Barbara McAfee
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World of Wonders Lyrics

All music and lyrics by Barbara McAfee unless otherwise noted.
© Big Bug Music
World of Wonders
​
Here’s a breath to help ease your breathing
Here’s a song to set your songs free
Here is a voice that will just keep on singing
A vision for who we could be
There is bread for all who hunger
A refuge when trouble draws near
The hate melting to kindness
And justice eclipsing the fear....


In a world full of wonders, why couldn’t these things be true?
In a world full of wonders, why wouldn’t one of them be you?

Every child is raised up in glory
Every soul knows the sublime
We weave a bright new story
Where we all wake up in time
The mending of the waters
The land restored to green
All the people, plants, and creatures
Taking part in Earth’s great dream....

In a world full of wonders, why couldn’t these things be true?
In a world full of wonders, why wouldn’t one of them be you?
As certain as the sunrise
As faithful as the tides
As ingenious as your body
Where the flame of life resides
As brilliant as the poppy
As solid as the stone
Unnumbered miracles unfolding
On Earth, our beloved home....

In this world full of wonders, all of these things are true
In this world full of wonders, I know one of them is you.


This Vehicle Makes Frequent Stops
This vehicle makes frequent stops to look around and breathe
To pause and rest in headlong times is radical indeed
Everything around me incites me to more speed
To do and buy and eat more than I actually need….
 
This vehicle is human; it goes at its own pace
What lousy etymology to coin “the human race!”
I’ll linger in the slow lane, let the drivers pass me by
‘Cause living fast ain’t living well
You just die before you die….
 
This vehicle’s my body; it’s perfect by design
The urge to keep improving it I hereby now resign
I’ll take a healthy pleasure in all my sense five
And that most confounding miracle: I’m actually alive!
 
This vehicle makes frequent stops; come sit here on my swing
We’ll have a glass of lemonade and chat about some things
Then maybe we’ll fall silent, just sit and watch the rain
And time will stretch like a lazy cat
Before it starts up again
This vehicle makes frequent stops to look around and breathe…


The House on Sherburne Street
He fell against the pillows
He dropped right in my hands
I gentled him with words whose source
I still don’t understand
He softened in his dying
A bitter man grown sweet
That rainy August midnight
In the house on Sherburne Street.
 
This giant of my childhood
Sharp words and scathing tones
His pounding jaw and flashing eye
Made a harsh place of our home
A wounded man so angry
Was it something about me?
I’d creep around on tiptoe
In the house on Sherburne Street.
 
That summer in the garage talking about lawnmowers
Then right into life after death….
Upstairs in the bedroom changing his dressings
Laughing till we lost our breath….
Long, easy evenings just watching him smoke
Sweet nicknames and tenderness under the jokes
My frail yellow hero: my dad.
 
Mom fled to the kitchen to call the funeral man
I stroked his brow and slid the Timex from his cooling hand
I felt a burden lifting
Felt an ancient fear retreat
That rainy August midnight
In the house on Sherburne Street.
 
It’s been twenty years since I asked him to haunt me
It seems that he found a way:
The redbird appears in the strangest of places
That old clock started ticking on Christmas Day
Upstairs in the hallway I sometimes smell smoke
I cherish the nicknames, retell the jokes of my
Late-blooming hero: my dad.
 
Every day that passes draws me closer to that door
Remembering that it will end
Makes me love my living more
Gonna ripen toward my dying
With my heart and mind at ease
I’m still held in the mystery
That we found on Sherburne Street
I’m still held in the mystery that we found on Sherburne Street.
 
Note:  One day in the garage I asked Dad what he thought would happen to him when he died.  He said, “Well, I don’t know, but I guess I’m going to find out soon!”  And laughed.  I asked him – if it wasn’t too much trouble – to find a way to stay in touch from there…that I was going to miss him.  He agreed. Ever since his death, I’ve had a lot of odd encounters with cardinals.  We were bird watchers, so that would be a way he might choose.  Who knows?  I like the story….
 
Many years after his death,  was staying over at the house with Mom on Christmas Eve.  I was lying in what used to be Dad’s bed when I heard the old key-wound Seth-Thomas mantel clock on the dresser start ticking.  I called Mom in to ask her if she’d wound it lately.  Nope.  And just outside Dad’s bedroom door, I used to catch a whiff of cigarette smoke from time to time. When I told Mom about it, she said she could smell it now and then, too.


Kindness
This one true intention,
This shining rule of gold
Is a cup of sweet sweet water poured out
For the thirsty soul.
 
Each and every person you meet along the way
Is fighting a great battle each and every day
(Plato - Greek philosopher, founded the first institute of higher learning, 2,400 years)
 
“If those who owed us nothing gave us nothing
How poor we’d be” 
(Antonio Porchia, Italian poet 1885 - 1968)
The very source of Life itself is generosity

Rivers
August morning; St. Croix River; I am 12 years old
No one else is stirring yet, I’m utterly alone
I toss my thoughts into the stream, the current’s pull is strong
The river speaks to me of time….and carries me along….
 
