When I was growing up, my mama made up songs for everything.  Potty training? Sing about it.  Your heart’s deepest longing? In song.  I learned: like birds, we sing.  Simple plain,  because we’re alive.  For me Song is a protection mantle, a wise friend, a presence meditation, a comic relief.  Song anchors us in our breathing bodies, resonant chambers.  Song lives in the crosshairs of Right Here + Right Now.

Turns out there’s an upwelling of folks who need to sing like we need to breathe.  We are finding each other and reclaiming our voices as a pathway to Belonging. We  bask in the pleasure of harmony and the power of unison.  Community singing (simple songs taught call-and-echo in circle form) is a growing movement that honors the relationship between our voices and our hearts, our voices and our grief, & our voices and the path to mutual liberation. Unblocking energy, melting judgment, decomposing scripts of separation, enlisting endorphins . . . . in Singing, we practice the muscle to choose. Wavelengths change things. 

Like peanut butter & chocolate, singing goes great with….. just about every verb. Chores. Walking. Driving. Showering. But biking! For me, it’s a match made in heaven. In 2019, I was drawn to spend much of the summer and fall in "bikeabout" around the American Midwest  -- attuning with the land and with my soul by taking months-long bicycle treks, weaving between communities, learning and leading Song. This particular bikeabout I was calling the "womb room bikeabout" ~ I was turning 40 that summer  (no human kids), and holding sacred questions about how I desire to Mother in this lifetime.  On the first day, heading out from east central Illinois toward St. Louis, MO,  this new song friend came while pedaling, without effort, as an answer: 

You don't have to know the Way

The Way knows the Way

You don't have to plan the way

trust the Way

feel your way

The Way knows

The Way knows

The Way knows the Way

In the weeks prior, I  had scrawled in my journal the words, "You don't have to know the way, the way knows the way” ~ attributed as an anonymous quote, as shared in the book It's Not Your Money by Tosha Silver.  Gliding on country roads, this wisdom remembered itself into melody and the rest of the words followed.  The Song arrived intact.  Gift.  That’s why we call it ‘catching’ songs….. 

I shared it a few days later for the first time at a Village Fire Singing gathering in Iowa with the teenagers during our overnight expedition evening fire circle, and then we all sang it back for the whole community upon our return.  It caught like wildfire ~ it was striking a chord in our collective. Songs tell the time on the clock of the world. 

In hindsight, I see that the song seeded itself in me at that critical moment.   Up til then, I’d been living a pretty hyper-local experiment: no planes,  just earthspeed in the heartland.  Something shifted that year ~ I said yes to invitations to co-lead at Omega Institute on the east coast and Esalen on the west coast, where I shared this song with people from around the globe.  I think the song knew it had some ground to cover to travel internationally pre-pandemic, to get into position so it could help to anchor us through the tremendous unraveling and decomposing as we are guided deeper into the Unknown.    I've heard from people all around the world who have welcomed it as a dear companion prayer mantra amidst the job losses, racial upheaval, relational breakdowns, health woes, and paradigm shifts we are surviving.  Asking us down from mental energy into heart intelligence, we re-center in the vast field of benevolent guidance that speaks to us through our bodies, through Spirit, and through the natural world.  The Way Knows. 

Song is a vibrantly alive energy here to support us in surrendering to the greatest Love we can fathom.  And the song-friends keep coming!  Next time you’re washing dishes, wink to the muse.  Wonder what she wants to sing through you? 

TheBirdSings · The Way Knows the Way by Lyndsey Scott