"Til the Last Shot's Fired"

(One of the most touching songs I've ever heard)

I was there in the winter of '64
When we camped in the ice at Nashville's doors
Three hundred miles our trail had led
We barely had time to bury our dead
When the Yankees charged and the colors fell
Overton hill was a living hell
When we called retreat it was almost dark
I died with a grapeshot in my heart

Say a prayer for peace
For every fallen son
Set my spirit free
Let me lay down my gun
Sweet mother Mary I'm so tired
But I can't come home 'til
the last shot's fired

In June of 1944
I waited in the blood of Omaha's shores
Twenty-one and scared to death
My heart poundin' in my chest
I almost made the first seawall
When my friends turned and saw me fall
I still smell the smoke, I can taste the mud
As I lay there dying from a loss of blood

I'm in the fields of Vietnam,
The mountains of Afghanistan
And I'm still hopin', waitin', prayin'
I did not die in vain

Say a prayer for peace (for peace)
For our daughters and our sons
Set our spirits free (set us free)
Let us lay down our guns
Sweet mother Mary, we're so tired
But we can't come home (No
we can't come home)

You Were Born to Fly by Sara Evens

I heard this song by Sara Evens on the radio this evening, and it is one of those songs that just strikes a chord within you and you know that you have felt that. Wanting so much that which you think will fulfill or which is most possibly your vocation. Kinda silly though, the part about the desire for love being a sin. There is no sin in attempting to fill that whole left in our being by original sin, ever since the fall, whereby we seek love, happiness, and fulfillment to be found in Christ by means of our vocation. It is that search for something deeper which effects our salvation...that we look into ourselves and eventually to God for the truth. Truth is end, the goal, of our lives and our being, the end and the means by which we find our way into paradise and happiness.

You Were Born to Fly

I've been telling my dreams to the scarecrow
About the places that I'd like to see
I say, "friend do you think I'll ever get there?"
Oh, but he just stands there smilin' back at me
So I confessed my sins to the preacher
About the love I've been prayin' to find
Is there a brown-eyed boy in my future, yeah
And he says, "girl, you've got nothin' but time."

But how do you wait for heaven?
And who has that much time?
And how do you keep your feet on the ground
When you know that you were born,
You were born to fly

My daddy he is grounded like the oak tree
My momma she is steady as the sun
Oh, you know I love my folks
But I keep starin' down the road
Just lookin' for my one chance to run
Hey, cause I will soar away like a blackbird
I will blow in the wind like a seed
I will plant my heart in the garden of my dreams
And I will grow up where I wander wild and free

Oh, How do you wait for heaven?
And who has that much time?
And how do you keep your feet on the ground
When you know, that you were born?
You were born, yeah, you were born to fly

Communications between sisters

My dear sister Deborah is always calling me and singing me popular songs, changing the words to fit to my situation. so I sent her this song one day, to the tune of "O Tenanbaum."

O Deborah, my Deborah
How lovely are thine eyeballs
O Deborah, my Deborah,
How lovely are thine eyeballs
They glance so sweet when morning comes
And are devious when day is done
O Deborah, my Deborah,
How lovely are thine eyeballs.

She wrote back with a nice poem, exploiting the fact that I don't have eyebrows.

Naomi, Naomi how thy eyebrows doth shine

They are so light

And flutter through the air

You'd never know

that they were ever there

And perhaps some day

When the world's bereft of delves

They will deign

To show themselves

But until then dear

I fear we must be content

To bid them farewell

Wherever they are sent

And in the life they find there

I pray they become not a bore

But find some eyebrowless peasant

Who needs them more.

So bid them adieu

And shed not a tear

You look so much better

Since they are not here.

We are so silly. =)

The Garden Song

(Sung, first two stanzas as refrain, and each two after as one verse. Or at least, that's how the Clancy Brothers sing it =))
Inch by inch, row by row
Gonna make this garden grow
All it takes is a rake and a hoe
And a piece of fertile ground.

Inch by inch, row by row
Someone bless these seeds I sow
Someone warm them from below
Till the rain comes tumblin' down

Pullin' weeds and pickin' stones
Man is made of dreams and bones
Feel the need to grow my own
Cause the time is close at hand

Rain for grain, sun and rain
Find my way in natures chain
Tune my body and my brain
To the music from the land

Plant your rows straight and long
Temper them with prayer and song
Mother Earth will make you strong
If you give her love and care

Old crow watchin' hungrily
From his perch in yonder tree
In my garden I'm as free
As that feathered thief up there

Riverdance: American Wake

In the deep night, in a dark place, I hear voices calling out in heartache;
They are wounded, they are broken, but their spirit rises when awoken.

Chorus
Yes, they may be poor in birth, but, yes, how great each one is worth!
Heal their hearts! Feed their souls! Their lives can be golden if Your love enfolds.

In their dream times, in their visions how they always hunger after freedom,
Every heart, Lord, every dark road, leads them on to reach a new horizon.

Chorus

Lord, where is our freedom?
When will our hope begin
Lord what of the promise you made; when will it come?
We have waited for the time for the truth to live, when justice will shine.
Too long those hands of freed held on and made us bleed!
When will your people breathe? Lord will it come?

Lord what of our children?
Will they always depend on You?
Lord why are they scattered and torn, and their young hearts in chains?
How they hunger for liberty, feel their hatred of poverty.
Let their spirits rise soaring free!
Lord let it come!Our day will come!

Lord where is our freedom?
When will our hope begin?
Lord what of the promise you made; when will it come?
We have waited for the time for the truth to live, when justice will shine.
Too long, those hands of freed held on and made us bleed!
When will your people breathe? Lord will it come?
When will your people breathe? Lord let it come!

Isle of Hope, Isle of Tears

(this song is beautiful, and offers an adventure for the heart into the history of your ancestors if they, like mine, are from Ireland.>




On the first day of January Eighteen Ninety-two,
They opened Ellis Island and they let the people through.
And the first to cross the threshold of the Isle of hope and tears
Was Annie Moore from Ireland who was all of fifteen years.

Chorus
Isle of hope, Isle of tears, Isle of Freedom, Isle of fears,
But it's not the Isle I left behind;
That Isle of hunger, Isle of pain, Isle you'll never see again,
But the Isle of home is always on your mind

In her little bag she carried all her past and history
And her dreams for the future in the Land of Liberty.
And courage is the passport when your old world disappears,
'cause there's no future in the past when you're fifteen years.

When they closed down Ellis Island in nineteen forty-three
Seventeen million people had come there for sanctuary.
And in the springtime when I came here and stepped onto its piers,
I thought of how it must have felt when you're only fifteen years.



The Isle of home is always on your mind.