Hymns for an Ecological Spirituality

A “V” in the clouds above the distant Three Sisters, a half hour before sunrise on Marys Peak, the mountain known to the Kalapuya as Tcha Timanwi - “Where the Spirit Dwells”, which to me feels like a much more fitting name. The last summer solstice sunrise was an ominous red ball in thick wildfire smoke. The “V” feels like a better omen for the months ahead. Photo taken 12-21-2021

The winter solstice has always been a time of song for me. My family was raised in a Christian tradition, and while we didn’t attend services we had our own vigil and made plenty of music around the wood stove - a mix of Christmas favorites and my father’s original songs.

While I still enjoy O Holy Night and Joy to the World, increasingly I find that I want music that speaks not to a two-thousand-year-old miracle but to the emerging Earth-based spirituality that is the beating heart of the Dendroica Project. I want to sing hymns that affirm the sacredness of the natural world and our belonging within it, that lament the harms we have done in our imagined separation and envision a different choice, that celebrate our participation with the life and lifeblood of this miraculously diverse world we inhabit.

I have selected five songs here, but I encourage readers to share more in the comments. I would love to see this collection grow to a hundred or more, including songs of all genres and from a wide range of human cultures.

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Songs of Affirmation

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Gentle Arms of Eden - Dave Carter

This is unfortunately a poor-quality video of a live event, but composer Dave Carter tells the remarkable story of its origin. From his telling, he woke up one morning with this song in his head and wrote it down.

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On a sleepy endless ocean when the world lay in a dream

There was rhythm in the splash and roll, but not a voice to sing

So the moon fell on the breakers and the morning warmed the waves

Till a single cell did jump and hum for joy as though to say

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(Chorus) This is my home, this is my only home

This is the only sacred ground that I have ever known

And should I stray in the dark night alone

Rock me Goddess in the gentle arms of Eden

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Then the day shone bright and rounder til the one turned into two

And the two into ten thousand things, and old things into new

And on some virgin beachhead some lonesome critter crawled

And looked about and shouted out in his most astonished drawl

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Chorus

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Then all the sky was buzzin’ and the ground was carpet green

And the wary children of the woods went dancin’ in between

And the people sang rejoicing when the fields were glad with grain

This song of celebration from their cities on the plain

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Chorus

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Now there’s smoke across the harbor and there’s factories on the shore

And the world is ill with greed and will and enterprise of war

But I will lay my burdens in the cradle of your grace

And the shining beaches of your love and the sea of your embrace

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Chorus

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All ecological spiritualities need a creation story, and this is one of the few attempts I have seen to describe the history of our planet as understood by modern science in a way that imbues the story with emotion and sacredness. Far too often we get lost in the mechanisms of evolution and forget that it is a magical, creative process leading always toward new forms and ways of being.

The chorus, interspersed within the story, is an affirmation of belonging and spiritual commitment to the world we inhabit. “This is my home, this is my only home. This is the only sacred ground I have ever known.” In many ways Gentle Arms of Eden encapsulates the central idea of the Dendroica Project in song.

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Rivers Run - Karine Polwart

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This weary Earth we walk upon

She will endure when we are gone

While kingdoms come and kingdoms go

Rivers run and rivers flow

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You know I don’t believe it’s true

That in this world there’s nothing new

For darling, you have just begun

Rivers flow and rivers run

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(Chorus) And if the river should ever run dry

Somewhere the rain will still fall

Will still fall from the sky

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When I’m beguiled by the fear

That darker days are drawing near

My darling, you seduce the sun

Rivers flow and rivers run

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Chorus

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This wounded Earth we walk upon

She will endure when we are gone

But still I pray that you may know

How rivers run and rivers flow

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Chorus

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I cross my heart and I hope to live

Just long enough that I can give

It all to you, my darling one

Rivers flow and rivers run

My darling one

Rivers flow and rivers run

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I love this song, both for its beautiful melody and for its life-affirming lyrics. It finds hope in affirmation that we are small and ultimately insignificant in the story of our planet. Even if our machinations change the climate and cause some rivers to run dry, “somewhere the rain will still fall from the sky.” In a time when our children are often led to fear that there might be no future worth living for, this song provides a simple and powerful affirmation of the sacredness and resilience of “this weary Earth we walk upon.”

