Peterson Toscano's A Musing

A New Song

The other day at the home of composer Lee Hoiby I mentioned how much I love hymns but more and more find that I cannot sing them. I start off with one of my favorites and stop realizing that my beliefs now do not match the lyrics. Sometimes when I have my quiet prayer time, I sit and go through 20 or more songs before I hit on one with which I agree.

Lee promised to share a song he wrote as a salutation "from the God in me to the God in you." Sounds like a Quaker power anthem! Really it is a lovely song called As the Work is Done.

Here is Lee performing it. He hasn't played it for years and apologized afterwards for stopping a few times, but like Joe G. with his podcasts, I think I perfer this version to a polished one. (And yet again the audio and the video got out of sync when uploading. Any suggestions on how to avoid that???)

I find it to be quite moving.

And with his permission, here are the lyrics:

As the Work is Done

From the god in me to the god in you, salutations!
On the path to our destinations, we share this air and sun
As the work is done.
And the less we hide what's inside us,
The more we trust in our truth to guide us,
The more we all are one, as the work is done.
And the work is done by you and me,
And the work is done to make us free.
And the more we see everything we do as creation,
The more we know there's no separation,
That all is really one as the work is done.
And the work is done by you and me,
And the work is done when we are free.

posted by Peterson Toscano @ 11:38 AM