Sweet Honey in the Rock introduce their miraculous singing of "Wade in the Water," with this invitation/warning:
"If you want change in your life, and you're avoiding the trouble, you can forget it. So Harriet would say, Wade on in the water." The sound system in my car, blessedly, only plays CDs and the radio, so I am visiting decades past, through my CD collection. Singing along to Sweet Honey in the Rock "Beatitudes" and "Peace"-- I found "Wade in the Water" responds to the moment many are living right now. "Ain't but the one God made us all. Wade in the water." Here is another version of the same song, recorded in a studio, and without the introductory words:
And...
the radical slip-shift into something soft, and already here. The necessary and yummy and demanding shift--is it work? is it art? is it the hardest thing? the simplest?--to include actively another sense of this same tragic moment, through another Sweet Honey song, "Be Your Water:"
"I be your shelter, I be your land, I be your everything. I be your water when you're thirsty and dry. I woke up morning in a crowded, sick place, surrounded by evil, protected by grace.
There were these hands, hundreds reaching for me.
They knew exactly who and what I should be.
... Then I heard whispers (be still, be still, be still) from deep inside (be still, be still, be still). As I gave power to the sound of my own voice A way broke before me, I followed my choice I walked along the way other lives had been Till I came to what seemed like an end Again these hands, (there were these hands) reaching, beck'ning for me (there were these hands) They knew exactly who and what I should be. ...there was no road, no path to take....
Still I have felt lonely most of the time.... Again the whisper, 'Be still, be still, be still.' ...Saved by the whisper... I've seen you before, many a time... I'll be your water when you're thirsty and dry."