My Spirit Belongs to the Sky
Hymn composed by
Everett HoweContextual information
For me, the “direct experience of transcending mystery and wonder” often comes from being in nature, and is most powerful when it involves more senses than simply sight. The sound of wind in the pines, for example, is a sense memory that I carry from time spent in the mountains of California in my youth and adulthood. The feeling of wind gusting around me is also something I have always enjoyed, sometimes without much conscious awareness; but one stormy day during a visit to Fort Collins, Colorado, I noticed how much the sensation was lifting my spirits, and the idea for this song was born.
For me, the “direct experience of transcending mystery and wonder” often comes from being in nature, and is most powerful when it involves more senses than simply sight. The sound of wind in the pines, for example, is a sense memory that I carry from time spent in the mountains of California in my youth and adulthood. The feeling of wind gusting around me is also something I have always enjoyed, sometimes without much conscious awareness; but one stormy day during a visit to Fort Collins, Colorado, I noticed how much the sensation was lifting my spirits, and the idea for this song was born.
Tune Name
[My Spirit Belongs to the Sky]
Tune Name
Text Meter
Irregular
10.9.10.9
Song Composer
Everett HoweHymn Arranger
Composer Background information
Rev. Dr. Everett Howe (he/him) is UU community minister affiliated with the First Unitarian Universalist Church of San Diego. He supports local congregations through pulpit supply and occasional pastoral care, and he supports the wider UU movement through his employment at the UUA. He continues to work in his first calling — research mathematics — and he sings with small groups at his home congregation.
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Lyricist Background information
Rev. Dr. Everett Howe (he/him) is UU community minister affiliated with the First Unitarian Universalist Church of San Diego. He supports local congregations through pulpit supply and occasional pastoral care, and he supports the wider UU movement through his employment at the UUA. He continues to work in his first calling — research mathematics — and he sings with small groups at his home congregation.
Arranger Background information
Lyrics
The mountains at night— the bright wheeling stars
Framed by pines circled round.
In the boughs high above, the rush of the wind—
In the dark, I hear no other sound.
And the wind in the trees fills the sails of my soul,
And my heart soars high.
For I come from the earth, and to earth I’ll return,
But my spirit belongs to the sky.
The showers of spring on the wide western plains—
Sunlight breaks through the gray.
The blustering wind whirls round me again
And sweeps me along on my way.
And the wind at my back fills the sails of my soul,
And my heart soars high.
For I come from the earth, and to earth I’ll return,
But my spirit belongs to the sky.
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