Susan Elizabeth Hale

Spider Woman tells me to sing...She tells me to go deep within my song to reweave myself… not just to sing while I cook or hum in the grocery line,  not just join a choir…Spider Woman tells me to sing …She tells me to go deeper than I have before…Deeper than the words I’m writing, deeper than a cave within the earth…

Spider Woman tells me to sing…She tells me to listen to the tune of her web, to the music inside each note…She asks me to sing the scroll written in a leaf, the musical score of the mountains, the sound inside a seashell…Spider Woman tells me to sing, to let go of anything I’ve ever heard about the voice and to sing the song of the honeycomb…

Spider Woman asks me to sing the song written in my bones, the signature of my fingerprint, to sing in the key of Susan…Spider Woman asks me to sing the sonata of a rose, the lullaby of the grapevine…Spider Woman tells me to sing… to go deep within my song…deeper than I’ve gone before, a voyage on the Songship Enterprise…she tells me to follow the cochlea’s spiral all the way to the Milky Way…

Spider Woman tells me to sing in concert with the marsh hawks, in harmony with spring frogs…Spider Woman tells me that my breath is a strand of her web, that sacred geometry is being created by my voice joining with her voice, joining with Voice, otter and buckwheat, prairie wolf and tangerine, orca and magnolia… the diadem of her shining web.

"Lift Up Thy Voice with Strength Be Not Afraid"

These words from the Bible have been reverberating within me these last several days after singing Handel's Messiah. I am keeping a family tradition. Every year my mother sang in the Messiah. When I was very young I remember being so bored I drew the faces of the choir members on the program of the First Presbyterian Church in Hanford, California. Then, as a teenager something shifted and the music took root.

Layers of memories flood me now as I sit in the alto section of the Presbyterian Church in Hendersonville, North Carolina. I remember my mother with her score in hand standing and singing. I remember the comforting voice of the alto who sang "He Shall Lead HisFlock Like a Shepherd" and the bass soloist whose face was always red. He wore a toupee that looked like it was lacqued to his head. These faces and voices are gone. They are replaced by the man in the green bow tie and red sweater and the old woman with the jingle bell earrings sitting next to me. We are all family now in the music.

I remember visiting my mother in a nursing home over Christmas many years ago. She could barely speak. My brother and I talked to her about our lives. She listened with a blank face. I held her hands and sang the "Hallelujah Chorus"and she looked up and sang a few notes with me. We danced there together with our eyes as she sat in her wheelchair. This was the most meaningful Christmas gift I received that year, a present moment shared in a timeless song.

Her voice echoes through me now as I sing the Messiah. I feel her presence.She is happy I am here. I have carried on a song tradition passed from mother to daughter

and pass this remembrance as a gift to you. Whatever you are met with now, during this season of gathering darknessand returning light, I wish you strength and fearlessness to lift upyour voices with courage and sing what is in your heart.

"Lift up thy voice with strength. Be not afraid.

Arise! Shine! For thy light is come!"

Growing up we hear many messages about our voices. Many are told they are tone deaf and can'tsing. Others are told they are too intense and should tone down. Some are told to keep family secrets or told they are too sensitive. All ofthese can translate into vocal

blocks and inhibit us from expressing our natural heritage as singers.

One woman was told by her brother that she sounded like a crow in a tincan. This stopped her from her natural love of singing for years. This woman became my apprentice and I taught her the simple technique of toning, of following the breath and allowing inner sounds to ride on the breath stream. This woman now gives sound healing sessions with body work on the Crow and Northern Cheyenne reservations in southern Montana. She has been given the right to sing native Crow songs,healing songs that come through dreams. She has found her voice and is no longer subject to the inhibiting messages that she internalized.

What messages were you given about your voice? What images do you have of your voice that you can transform?

Over the airwaves

Over the phone

Out of the foam

Venus rises

Poems travel at the speed of light

We cup our seashell ears to receive our birth moans

Midwife each other

Witness blazed trails

As spring flowers cut through the earth with their green blades

Resurrected Easter lilies open

The weaving of women in cyberspace

Star-linked

Tell stories of mother’s cherry pie in the freezer

Finally unthawed to be eaten

Éclairs dipped in chocolate

“Eat them now,” Mama advises,

“Before the sun gets too hot.”

Eat your own sweet heart

Pick your own ripe fruit

Knead the dough

Then turn up the heat

Set the table

Take your place at the feast of life

Set a place for your grandmothers

Hear their voices again

Ancestors, who even now as you sit waiting for the next call,

Alone in your little house,

Even now they weave a shawl for you

Embroidering your name in red silk thread as they hum

There is a cell phone that reaches that far

There is a line open always

In the dark

            Between dreams

            Between labor pains

            Between your hearts crimson rhythm

This is where your phone rings

Use your free minutes

Answer the call

Do you know the story of your name? Perhaps your parents told you a favorite relative or friend that you are named after, or why they were moved to make up an original name. Even if you don't know this story there is a another story waiting to be discovered. That is the story of the vowels of your name.

Vowels are both the emotional content and the sacred content of speech. They are the instinctual sounds that we make when we are moved. Ahhhhh is the sound of sympathy and heart expansion. Eeeee is for delight. Vowels are made by the breath and are rich in harmonics.

Your name contains vowels and each time your name is said these vowels are reinforced in your aura.

A simple exercise working with the sacred vowels of your name

1. Say your first name out loud and listen for the vowels it contains.Then say any childhood names and nicknames that you grew up with to see if the vowels are the same.

2. Now say your full name and listen for the vowels in your middle and last names. Are there new vowels that you hear or cerain vowels repeated?

3. Write down the vowels in your name and also look to see what vowels are missing.

4. Now sing your name on one pitch. It doesn't matter what pitch you sing on.

5. Now sing your name again and elongate the vowels of your name giving them more breath. As you sing the vowels listen for harmonics, higher sounds than the main pitch you are singing.

6. Sing the vowels of your name and as you do change the shape of your mouth and tongue to enhance the harmonics. Place your fingers in your ears so you can hear these harmonics more clearly. Notice where you feel the vowels vibrating in your body.

7. Pause in silence and notice how you feel.

8. Do the same process with the missing vowles of your name.

9. Pause, notice how you feel.

10. Sit in silence.