Psalms of Water and Stone

A collection of 14 poems set to music 
(three featured here)
Lyrics by Heidi Hart and Jennifer Wallace
Music by Richard Smith
First performed June, 2009 with the Mountain Chorale, Salt Lake City, Utah

       It seems fitting that this three-way, long-distance collaboration should speak so much of nearness and space. In these psalms, various voices address the longing for God. The speaker whose journey weaves in and out of the sung psalms has no name; he / she can be whoever the listener imagines. The singers, solo or choir, approach the divine in moments of need or questioning. Images of the natural world - saltwater, frost, egg, stone, bird - express the otherness and intimacy of the sacred. Images of the human-made door, threshold, hinge, or latch allow voices and listeners to approach that in-between place where the heart begins to open. Sometimes words fail the voices, who lapse into silence. Sometimes they speak of God as a presence as close as one human hand reaching for another. The final piece, "River Psalm," reminds us that the journey is never exactly what we thought, and does not end.
-Heidi Hart




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River Psalm

Your white wing brushes at the gate,
Gusts at the gate of my heart.

Fortresses have come undone,
Doors that I have closed are unlocked.

I know a place where the river runs, 
A room made by Your wind.

Hands unclenched, pockets dry and worn,
Your river sings itself in me.

Seized by desires I don't understand, 
Seized by their demands,

Reach for the grace to celebrate
Not the light but what the dawn asks,

Not the sun, not the gifts,
but the empty field, my bright path.

Gust at the gate of my heart,
Your river sings in me,
Your river sings itself in me.

Shadow Psalm

The moth sleeps in a folded sleeve.
The fig folds its fruit inward.
Once a day, I'm still as this.
I turn my shadow toward the bone,
Where it tells of cellar and tunnel,
Root-knot and riverbed,
Wing's underside and hollow of an ear,
All the places I might live,
All the silent rooms
God might enter.

Morning Psalm

Eleison, Eleison
We are guardians of a broken world

(Silence)

Domini, Domini
Free us from ourselves       
       So we might become Your clear water.

(Silence)

Elieson, Eleison.
Pride - like a boiler - blocks the door.
We rise, ashamed of your embrace

(Silence)

In Nomine Domine, Dominus Deus
Make us one body.

Domini, Domini
Your breath, Your word.

AMEN