Here and gone
I can remember your skin on my skin
Safe in my arms and the warmth of my home
Bound to another as I’d never been
Breathing our promises solid as stone
Gone
Not gone into nothing, but gone into everything
Gone
But here with me now like the memories of all I have been
Here and gone
All of the longing and all of the mystery
All in the smallest of things
All of a sudden it shatters my soul then it’s
Gone like a bird on the wing
Brown as the winter grass, hollow as reed
Quiet as morning recedes into day
Fractured by gentleness, captured and freed
Painting the picture with no words to say
I’m standing watching alone on the shore
Still there’s taste of her grace on my tongue
Savor the moment just one moment more
Memory and mist will burn off with the day
Memory and mist will burn off with the day
Gone
Not gone into nothing, but gone into everything
Gone
But here with me now like the memories of all I have been
Here and gone
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