"Beyond Borders" Special Music Service
Beyond Borders, Andrew's first CD in the wake of the September 11, 2001 tragedies, is rich with themes of personal growth and challenging our individual "comfort zones". Several of these songs together lay out a compelling and provocative look at our footsteps and those awaiting the arrival of our feet, often leading us places we never imagined for ourselves. Moving through the exquisite emotional landscapes of love and loss, life and what lies beyond and before, Andrew's words and music provide a soundtrack and narrative to ponder the mysteries of the human experience. Andrew's own words from the CD liner notes are often used as a shared affirmation (below).
SUGGESTED READINGS (from "Singing the Living Tradition"):
Opening words: 434
Responsive or unison readings: 532, 524
Closing words: 706, 701
"Sometimes the world thrusts itself into our neat tidy little lives, just when we find ourselves perhaps too comfortably settled in our routines. Love and loss, life and death, evolution and metamorphosis: all never ending threads of the human experience. We spend our lives defining ourselves, only to have the universe rewrite our definition with little or no input from us.
It is how we dare to embrace those changes that truly define us. We may draw our boundaries and borders, paint and decorate them, but in the end they still bind us inside a carefully delineated emotional and spiritual comfort zone.
I choose in this moment to live life where it happens, where the wondrous and the painful intersect and blend. Living is about things remembered, and things to come, about acknowledging life’s hardships and losses, and there is always hope and faith that there are beautiful footsteps yet to be taken. We know the sand is falling, but the hourglass is opaque; and we have no way to know how many grains remain. Cherish each and all of them."