Songs for Our Journey - 3

As I have walked in various beautiful places this past week, looking for birds and playing around with my new tripod (so fun!), I kept thinking of the Navajo song/prayer Now I Walk In Beauty, which I have loved from the moment I heard it many years ago.  "Now I walk in Beauty. Beauty is before me. Beauty is behind me, above and below me." With great gratitude to the Navajo culture for the power and wisdom carried in that prayer, I wrote a song based on it called Beauty Waltz several years back, in which I added the words "beauty inside me". I have often wondered whether "beauty inside me" is inherent in the original Navaho and was left out in the English version I learned, as I felt that if there is beauty all around me, there must be beauty inside me too! And of course, when I started to sing those words, I started to notice, yes, there certainly is beauty inside me.  This week as I sang quietly and watched for birds in the winter trees I once again experienced that in singing those words, I fall into a place of intimacy with all that I see.  The beauty in me is the beauty in the birds, in the trees.  Here's a recording of the song I made about ten years ago.  
 

Beauty Waltz
words - Navajo Beauty Way song/prayer
melody © K Hannan 1995

I walk in beauty
Beauty before me
Beauty behind me
Beauty inside me
Beauty all around
Around, around, I walk around
I walk in beauty all around