travelin from 5G by CD Scofield

Where I live (in the forest), waking up on a summer morning is a mesmerizing sensory experience. If it’s a clear sky start then the first things my eyes see are blue sky and golden sunlight weaving through a myriad of greens. That’s what the first line of travelin’ describes. A day like that begins, for me, with a profound sense of gratitude for the gift of life. On a spinning planet where every breath is a gift given by green plants growing through the grace of a perfectly balanced sun, I am somehow alive. Simply a speck in the enormity of time and space, I get to be a witnessing presence. That is a situation that is both completely implausible and totally real—a miracle.

This kind of “big picture gratitude” for the gift of being has been a feature of my adult life. The experience of being loved and cared for by someone who is a “perfect match” is another source of gratitude. Out of my entire life, this has only been a feature of my most recent years. I could never express how beautiful it is to be known and valued for who I am by a loving partner, by a wife whose presence is a treasure and a gift. Thank you Ute!

One of the greatest features of my life with Ute has been our travels. We were born to be together and we were born to see the world. As my son put it in his toast at our wedding, “Somehow, amazingly, with Ute to inspire him, my dad has been transformed from a guy who used to grumble about driving 30 miles to visit family into a person that happily travels thousands of miles to join family and friends for adventures and memories.” With Ute in my life, I am travelin’ indeed.

I think the chorus line of this song is one of the most poetic and descriptive lines I’ve ever been given by the muses. When I’m singing it, you hear the phrasing in such a way that the ideas and imagery come across as discrete concepts. When presented as a single sentence, though, you can see it’s all one description of the human condition: “We are loving, we are learning, we are always candles burning, brightening the shadows as we are living on a world spinning darkness into new beginning, traveling together through the stars.” Laid out in that form, that sentence describes our existence as human beings to a T. Truly, we’re all travelin’ together. Let’s burn bright while we can and lighten the darkness with love. Peace!

songs
for the
SOULFUL & BRIGHT