Many of us at Wildflower have been thinking a lot about covenant and promises, how we live up to our community agreements, and how we come together to say and hear difficult things. Several Wildflowers come together to reflect on the idea of transformation through returning to our commitments to each other.

August 22, 2021 Sunday Service Playlist

• Gathering Music - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcO7PXCarnE; Nathalie Joachim + Spektral Quartet - "Suite pou Dantan: Prelid"

Haitian-American composer, flutist, and vocalist Nathalie Joachim released her debut solo album, Fanm d'Ayiti/Women of Haiti, in August, 2019. The album shows Joachim exploring her Haitian heritage and celebrating the songs and stories of some of Haiti’s most iconic yet under-recognized female artists. The songs on Fanm d'Ayiti were all written or arranged by Joachim and feature her performing on vocals, flute, and electronics alongside the Grammy-nominated string ensemble Spektral Quartet. The above song incorporates the recorded voices of Joachim’s grandmother and the girls choir of her family’s home farming village of Dantan.

• Litany: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWsZZj_6vng; Litany of Atonement with commentary by Robert Eller-Isaacs, spoken with the words “I forgive myself, I forgive you, we begin again in love.”
• Offertory - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNY4IbD70Gs Lisette, by Ludovic Lamothe (1882-1953), performed by  Jean Bernard Cerin, baritone; Toni Caldwell-Hall, piano
  • The offertory music, originally written in 1757 by a white colonist, dramatizes the plight of an enslaved African man and is the oldest surviving song text in early Haitian Creole. In the 1920s the song was reclaimed by Haitian pianist and composer Ludovic Lamothe. As an expression of national pride, Lamothe set the song to the Haitian traditional dance form, the méringue.
• Joys and Concerns - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVyCrFAV8FA; Beethova Obas (Haitian musician) Éclosion (Hatching) 

English translation:

I have seen you leaving
Your heart lighten, your soul unburden
To no longer endure the ambiguity
Of a love all gutted.

We had to let go of our memories
To embrace the future
Body and soul hungry for passion
Absence of reason.

Oh! My love, my fault, my disaccord
Treasure Island, slumbers in you
Close your eyes, free your body
Strum once again and tell the buds to bloom.

Take reason as guide
And rhyme emotion with maturation
Change the chrysalis into butterfly
Learn how to forgive.

It’s time to repaint the painting
just play your do, unknot your words
Unmute your voice, sing a tremolo
a melody and all will be alright.

Just shine like a star in the night
Enjoy every drop of your life
Yes, and since that you have been gone
Another world has conquered me.

Oh! My love, my bad, my disaccord
Strum once again, tell the buds to blossom.

• Postlude - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TbDPwA09Bc; This Joy sung by the Resistance Revival Chorus;