When She Dreams of Christmas

Never grieve the evergreen
Cut up from the earth
In this sacred season
As we celebrate a birth

Cover it with anything
To let us see the light
As we listen to the music
And we cradle her tonight

The roots go deeper
Away out in the yard
While the moon is sleeping
In her arms

When she dreams
She'll remember
All the joy and wonder
In the story of a star
All the love of family
All the seeds of mystery
She will see
Beneath the tree
When she dreams of Christmas

Every year we gather here
To light the light again
Now she is here to remind us
Of why this all began

The roots go deeper
Than any one of us
But all of us together
Are the promise and the trust

When she dreams
She'll remember
All the joy we gave her
In the story of a star
All the love of family
All the seen and unseen
She will meet
Beneath the tree
When she dreams of Christmas

To Let You Go

I wake up in a memory
I cannot put my dream to sleep
I feel you in the room with me
I feel the darkness in the deep
You step so lightly on the sand
And thread the liquid undertow
But I can’t hold you by the hand
I have to learn to let you go

Again we spin inside a dance
Upon the edge of our last day
So little life fits in a chance
To look for words I cannot say
We move together on the sand
And thread the liquid undertow
I couldn’t hold you by the hand
I had to learn to let you go

I can’t reduce you to a song
I can’t remake a memory
I must admit that I was wrong
To keep you in this room with me
I see the darkness in the stream
I slip into the undertow
When I can free you from my dream
I will have learned to let you go

The Deep

A presence on the sea tonight
I see it in the water
I feel it in the undertow
In the shadow that I cast
Where the moonlight is dancing
In the dark disturbances
There is something rising up
From the deep

As the ocean comes ashore
I make a wall between us
Words of sand to hide behind
To keep my soul unseen
No matter where I lay them
All these words will wash away
There is something rising up
From the deep

There are voices in the wind
They are offers to begin again
Now I'm scared to hear that sound
If I follow, will I drown?
But I stand still and listen
And I cannot turn away
There is something rising up
From the deep

Let my soul sink in the sea
Let it wash all over me
Let it rise up from the deep
From the deep inside
There's nowhere left to hide
From the deep inside

Go Now to the Mountain

Go and do the work, my son
Go now to the mountain
Find the source and drink it in
At the ancient fountain

You've heard the call in everything
As present as your breath
In every song, in every sound
In every little death

Go now to the mountain
Every road is leading there
Go now to the mountain
Every road is leading there

Don't listen to distraction, now
Just let yourself be led
Away now to the mountaintop
Through the valley of the dead

The holy star is in the sky
But turn your eyes within
Your soul already knows the way
Let it lead you in

Go now to the mountain
Every road is leading there
Go now to the mountain
Every road is leading there

Underneath the evergreen
Unseen under the sky
A glimmer in the space between
The starlight and the eye

It's everywhere
You know it is
You've seen it in your dreams
Nothing of the world you know
Is solid as it seems

Go now to the mountain
Every road is leading there
Go now to the mountain
Every road is leading there

Out of the Cradle, Endlessly...

I lived my life in the shelter of the suburbs. My world was row houses, highways and strip malls and the constant hum of traffic and electric grid. Sometimes I'd look up and it would come back to me: a memory of a feeling, something pulsing through the veins of power lines, the thing that gave those neon signs their radiance. It was always there but mostly forgotten in the day-to-day distraction in which we lived our lives. We forgot to notice how completely we were cradled by the slow, patient embrace of nature.

Maybe nothing is eternal. But set against our quick flight to the flame, the inching up of a new shoot, the gradual change of dark into dawn, the almost unnoticed motion of the stars seemed much nearer to timelessness than anything we could ever know. Whenever I was reminded, I was grateful. It tied me to something much larger and deeper than anything I found around me in the everyday. There was some faint glimmer of memory, of knowledge that I, too, was made of the same stuff, that I knew something of that same slow pace, that timelessness. Somehow, I sensed, I could participate in that patient, creative pulse that, given enough time, could recreate the universe.

Once I could feel its presence, I was drawn to it, often in the early morning before the world woke up or late at night, when it finally fell asleep. I could feel it more than hear it, but I thought of it as a voice that spoke to me directly and called me out by name. It would say, "Everything you think you know, all you see in your world is a projection, a shared illusion made real by belief and the fear of letting go."

Maybe we were all afraid that if we let ourselves wander out into that wilderness, we'd encounter something we were not made to see. Maybe, we thought, it was better not to know, better to keep our eyes and our thoughts focused on the things we made and understood, the things we could control.

And I was afraid. Whenever I walked outside, there always came a moment when I would see myself taken away. And I would feel a little shiver and wonder, "What if I can't go back? Or what if, when I do, I won't be able to tell them where I'd been and I will be left so alone with this?"

But in those early mornings, just before dawn, I would stand still, slowly lower my defense and let it in. And then it began: a pale light, just the faintest sign that the night was ending. I felt the change before I saw it. A bird called, a breeze swept up a leaf. The last of the stars began to fade like a candle floating on the water, slowly submerged. And then, just for a moment, everything was new and anything was possible. Dreams mingled with waking life, and my heart opened and expanded, reaching up into the sky. I felt at peace and connected to all that surrounded me, to the houses, roads and strip malls, to the constant hum of traffic and electric grid, to that something pulsing through the veins of the power lines, to the gradual change of dark into dawn, to the motion of the stars, to that patient, creative pulse that, given enough time, could recreate the universe.

The Song of the Reed

The Holy Moment

Silent night, silent stars

Are those angels in the air

Watching from afar

In this still and silent hour?

All is calm, all is bright

We've been watching through the night

I can feel the light

Slowly growing in the sky

In the holy moment

Just before the dawn

The spirit rises up

With the sun

What it was, I don't know

What drew me from my dreams

Out there in the snow

Singing voices in the trees

Under moon, under cloud

Outside of every door

Born into the world

Something never seen before

In the holy moment

We are not alone

A light has come

To guide us back home

Body weak, spirit strong

As we make our weary way

By the star that guides us on

To the dawning of the day

In the holy moment

We see the morning star

And glimpses of

The wonder we are