This water I am watching now is soon to join the sea
All beginnings have an end and the same is true for me
I see that all things now alive will someday pass away
I’ve never had such thoughts before….
Like the river gave today….

Chorus: Who would I be without these rivers?
And all of the things that rivers know?
Flood, freeze, change, flow, let go.......

 
December midnight on the Seine; I am 25
I’m living far away from home for the first time in my life
I linger on the bridges in the rare Paris snow
In these winter river wandering, there are things I’ve come to know
 
What called me here was a mystery I felt down in my bones
I walked and pondered, wrote and wept – never more alone
The dream I thought I’d find here never came to be
But in Paris my first song was born
The river’s gift to me...Chorus
 
I’m 46, the upper Mississippi is out my door
I bring my weary spirit here just as I have before
I walk the river paths for miles – exhaustion falls away
I listen for the lesson the river has today
A hurricane, a falling bridge, flooding just downstream
There’s trouble on the river, just like there’s always been
Her waters make their seaward journey even so
Like the river, I learn by going where I have to go*...Chorus
 
* from a line by Theodore Roethke's poem, “The Waking”


Margie's Song
Step into the world with wonder in your pocket
Sacred intention, your heart on your sleeve
Let your soul be your source of navigation
As you travel through creation
Let love be your home.
Let love be your home, hallelujah
Let love be your home.
Let your soul be your source of navigation
As your travel through creation
Let love be your home

Breathing Trees
The sun goes down; the trees exhale
On their sweet breath our dreams all sail
At break of day they open wide
To let the gift of light inside
 
Chorus:
I am breathing tree
Tree is breathing me
I am breathing tree
Tree is breathing me
 
My lungs hold branches upside down:
Bronchia and leafy crown
I from egg and thou from seed
Each gives what the other needs...Chorus

Our songs twine on the dancing wind
I breathe out what you breathe in
Rising sap and beating heart:
One of life’s great works of art...Chorus

More Than A House
by Jean Leicester and Barbara McAfee
​

It's more than a house we are building.
More than a place to call your own.
It's a joyful gift, a holy promise
That our love will build this home.
 
It's more than a house we are raising
Lifting hope with every beam
Our labors join in true communion
It's more than a house: it's our common dream.

Let It Be
By John Lennon & Paul McCartney
 
When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be
And in my hour of darkness she is standing right in front of me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be
Let it be. Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
 
And when the broken-hearted people living in the world agree
There will be an answer, let it be
For though they may be parted,
there is still a chance that they will see
There will be an answer, let it be

Let it be. There will be an answer, let it be.
 
And when the night is cloudy there is still a light that shines on me
Shines until tomorrow, let it be
I wake up to the sound of music, Mother Mary comes to me

Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
Let it be. Whisper words of wisdom, let it be.

Jewels
Every time I go into the darkness, I return with fistfuls of jewels
Midnight velvet wraps all around me
Stars glitter brilliant above
Dreaming darkness, dreaming light

Child of My Heart
I was only a girl when you were born
Guess we both had some growing to do
Some things I loved – turns out you loved them, too
Twin spirits too wild to tame
I loved it when they said we looked the same
Child of my heart.
 
Never have babies of my own
Wasn’t something I had to do
Just made up my life as I went along
Now you say how much that mattered to you
Your life is your finest work of art
Child of my heart
 
Hearts bound together with bonds much stronger than blood
Whenever we are together, we do each other so much good….
 
I know you’re dancing with the shadows
And they wear you right down to the bone
These are fearsome roads on which you travel
There are places you just have to walk alone
And I pray you’ll find that guiding star
Child of my heart
 
May you be less afraid and wake up sooner
And take joy in the living of your days
May you heal the old pain that filtered through
Despite all I tried to do
I did it for me and I did it for you
Child of my heart

I Wish That I Could Show You
Lyrics based on a quote by Hafiz, translated by Daniel Ladinsky

I wish that I could show you
I wish that I could show you
Whenever you are lonely or walking in the dark
I wish that I could show you
I with that I could show you
The Astonishing Light of your Being.

When I Die
When I die I know there’ll be singing
By my friends all gathered around
As their sweet voices fade behind me
I will join with the One Great Sound
And I’ll stand on a sunset hillside
Just like I did in that dream
Join the multitudes there w ho are singing
The song inside everything
 
When I die I hope I’m not frightened
But it’s not for me to know
What awaits me there at the threshold
What’s required in letting go
Every time I leave home
Or someone I love
Or a place sweet and holy
Each night as I slide into slumber
I am learning how to die
 
When I die I will fall into a hammock
Woven of every song I’ve ever sung
I have sent them all forward to catch me
On the day that my life is done.
I have learned the best gifts of my living
From my friends who are nearing their death
So I offer them tribute and honor
Through the blessing of each breath
 
May I slip into that great mystery
As I did in the cool lake a dawn
May I float those eternal waters
Let the current of love bring me home
 
When I die I know there’ll be singing
By my friends all gathered around
As their sweet voices fade behind me
I will join with the One Great Sound
 


 


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