It isn't summer without Village Harmony

While I was off on all my history jaunts, Elizabeth was at Village Harmony. Village Harmony is this fun concept where musicians go around the world to tiny villages to collect songs. They bring them back to the U.S. and then offer singing camps and retreats for teens and adults.  

After the participants learn all the music they go on tour to tiny villages in Quebec and New England. The villages put together potluck dinners and host the teens.  So, the villages all come together in many ways though food, music, and fellowship. 

Here they are on the last night singing a song with prose from Wendell Berry. It is incredibly beautiful.

Slowly, slowly, they return

To the small woodland let alone:

Great trees, outspreading and upright,

Apostles of the living light.

Patient as stars, they build in air

Tier after tier a timbered choir,

Stout beams upholding weightless grace

Of song, a blessing on this place.

They stand in waiting all around,

Uprisings of their native ground,

Downcomings of the distant light;

They are the advent they await.

Receiving sun and giving shade,

Their life's a benefaction made,

And is a benediction said

Over the living and the dead.

In fall their brightened leaves, released,

Fly down the wind, and we are pleased

To walk on radiance, amazed.

0 light come down to earth, be praised!

We picked up Liz this past weekend. This photo says so much about the power of music to cement friendships and world understandings. It was a difficult goodbye.

I am so happy that both girls have had Village Harmony in their lives.