Rising Green
Hymn composed by
Carolyn McDadeContextual information
The composer shares these words about her song, written in 1983:
Earth shakes out a mantle of green—each blade of grass true to the integrity within, yet together with others is the rise of spring from winter’s urging. Our coming is with the grass—the common which persists, unexalted, but with the essence of life. Our humanness, our rhythms and dreams, the faith which nurtures our ardent love and hope for life—all this we share with earth community, of which we are natural and connected beings.
The composer shares these words about her song, written in 1983:
Earth shakes out a mantle of green—each blade of grass true to the integrity within, yet together with others is the rise of spring from winter’s urging. Our coming is with the grass—the common which persists, unexalted, but with the essence of life. Our humanness, our rhythms and dreams, the faith which nurtures our ardent love and hope for life—all this we share with earth community, of which we are natural and connected beings.
Tune Name
[Rising Green]
Tune Name
Text Meter
Irregular
10.9.10.9
Song Composer
Carolyn McDadeHymn Arranger
Composer Background information
Ecofeminist singer-songwriter Carolyn McDade spent more than four decades writing music to accompany and support her work of organizing activist women (and some men) around justice issues. Realizing that the “movement songs” of the sixties did not include a woman’s experience, she set out to fill that gap. With attention to social and international concerns, she grounded anti-war, anti-racist, and earth-care activism in a clear feminist perspective. Her life’s work includes fifteen recordings and more than 150 individual songs.
Lyricist Background information
Ecofeminist singer-songwriter Carolyn McDade spent more than four decades writing music to accompany and support her work of organizing activist women (and some men) around justice issues. Realizing that the “movement songs” of the sixties did not include a woman’s experience, she set out to fill that gap. With attention to social and international concerns, she grounded anti-war, anti-racist, and earth-care activism in a clear feminist perspective. Her life’s work includes fifteen recordings and more than 150 individual songs.
Arranger Background information
Lyrics
My blood doth rise in the roots of yon oak, her sap doth run in my veins.
Boundless my soul like the open sky where the stars forever have lain.
Where the stars, where the stars, where the stars forever have lain.
My hands hold the weavings of time without end, my sight as deep as the sea.
Beating, my heart sounds the measures of old, that of love’s eternity.
That of love, that of love, that of love’s eternity.
I feel the tides as they answer the moon, rushing on a far distant sand.
Winging my song is the wind of my breast and my love blows over the land.
And my love, and my love, and my love blows over the land.
My foot carries days of the old into new, our dreaming shows us the way.
Wondrous our faith settles deep in the earth, rising green to bring a new day.
Rising green, rising green, rising green to bring a new day.
Resources
Music XML and MEI and MIDI and Musescore files