the letting go

 

Last summer, I was in a sweat lodge during purification at a Sundance, way upstate near Canada and a woman in the lodge sang a song that moved me. It was in English, which is unusual both in the tipi and in the lodge and it was so clearly a song for Love:

High above the mountains, across the sea, I sing to you, I know you can hear me

High above the mountains, across the sea, I call to you, come pray with me

Hey Yanna Hey, Hey Yanna Ho, Hey Yanna Hey, Hey Yanna Ho

Hey Yanna Hey, Hey Yanna Ho, Hey Yanna Hey, Hey Yanna Ho

 

I wanted that song.  I knew I needed to sing that song. 

This is how it goes with songs in the tipi: you need to pray, you want to pray, you need to find your voice, you need to not be afraid, in order not to be afraid you need to find the songs that you absolutely must sing, there is no holding back.

Then the songs become yours, so you must really choose your truth.  Other people will pick up those songs, other people will share your songs, but you will be known by your songs.  The more songs that call to you, the deeper and more intricate and more whole your prayer becomes.

The true way to learn a song is for someone to sing it to you.  Sure, plenty of songs are learned off of YouTube and CDs but really, you need to go up to someone in the morning after listening to them sing all night and you need to find a place to sit down and have them teach you how to pray.

I asked Stephanie to teach me that song.  She told me she had sung that song in sweat lodges for years, looking for her mate, someone to take her on with her pack of kids, and she found him, her chief.  She still sings the song anyway.  We didn't have time though, I thought the song was lost for me.  I couldn't find it anywhere.

One night in the middle of the night I got a phone call and it was Stephanie on her way to work out in Seattle.  She sang me the song once, because she was in a rush and then she sang it again onto my voicemail.  I learned it that way, playing it over and over.

My daughter Nola was in Cuba then, and I called her there in her boarding house, where they had to call her down to the lobby for her calls.  I taught her the song, she sang it back to me right there by the switchboard with a card game going on in the background.  It was like $1.00 a minute and we were both crying and sniffling a little.

I told Stephanie's sister she taught me the song and I said I was praying for a partner.  She laughed and said, no that is an ancestor song, that song is to call your relatives close to you, to help you, to guide you.  But, she said with a smile, let me know if it works out the way you want it.

That was all over six months ago.  Last night, I was in a sweat with about 30 women, virtually right on the street in the Bronx, in a community garden.  We were packed in tight and the stones were hot.  We went 5 rounds.  Almost every song was in Spanish, but on the last round, Nola's voice rose from deep in the lodge, across the way from me: High above the mountains . . .

 

Comments

[yhari]

i needed that.. ♥

[yhari]

i also needed to sit next to you that last round.. i realized it in the end.. thank you.. you reminded me of something i needed to do ~ go inwards and work on my self.. ♥

[Ashni]

Thank you<3

[the love artist]

oh! such an honor to pray with you beauties!!!!

[Laurenbrownell77]

wow... this was so moving. crying....

[Bett]

Thank you for this. Learning lots of songs now and it is such a strange journey....languages that bump up against eachother. I want someone to teach me the Chumash grandmother's song because those were the people who lived on the land where I grew up. Songs enter me and leave and I have not kept them. I realize this is something I have done with other things in my life and is something I want to change. I want to keep the songs I learn in my heart.

[the love artist]

bett, i'm gonna teach you some songs that you you are gonna keep, promise

[Bett]

thank you love, and I'll be thinking/feeling of you on your vision quest.