Last year we moved to a pre-Civil War farmhouse on a piece of land surrounded by open fields and meandering tree lines. The sky is bluer out here by day and blacker by night. We see real stars after dark especially when the moon is new. When the moon is full, we walk the mown night paths in a light that feels sacred, a light that has the same effect on the body and senses as a good glass of wine, or secret good news, or maybe good laughter remembered silently from a distance. It was a dream to land in a place like this, plant our feet on a piece of earth surrounded by a few tall trees, trees that have been alive much longer than we have. Apart from good music, the sound of the wind moving through the pines next to the back porch may be as close as weÕve come to the sound of the Holy Spirit moving. We can get lost there.

Our own songs have nudged us forward in a life we now recognize as very much our own, the life we have been given. WeÕve been more-or-less penniless on various occasions, but it seems we nonetheless often manage to be surrounded by exceptionally good food and drink and people who have stories to tell and a knack for making us laugh. In the early days, I once described the life of the touring musician like this:

ItÕs a beautiful vacation
But you wear Salvation Army clothes

I look out the guest room window here at the farm as I write this: I see nothing but increasingly familiar trees, fields and sky: more than worth the price of admission.

The songs continue to arrive, and we continue to need to know where the songs want to take us. WeÕre still curious. We still have the ability to be surprised.

So we invited Paul here to Nowhere Farm awhile back to help set up the microphones and get us started on this our first real recording at the farm. We sat on the back porch and talked about music and how everything in the universe is vibrating, everything joining in.

The leaves are falling, the rocks are crying out, harmonic clouds are drifting by, stars are droning light Ð whether or not the human ear is capable of tuning in, itÕs all pulsing, itÕs all connected, an infinite organism of song. I confessed that my mind has been chattering away this year like a dancing puppet with a sprained ankle. How do I quiet my mind and tune into the bigger picture?

Paul gave us a new ancient mantra, a tuning device, a mind-quieter: Sa Ta Na Ma, Wa He Gu Ru: Birth Ð Life Ð Death Ð Resurrection: Wow God.

It was an eye-opener. As a musician, I can riff on these words, find countless variations.

Every day arrives, becomes evening, becomes night, becomes morning: Birth Ð Life Ð Death Ð Resurrection: Wow God.

A hawk flies dead quiet into the locust grove next to the garden and waits: Birth Ð Life Ð Death Ð Resurrection: Wow God.

The maples this year were golden, rouged through and through, gilded with ambers and lovely rust. The maple grove shook out the softest yellow blanket of leaves, a kneedeep invitation. Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring: Birth Ð Life Ð Death Ð Resurrection: Wow God.

My own father turned 80 this fall. My father: the Amish boy who left the Amish farm at age 21 and eventually bought an upright piano for his own son. Birth Ð Life Ð Death Ð Resurrection: Wow God.

This is the vibration of the universe, the everywhere song, the rhythm of everything.

IÕve been trying to figure out why it was so fun to write and record these songs. Karin and I are drawn to Christmas music like children to snow: it just feels like play. It could be that Karin grew up with the voices of Bing Crosby and Nat King Cole on her grandmotherÕs record player Ð singers who made Christmas feel like no other time of year. It could be that my own father loved to unearth odd Christmas gems like ÒDo You Hear What I HearÓ or Mahalia JacksonÕs ÒGo Tell It On The Mountain.Ó

As we set about brewing this music, we tried to steep it in the stuff of the everyday. But somewhere along the way we realized that underneath everything, isnÕt that ancient mantra, the deeper rhythm, the crux of Christmas? IsnÕt the Christ child, the baby in the manger born surrounded by blinking animals, the baby that grew to a man and taught his followers to love the Creator with all they could muster and their neighbors as themselves, isnÕt the life story of Jesus the quintessential embodiment of this deepest of all rhythms: Birth Ð Life Ð Death Ð Resurrection: Wow God.

Come late November on Nowhere Farm when the leaves are lying down and the earth is lying fallow, weÕll put lights up in the windows and trim a Nowhere Farm tree, and lift a glass of something warm and glowing with the familiarity of home. (Karin has always loved this time of year.) And then weÕll come looking for you with these songs all wrapped up for real. (In the thick of the night, take me out of the cold, let me sing inside like a radio...)

And when we finally get back to the farm a few days before Christmas Eve, and itÕs just the two of us and the dogs and the cozy kitties, weÕll pray we get snowed in. And after the storm, when all is still, the stars will wink at the sleepy farm, and weÕll hear the sound of the violin in our heads, and weÕll burrow down deep in our beds, and weÕll breathe ourselves grinning full of Christmas: Birth Ð Life Ð Death Ð Resurrection: Wow God.

Happy holidays,
Linford Detweiler for Over the Rhine,
Nowhere Farm, November 3, 2006