At the end of October, Music that Makes Community Facilitators gathered for a playlist party around the theme of “Advent.”  Here are some of the songs we sang:

The last time I wrote for the MMC blog, I had yet to move across the country to serve my first congregation, become ordained, live through a pandemic, or behold the kind of transformation that comes with putting roots down with certain people in a certain place. Paperless singing has been part of that journey all along, and has helped me hone my own theology and leadership with it.

There have been times, say when the musician of my small and scrappy internship congregation fell ill on a Sunday morning, when paperless singing was an immensely helpful tool. When I began my first call as an ordained minister, I entered a different setting entirely — one with a resourced music staff and a deep bench, and a variety of music led. There wasn’t a need to be filled per se, so I started introducing paperless tunes small moments of transition, one season at a time. My first year, we sang “Come, O Lord and Set Us Free” during the lighting of the Advent wreath.  We sang “What We Need Is Here” as the Gospel Acclamation in Lent. Over the coming years, that repertoire slowly built. The Caribbean Alleluia, “Our Stories Are God’s Stories,” “Listen to the Word that God Has Spoken,” “All Who Are Thirsty (Come to the Water)”, “Open My Heart,” “Come Light of Lights,” and “Jesus We Are Gathered” are all under our belts now.

Greetings MMC community!

Can I share a vision with you? 

The dream is “A Songleader in Every Family, Every Household”. 

That sounds pretty straight forward, but let me tell you how I'm defining songleader. 

I describe a songleader as a “collaborative ritual artist.” Let me break that down… 

• COLLABORATIVE = someone who shares leadership and responsibility 
• RITUAL = meaningful patterns and rhythms of communal life 
• ARTIST = Creator, tender with beauty, grace, creativity, and attention to process  

So a Songleader is one who shares the tending of a creative process of meaningful communal patterns and life rhythms with attention to beauty and grace.  

A collaborative ritual artist.

And if there's a collaborative ritual artist/songleader in every family…

Do you know what this means for spiritual communities?  There’s multiple song leaders in every community!

Music that Makes Community facilitators met online in August to build community, hone skills, and share songs with one another around the theme “Connection in Fractured Times.”  As a gift to the MMC community, we are offering a playlist of the songs we sang to you.  We hope that they may aid your own practice of singing in community as we navigate fractured times together.  

Hi, friends, 

Breen Sipes and I have been doing the behind the scenes facilitation and space holding for MMC’s Monday Morning Grounding this past six months, and because of school changes, Breen is unable to do this in the fall. 

Can you join me and Amy Steenson in holding the space for Monday Morning Grounding this fall. (10 a.m. Eastern, 9 a.m. Central. 8 a.m. Mountain, 7 a.m. Pacific)

Here's an update on the Sacred Lands Playlist Project, a partnership between Music that Makes Community and the Coalition to Dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery.  

This post includes two updates.  First update is on the review process and when creators will be notified if their submission was accepted.  Second update is an invitation to a hybrid, in-person and virtual gathering, where songs from the Playlist will be shared.  

You know that something is good, when a clergy colleague on Friday tells you that what you’re doing in keeping Monday Morning Grounding going is a ministry and makes a difference, and then on Monday when the Trader Joe’s cashier asks how your Monday has been and, I can say: I woke up tired and grumpy and because of Monday Morning Grounding, I’m having a better day. 

So, that’s the truth. Monday Morning Grounding can turn your day around and set you up for the week. We sing, we’re playful, we share meaningfully, we are hospitable. We notice and share what we notice. People are welcome to come on Zoom with camera on or off, singing on mute unless we’re passing a song around (which we often do), and as Breen (MMC Board president) likes to say, you can come with your shoes on or off, because this is holy ground. You are welcome and invited!! Don’t think that this is like any other Zoom meeting (non-MMC) that you’ve been to.

The Deadline has been extended for the Sacred Lands Playlist to Monday, July 1st!

The Coalition to Dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery and Music that Makes Community are collaborating together on a community singing playlist project!

MMC is excited to partner with The Coalition, a faith-based movement that seeks to respond to the call of Indigenous communities to the Christian Church to address the extraction, extinction and enslavement done in the name of Christ on Indigenous lands, to support their mission and liberate and spread the power of communities’ spiritual life through singing.

We welcome original* song submissions around the theme of "Sacred Lands." Understanding the land as sacred, not as property or commodity, is an Indigenous worldview -- one which the dominant culture desperately needs, if we are going to actually address the root causes of today's climate crisis. 

My first Music that Makes Community board meeting was on a Saturday morning after what had been a long, hard week at work. A colleague and I had different expectations about a deadline, and as I watched that time come and go without the desired end result, I felt disappointed, then blamed, then just done. My conversations that evening with my spouse were peppered with some of my favorite vocabulary words, and I felt validated and vindicated as I turned up the “not my fault–they’re to blame!” tune in my head to 11!

Needless to say, with this as my evening prior, I was not entering the MMC virtual space with the calm and equanimity I usually experience with the group. My distress increased when I looked over the agenda and saw we would be invited to share a song. “I don’t even have a song! My first meeting and I’m showing up without a song!”

I grabbed a pen and a piece of paper, hummed for a few minutes, and this is what appeared:

We are all doing our best
We are all doing our best
When fears are rising
And tempers are flying
We are all doing our best

We are all doing our best
We are all doing our best
Let's care for each other
Be held by Our Mother
We are all doing our best

- Jennifer L. Sanborn and the Spirit of Song, 1/27/2024
(and probably Chanda Rule's In the Heart of God, as I think about it!)

Oof. I felt seen. Or heard. Or called out. Or Loved in. Regardless, I knew I had caught my song to share with the group.

As the board gathered, I volunteered to share first because it’s hard not to fear a quickly-caught song will fly away as fast as it flew in. Somewhat timidly, then with greater strength, I invited these new boardmates to join me in singing, “We are all doing our best.” Could there be a better affirmation to sing when venturing into new, treasured, complex, and important work together?

On Monday, March 4, three members of Music that Makes Community's Board of Trustees, Rev. Breen Marie Sipes, Rev. Nancy Willbanks, and Adam Michael Wood, gathered on Zoom for an open 90 minute Drop-in jam of songs for Holy Week and Easter.  Here's the list they came up with!  It includes many well-known songs and some new tunes you may not have heard before.  May these songs be fodder for your preparations. And when you have a moment, whenever that is, let us know what you're doing in the comments.  We love to hear about new songs you've created and about experiments you've tried!  Everything is a lesson here.

General Resources

- https://www.musicthatmakescommunity.org/tags/lent 
- https://www.musicthatmakescommunity.org/tags/easter 
- https://anahernandez.org/sheet-music/ - search for paperless 

You can find additional songs on the MMC website or in our song resources, Singing in Community and Music By Heart. If you can’t locate a video or sheet music for a song, please reach out and we’ll help.

Lastly, take note of the copyright suggestions at the bottom of the page.  The songs listed here come from a various of sources with some covered by OneLicense and others you'll need to contact the originator directly.