This is a poem I carried around in my wallet for years. Today it came back to me through a friend and I learned the poet's name.
It's about Grace and Acceptance.
@ghandigirl, what a wonderful way to greet my Saturday morning! I'd read this beautiful poem years ago and had forgotten about it. It is as meaningful now as it was then. Thank you for sharing it with us.
(2) There's Still My Joy - Indigo Girls - YouTube
(2) "There's Still My Joy" Siebert Family. - YouTube
This song is exactly how I feel today and I am sure many others do too. It is a song about grief, and amazing grace.
I will be learning it on guitar during my week off. I am a singer and I am grateful to be able to sing this song and find some peace.
If you are grieving this Holiday Season, I hope that it comforts you as it does me.
The perfect song altered slightly for the times we are currently living.
In honor of the hostages who have recently been released and those still being held, I would like to share an incredible song with everyone.
Broadway came together a few weeks ago and did what they do best.
"Bring Them Home".
You will definitely be moved.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97sDLWpQqgg
"Bring Him Home" is one of my all time favorites even before the beautiful adaptation you cited.
Here is another moving adaptation from Madonna's "Like a Prayer" in honor of the hostages:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6y2laYXcBdU
@raincloud @lovendures thank you for posting those incredibly moving songs. They were like prayers.
I've felt incredibly depressed today and I have been trying hard to raise my spirits and get into the mood for Christmas. So I decided to listen to Cher's new Christmss song to help me with that:
https://youtu.be/G_8Bo3eE-3Y?si=zJQD4XO0JXtCwXgD
Beautiful, beautiful version, when people come together to sing it so increases the power!
I also find (can't help mentioning 😊) that Josh Groban's version, on his Stages Album, is one of the songs when Spirit sings through him, or at the very least when I hear Spirit within his voice—and even though he is singing the original lyrics with "him" not "them" the power of this anti-war song, this song of love even in pain, is always immense. ANY rendition of this song is powerful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXnRf3TQcpk
Avant-garde holiday song.
https://youtu.be/XE0qtKkvVr8?si=MYufGtK8B5hmQA0U
(for sonic youth fans)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOXHsVp3otU
Yo la tengo byrds cover
Many folks have expressed that the song "Songbird" by Christine McVie is meaningful to them.
I am attaching my version here.
Happy New Year to all.
Love, ghandigirl
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFry2H3SHKg
@unk-p If those songs were directed at me, there's a misdiagnosis. I simply had an intense flare, and some things that were spoken confidentially were sold as entertainment. Sometimes when I write it is not my opinion, but what is being served to me. Hopefully, that makes sense.
Grateful for the good energy sent. I am really trying to conserve energy at the moment and am grateful to have gotten a full nights sleep.
@anya ??? sorry, but i am not sure what you are talking about? I have not been active online for a while, so i may have missed something.
Anyway, i was surprised and happy when i saw that you had posted the Yo La Tenga song. Even tho they have been making great music for 40(!) years now, it seems that most people have never heard of them. My post was only directed to you in the same way that it was directed to anyone who might want to rock out to some music they may or may not have heard before. Yo La Tengo has so many great songs, that it was hard to only pick two of them. There was no other meaning or message implied by me.
peace & love to you
President Biden's speech was very moving. I listened to it several times and this section was very powerful.
The great folk singer Melanie has died. Her children have asked that we all light a candle at 10pm central time tonight, a reference to her song lay down (candles in the rain) , written about her experience performing at Woodstock, when she was a new artist:
“I had my first out-of-body experience. I was terrified,” she said. “I just left my body, going to a side, higher view. I watched myself walk onto the stage, sit down and sing a couple of lines. And when I felt it was safe, I came back. It started to rain right before I went on. Ravi Shankar had just finished up his performance, and the announcer said that if you lit candles, it would help to keep the rain away. By the time I finished my set, the whole hillside was a mass of little flickering lights. I guess that’s one of the reasons I came back to my body.”
Her passing has hit me hard. I still remember the day my sister brought home the brand new Melanie record called My First Album. And hearing the first track. Her voice was so weird that i laughed, and asked my sister if she was a little kid, like me? But by the end of that song, i was already in love with Melanie:
I begged my sister to play it so often, she finally just gave it to me, with one of those little suitcase record players. And so My First Album was literally, my first album. Every song on that album was amazing. Here's a few:
Searching rather aimlessly on YouTube because I was all wound up (for positive reasons) and this popped up.
It seemed rather pertinent.
And Lovely, just so VERY lovely.
The video is old and rather blurry, but the poem and the song are crystal clear.
Let it be a surprise. It was to me, after all these years. I think I will go to sleep and dream now.
Enjoy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ea9U3E58HC8
In January of 2014 my husband of nearly 30 years passed. He passed consciously and with no fear. The hospice nurse told me she had never felt such palpable peace and I knew he was fine, but well, I still had problems going to sleep.For a year or so after that, pretty much every night, I listened to a clip I had made from the movie Sister Act 2, because the music and dancing was so joyful and full of promise and it helped me get to sleep, and trust that the unknown was not something to fear, but something to welcome in.
Yesterday I happened to stream an episode of The View, which I had not watched for quite some time and Hmmm, the one immediately available was the 30-year anniversary of Sister Act 2. Many of the teen/twentys kids in the movie were on the View, singing O Happy Day and Joyful Joyful. And it had the same effect. It was joyous and comforting and even more, it was a GET UP AND BE JOYFUL kind of kick in the butt. Since I have been “cocooning” (aka being reclusive) for days, I do suspect it was a kick in the pants from Spirit for me to break out of the cocoon (again, because I do this periodically) and get back into communication. So. I give to you the original, and the reunion, Sister Act 2 with a radiant Lauren Hill and joyous Whoopi in the first, and the now grown and 50-ish kids and others, plus a clearly emotional Whoopi, bringing it all back to the forefront of my brain. Not really an earworm, but a reminder from Spirit because I feel Spirit, and an enormous unconditional love, in both versions.
I put most of the lyrics under the url, but (I discovered) if you click cc (I can be slow) you have subtitles.
Enjoy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaEH1e_DLm0
The song uses Henry van Dyke's poem, "The Hymn of Joy" (1907) which was the lyric to Beethoven’s "Ode to Joy,” the final movement of Beethoven's 9th symphony. Some of my favorite lyrics of all time.
Joyful, Joyful Lord, we adore Thee,
God of glory, Lord of love
Hearts unfold like flowers before Thee
Hail Thee as the sun above
Melt the clouds of sin and sadness
Drive the dark of doubt away
Giver of immortal gladness,
Fill us with the light
Fill us with the light Oh, fill us
With the light of day......
Come and join the chorus
The mighty, mighty chorus
Which the morning stars begun
The Father of love is reigning over us
He watches over everything
So we sing:
Joyful, Joyful Lord, we adore Thee
God of glory Lord of love
Hearts unfold like flowers before Thee
Hail Thee as the sun above
Melt the clouds of sin, sin and sadness
Drive the dark of doubt away
Drive it all away!
Giver of immortal gladness
We need you, come right away,
we need you, need you today, we need you,
I'm here to say
Fill us, fill us, fill us, fill us!
Fill us with the light of day
Light of day!
https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/06/entertainment/whoopi-goldberg-sister-act-2-choir-reunion/index.html
@Tesseract you post on the future of DJT reminded me of this video by Barbara Streisand. She wrote this BEFORE Covid. Can’t image what she would have included had that been happening as well
https://youtu.be/kNrj87Q-4Yk?si=kaaEI5DGghqsu_bt