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Songs of Lamentation

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There is a certain grief that arises upon acknowledging the inherent value and sacredness of a world that our species has been treating as an inert repository of resources and waste dumping ground for centuries. Too often these days that grief is funneled into a sort of guilt, shame, and fear that leaves people feeling depressed, powerless, and vulnerable to manipulation by those who wish to control others for their own gain. The grief itself is healthy and necessary though, especially if we can move through the experience to a place of humility and healing, and from there begin to re-imagine the story of human existence on planet Earth.

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The Buffalo Song - Ed Stone

My father was a Catholic priest. He was a lifelong spiritual seeker, and his individual pursuit of inspiration and truth often put him at odds with church leadership and eventually led to his departure. His actual spirituality was much more ecological than Christian for much of his life. During my childhood, in his post-priesthood years, he taught me all of the native plants and birds, set me free to explore the wild lands around our home, and bundled me up for winter solstice bonfires in Minnesota weather. As a priest he designed a much-beloved youth ministry program centered around backpacking trips to the Bighorn Mountains and canoe trips near the Canadian border. He also wrote songs - two of which I will share here as hymns for an ecological spirituality. In 1974, he produced an LP record, with youth musicians from his programs providing instruments and harmonies.

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Who first stored the oil deep down?

Tell me who makes pure water to spring from the ground?

Tell me who tells a seed that it’s his turn to grow?

Tell me who first designed the wild buffalo?

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There was a time and it’s not long ago

This land belonged to the wild buffalo

Till some men decided that the great herd should go

And we saw the end of the wild buffalo

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Some men decided and that was the end

There was no limit to what we could spend

Spend for our pleasures, survival, or our gold

Or the big heavy hides of the wild buffalo

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So the buffalo is gone, now the oil’s going too

May the Lord have mercy on me and you

We use up our gifts, oh it’s so hard to know

Why we did what we did to the wild buffalo

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When the gifts are free, the giver’s in love

Giving oil in the ground or sun from above

We reap and we harvest what we never did sow

It’s all in the story of the wild buffalo

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We reap and we harvest till the harvest is gone

Some men make millions and few cry wrong

We’ve been led to believe that the rivers always flow

But they didn’t in the story of the wild buffalo

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So the buffalo are gone, now the oil’s going too

May the Lord have mercy on me and you

We use up our gifts, oh it’s so hard to know

Why we do what we do to the wild buffalo

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When the gifts are free, the giver’s in love

Giving oil in the ground or sun from above

We reap and we harvest what we never did sow

We’ve been led to believe that the rivers always flow

So we use up our gifts, oh it’s so hard to know…

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Who first stored the oil deep down?

Tell me who makes pure water to spring from the ground?

Tell me who tells a seed that it’s his turn to grow?

Tell me…tell me who wrote the story of the wild buffalo?

Help me…help me re-write the story of the wild buffalo

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At first glance, this might seem to be a contradiction to the previous song. Ed sings: “We’ve been led to believe that the rivers always flow, but they didn’t in the story of the wild buffalo.” Karine sings: “While kingdoms come and kingdoms go, rivers run and rivers flow. … And if the river should ever run dry, somewhere the rain will still fall from the sky.”

Upon closer examination, it becomes clear that they are actually compatible. The rivers don’t always flow. Sometimes we kill all of the buffalo, or we take so much water from the Colorado River that it no longer reaches the sea. Yet at the same time, somewhere the rain does still fall, and rivers run, and rivers flow. We have caused great change and great harm, and yet all that we have done and could possibly do is dwarfed by the enormity of this great, living, ever-renewing and ever-evolving planet. I find that it is important to be able to see both perspectives, to feel both grief and comfort.

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Songs of Participation

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If we believe that we truly belong on this living planet, that we are as much a part of Earth as the trees and the birds, then we will celebrate our participation in the great dance of life, experiencing with all of our senses and entering into personal relationship with all that which surrounds us.

