Who's Gonna Hold This World

The first in a new series of songs-of-the-times

Long before I became a Unitarian Universalist minister, I wrote a song every week as a volunteer for a community radio station. I didn’t know how many people were listening (probably very few) but I was listening. The songs I wrote helped me cope…and helped me grow.

In the past few years (and especially since Donald Trump was re-elected) I’ve realized that I need to write regularly as a way of coming to terms with the world, of staving off despair and making peace with things…of changing what I can (sometimes only a word, a chord, or my attitude) in the face of all I cannot change.

I may not write a new song every week, but today I am setting my intention to write and share what the Creative Spirit brings my way right now. Meanwhile, I’m close to completing a manuscript called Songwriting as Soul Work: Songs and the Inner Life, which affirms the power of songwriting to transform each artist from within, to bring us joy, courage and clarity of purpose…no matter how popular our songs become. I’ll keep you posted on that, too.

So, today’s song. It’s called “Who’s Gonna Hold This World.” It starts out: “Hope is out, fear is in, the bad guy’s up on top of the heap again, and who’s gonna hold this world up now?” As always, the song answered the question for me. (It includes a reference to yesterday’s sermon directed to President Trump by the courageous Rev. Maryann Budde.) (If you click the link above you’ll go to YouTube, or here’s the video right here:)

In the words of Rumi: “Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened.” (Maybe today he’d say “angry” and frightened!) “Don’t open the door to the study (Internet) and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument. Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.”

May this be the first of my next hundred ways…and may we all do all the good we can do. Thanks for being here.

Love,

Lynn