1. |
Everywhere
03:24
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I see the workers in the upper and lower waters
gathering the streams into their arms.
Delirious you said I love the world,
did you mean all of it or some of it?
I track the ascents and descents,
the upper root and the lower root will find each other
but don’t leave me alone.
All my broken bones are whole,
my broken heart too, every shard complete.
I love the partial, the broken, individual, incomplete,
the fragment, the wounded,
I love the separate, you said,
Because it integrates,
and even if not,
it is whole.
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2. |
What To Do
04:12
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Begin with the heart circle
Some time into the future
Wash us clean
Bones blood hearts
Lift our hands into the wisdom of knowing
What to do
Face to face, breath to breath, chest to chest
Bones blood hearts chest
The world heart
Our heart
The works of our hands
Another world intruded on our own
As if we prepared to receive it
Lift our hands into the wisdom of knowing
What to do
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3. |
Rainmakers
02:27
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I misunderstood the teaching when I first heard it brought down.
Two were praying for rain; one famous, one unknown. The famous
one made a load of prayers – no rain. The unknown erupted in a
simple spontaneous voice. It rained buckets.
A specially created voice was heard, the voice said: it is not
because one is greater than the other, but because one listens and
forgives. And the other? The other listens and forgives. Did I hear
that right?
Maybe it’s the listening, I thought, and the willingness to overcome
your own obstacles, opening to the reality of someone else even
your enemy. It’s about nothing else than growing beyond yourself.
For each of us it’s the same and it’s different.
There comes a time when all of us will have to move off our mark if
we are to grow; make peace, make rain.
Grow – that’s what the story is about. The reward is rain when there
is growth. I love that: growth, then rain.
The rain came because someone in this story was willing to face the
challenge of life by growth, it didn’t matter which one because they
weren’t enemies anyway. The world needed rain, not adversaries.
Every living thing, every blade of grass, has an angel hovering over it
who demands one thing: grow.
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4. |
Soul Dialogue
03:57
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I’m alone with my shoes and still I cannot move
One step and the world would cease to exist.
Let my soul speak freely
To my heart.
Let me be wise trust wisdom
Let’s be wise together.
I am carrying my soul with me wherever I go
Ahead a field a small house a mountain
I unpack my bag.
I reach in I pull up my soul
It’s a mouth now a pen a stick
it has taken the shape of prayers.
I am speaking to you from you same voice
To you from you same voice.
Save me my soul
Pick me up and lay me down.
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5. |
Book Of Healing
03:14
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I will bless you and increase you as the earth
as the sands of the seashore as the sea
look at the algae now
the horseflies buzzing over your face
I will make you as great as the algae
the grasshoppers;
Look up to the sky now
you will be as great as the stars
as the darkness;
The sand and the sea and the stars
the mud and the dark and the green
the sticky stuff on the surf
the early rains and later rains;
The mud the mud the green the sand the dark
The mud the mud the green the sand the dark.
You will be a blessing
as great as the dark
as the sea the sand the green
the flies;
Instruments of the working out of all things partial
becoming whole;
Schooled by nothing loftier than the poetry of our own lives
We are writing the book of healing.
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6. |
Let Peace Rise
02:03
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Filter and fiber
Your blood bones soul
Make tea often;
Small things opening onto large things
Everything opening;
Rooted serenity
Let peace rise from the kitchen;
Peace is the engine of beauty
Let us repair the world from our seats at the tables
We want peace and we want it now;
Send me a sign
Starving for it;
For everything that issues from Your mouth
Let peace rise from the kitchen;
The poetry of our own lives
Our hearts cling cling cling
Our hearts unzipped;
We will receive each of us to our own capacity
This journey of secret destinations;
G*d entered through our wounds --
The last place we expected;
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7. |
Deeper The Claim
01:45
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The highest freedom
The flight of thought
My soul releases inky treasures
Rivers of honey and butter
Give the spirit its aspiration
The soul is always singing
Deeper the claims made by the soul
Draw out the darkness in jewels
The harmonizing voice
Over the head pouring oil
All spirit all action all feeling
Every moving thing
The harmonizing voice
The one that unites
Hidden within all of us
All worlds all creatures all raised up
Over the head
Pouring
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8. |
Elegy
04:05
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The sounds that stay with me, the residue. The angels delighting
in irreverence. Like all of us, unlike all of us. How many lives did
you have? Human being of flesh and bone, I am a human being of
flesh and bone. When we are good we are lovable. When we are
not-so-good we are lovable. Rest in peace warrior of epic struggles,
powerful in your lights, powerful in your darks.
O G*d, what is this crazy existence, we can be so –
Send me a sign, send me a sign. Take our beloveds back to the
Source, welcome them. Don’t measure any of us by anything more
than you measure all of us.
They loved squeezed loved squeezed loved squeezed life, and moved
through the best they could. Forgive me for being me. Have a little
mercy for the rest of us working the vineyards here, we’re wildly
imperfect but you have to love us for that.
You created us whole with broken parts. You know who this is, fellow
pilgrim on the road from and to, from and to, to and from –
Created whole with broken parts. Amen.
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9. |
O Me, O My
02:18
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We aspire to raise a spark
Gather the scattered letters
Cast them across the page
O me O my
The dew of the highest light -- choose
O me O my
Amen -- praying today
The edges will not overwhelm
I delight in every edge
O Earth
I’m going to work you today
A world absorbs
Spirit rising from low places
The soul is always singing
In every idea -- a buzz
Read to me
I see us all in a circle around G*d
I broke my soul one night
It fell out my nostrils onto the floor
Recalled home I mattered in four
(Make that five) measures of dignity
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10. |
Surprise Me
02:56
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Surprise me, lift me off somewhere new, send me
on a roundabout way. Make it an uncommon journey --
one I might not have taken if not for you.
Too far out I might not go with you. Don’t make it
too familiar either. Use your own words, the ones
that tumble in your head. Don’t tell me too much.
Smuggle in an organizing notion, a re-visioning.
Sneak it past me, sneak it past the line of defense.
You speak right around them.
Be thoughtful, push your ideas the best you can.
Be a thinker, a sweet singer of the unconventional
soul.
Please, I’m speaking to you. You saw me when
I came looking. Come learn with me, you will be
my student, I will be your teacher.
No first no second no success
No failure no me no you
Walk the track
Yearning for something that seems impossible
They all laughed at us
These foolish ideas
There’s nothing outside the camp tonight
That cannot be brought within.
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Rabbi James Stone Goodman St. Louis, Missouri
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