Dancing Toward the Promised Land (from Longing for Home) – Carol Barnett

Composer: Carol Barnett

Text by: Alla Reneé Bozarth;

Instrumentation mezzo-soprano, piano

Duration: approx. 3'

Date Written:  2018

Composer’s note: Longing for Home is a song cycle written to celebrate Source Song Festival’s fifth season. The texts all reference homecoming in various ways – the enduring wish to return to a place remembered with love and longing, as well as the uncertainty, the impossibility of doing so.

“Dancing Toward the Promised Land” – Ranging freely across the centuries, Miriam, sister of Moses, remembers her younger self leading the way out of Egypt with her dances and songs, and imagining what it will be like to enter the Promised Land. But Miriam never did reach the Promised Land, and the poet is writing many centuries later. How powerfully historical events still influence us, and how strong is the urge to return to the promised land of home. Poet, prose writer and spiritual director Alla Reneé Bozarth was among the first eleven women ordained as Episcopal priests in 1974 in Philadelphia.

The full cycle can be found here: https://opusimprints.com/products/longing-for-home-carol-barnett

text

DANCING TOWARD THE PROMISED LAND

I, Miriam, took my tambourine
and finger cymbals with me
out of the land of slavery
with its daily insults and petty
exemptions, and so remain always
ready to dance on the long, long journey,
dance at every victory, beginning with
surviving the Passover, then the strange
occurrence when the Red Sea dried beneath
our feet as we ran, safely passing over the narrow
strip onto the Sinai Peninsula, all the way out
from the land of longing toward the storied memory of Home.

I danced to the song that spilled out of me,
loud up to Heaven, rejoicing on hopeful feet,
rejoicing with arms flying through warm air like wings.

God knows it may take a long time to return.
It’s been five hundred years, after all.
A long time gone, but our stories keep it alive
in our hearts. I wonder if I’ll live to see it from
the mountains across River Jordan. I wonder
if I’ll be an old woman, and dance down
the side of Mt. Nebo with arms wide open,
heart fluttering strong, leading the way
with cymbals and songs into the Promised Land.

This poem is in the unpublished book, My Blessed Misfortunes, by Alla Renée Bozarth,
Copyright 2011. All rights reserved.