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The Lost Words Blessing - Karine Polwart

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Enter the wild with care, my love

And speak the things you see

Let new names take and root and thrive and grow

And even as you travel far from heather, crag, and river

May you, like the little fisher, set the stream alight with glitter

May you enter now as otter without falter into water

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Look to the sky with care, my love

And speak the things you see

Let new names take and root and thrive and grow

And even as you journey on past dying stars exploding

Like the gilded one in flight, leave your little gifts of light

And in the dead of night, my darling, find the gleaming eye of starling

Like the little aviator, sing your heart to all dark matter

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Walk through the world with care, my love

And sing the things you see

Let new names take and root and thrive and grow

And even as you stumble through machair sands eroding

Let the fern unfurl your grieving, let the heron still your breathing

Let the selkie swim you deeper, oh my little silver-seeker

Even as the hour grows bleaker, be the singer and the speaker

And in city and in forest, let the larks become your chorus

And when every hope is gone, let the raven call you home

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This song brings tears to my eyes every time. It is a call to relaxation into the world we inhabit, to participation and belonging. “Enter…look….walk…speak…sing.” It speaks to the significance of names, of building a personal relationship with the wild parts of our world. Too many places remain nameless, and too many of our names are empty of real meaning - carried forward from Indigenous languages but divorced from their origin stories, or named arbitrarily for a long-dead human who has little connection to the named form or to our present time.

I was lucky to grow up in a landscape where my father had named the places, and where I was encouraged to add names of my own. Strawberry Rock. Vulture-Hawk Rock. The Secret Garden. Whip-poor-will Hill. The Lookout. A whole nation of names on a hundred acres of land, of ancient granite exposed and carved by glacial meltwater, now covered in a patchwork of prairie and forest. Naming that which surrounds us is an act of participation, a statement of belonging.

Re-naming has become a hot political topic, a clash of ideologies and worldviews. Too often it is about moving away from something, rejecting a name that now seems tarnished to some, but perhaps it could be more about moving toward a world in which we craft names that represent the “being-ness” of forms and places in relationship to our own lives and communities.

The Lost Words Blessing is part of the “Spell Songs” project, which grew out of The Lost Words by Robert Macfarlane.

The Lost Words is a ‘book of spells’ that seeks to conjure back the near-lost magic and strangeness of the nature that surrounds us. The book began as a response to the removal of everyday nature words - among them "acorn", "bluebell", "kingfisher" and "wren" - from a widely used children’s dictionary, because those words were not being used enough by children to merit inclusion. But The Lost Words then grew to become a much broader protest at the loss of the natural world around us, as well as a celebration of the creatures and plants with which we share our lives, in all their wonderful, characterful glory.

It is in many ways a sister effort to The Dendroica Project, and I encourage readers to check out the books and music.

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Napeequa - Ed Stone

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(Whistle) I heard it where the cool waters fall

(Whistle) I heard it like a far distant call

(Whistle) I heard it high on a mountainside

(Whistle) I’d sing that song, and I’d cry

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I cry for all the days that flow on into years

I cry for all the friends who share our deepest fears

Oh I cry for all the joys life holds we’ve yet to know

I cry there’s someone, someone loves us so

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Someone loves, I feel it in the way the breeze is blowing

Someone loves, I see it in all the colors showing

Someone loves, I know it when the winter turns to spring

Someone loves, I hear it in all the songs we sing

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We sing, there’s so much to do before we die

We sing, our voices reach out far into the sky

Oh we sing, the notes are there in everything we see

We sing to celebrate the moments when we’re free

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Repeat last verse

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My father found God in the Napeequa valley, in the plaintive call of a bird beckoning him to come forth, to live fully, to participate, to cry, to feel, see, know, hear, and ultimately to sing.

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This solstice, in a time of darkness and confusion on planet Earth, may we be reminded that there is so much to live for, so much to do before we die. May our voices reach out far into the sky, and to each other across space and distance. The notes are there, in everything we see. May we open our eyes to all of the love and life that surrounds us, as the great turning reaches its ebb and the days begin to lengthen, beginning another cycle of growth and rebirth.