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Loving Our Way Through This

“Our only hope for our collective liberation is a politics of deep solidarity rooted in love," wrote Michelle Alexander, African American author, civil rights leader, professor, and NY Times opinion columnist, in a recent piece in that publication.

 

With those words in mind, I want to share this new song with you today, in the aftermath of what has certainly been the strangest and most unsettling White House sponsored July 4th  celebration in our lifetime - and quite possibly US history. https://youtu.be/o9A1A2wMsV8

I actually began writing this one many years ago, inspired by a personal experience I shared with my daughter when she was about 5 or 6 years old - my younger granddaughter’s age now. Her joyful fascination with seeing and learning about a nurse tree and the idea of one living thing growing out of another left me with the perfect metaphor for a lyric to help pull me out of a pretty dark place I was struggling with at the time. But that first draft remained tucked away among my collection of unfinished lyrics until I came across it in the mid-90’s and expanded it a bit. That version nearly made it to completion, but still felt like it was missing something. 

Then a few weeks ago I found myself recalling and singing what I still remembered of it again, so I pulled it out, worked up a musical arrangement for it on my guitar, and started tweaking the lyrics a bit. And then suddenly the bridge came to me, connecting the older material to the current situation we’re all living through, along with it’s unexpected ending refrain and title, feeling kind of like a personal mantra for getting through what lies ahead. Love will win. 

I think it’s helping, because in the process of rehearsing and recording it, I’ve found myself believing those words more and more, in spite of all the media’s mounting evidence to the contrary. Love will win.


"This night will pass.
Then we have work to do.
Everything has to do with loving
and not loving."
- Rumi


Love and good health to you all,

Jim

 

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