Through tall windows I can see evergreens and mountain peaks. In the
recording studio of the Banff Centre for the Performing Arts, with headphone to
one ear, I hear exquisite instrumental accompaniment. Through the other ear l
hear my own voice, blending with women's
voices around me.
Women from the four western provinces of Canada realized this dream last August, when we gathered as the Sacred Web Project to record the music of American singer and songwriter Carolyn McDade. Her many songs of social justice and reverence have given us sustenance over the years, but few of us had imagined recording a CD with the composer.
For 30 years she has written songs that inspire personal and social transformation. She is a humble visionary who listens to the ringing of the universe as no one else I know.
In 1995, when McDade was musician-in-residence at Prairie Christian Training Centre, Saskatchewan, she began to hope that Canadian women might record her songs. "I have a dream that will not lie down," she told Nancy Steeves of Edmonton two years ago.
"If you have the energy to come to Canada," Steeves said, "the women of Canada have the energy to meet you."
Last spring, McDade came from Wellfleet. Massachusetts, to each region to explore the meanings of the songs to be recorded in Banff. She encourages women to sing from the place of our own Inner authority, to sing "with an unshielded heart, a deep an knowing mind." She says that "songs of themselves are not paths to the soul. When singers become the singing, however, some horizon, both inner and outer, opens, and we know, if only briefly, why we live. We have become part of the singing river, the long voice that has held, washed, and laid down 10 million mornings of song."
Fabric artists in each of the four regions began a quilt-making project,
creating blocks to be crafted into a magnificent quilt. Meanwhile, on the West
Coast, women produced audio tapes of the harmonies for all the songs to be
recorded, enabling each of us to learn our part. Indelible in my memory is
driving through a Manitoba blizzard, bravely singing along with the alto tape.
It gave new meaning to women and spirit.
Then, with no auditions --- simply a commitment to embrace the vision and learn the music --- 90 women came to be with her in Banff. In the words of one director, Elaine Mann of Alberta, they were ready to "sing with the kind of passion and precision that will clearly send our vision out 'o'er all the earth."
Six days of laughter-filled practices and long, intense recording sessions followed. A long, spontaneous burst of rhythmic hooting, clapping and stomping of feet erupted after the last song and the ensuing tide of energy carried singers through a joyous Saturday night of skits, music and dancing and a Sunday-morning sunrise ceremony. The dream had become a reality, both in the CD and in women's lives.
And it's not over. Circles of women have formed across ethnic, religious, and economic divides as the Sacred Web Society. In the words of a McDade song inspired by the Project:
We are the land we sing / We are the prayer we bring / to these wide miles of morning.
As women, too often named and claimed by others, we have claimed our own names. We found our voices, taken our rightful places in the sacred web of things, joined in building culture and community. In regional gatherings, women continue to discuss, write, compose, paint, photograph, and dance the interrelation of women, land and spirit.
All this has strengthened my already-strong belief that people of the dawning millennium need to sense --- and revere --- the One invoked in the song, "Ancient Seas":
Who honors faithfulness more than obedience / Who trusts I make my path when I know not the way.
I believe, as Christians, we need a transformation of theological vision. We need theology that remembers we are molded from the land with Spirit-wind breathing life into our nostrils. We need to seek beyond us and within us the One and All "who honors faithfulness more than obedience; Who trusts we make our path when we know not the way."
Janet Silman, an Observer columnist, is currently taking a sabbatical on Vancouver Island.
The CD
($18) and tape ($12) We Are the Land We Sing are available at United Church Bookstores in Canada and in the U.S. through Faith@Work.
More pictures & reflections on the Sacred Web Project. And please these other sites on the Internet at http://www.gis.net/~surtsey/womenlandspirit/ (Carolyn's website) or http://www.cableregina.com/business/livingland/ .