18. Walter Wink’s Chant
Years ago I took a one-week course at Union Theological School with Walter Wink and June Keener-Wink. At one point in the course Walter asked us to sit on the floor and get as comfortable as we could. He taught us a chant and then said that we were going to repeat it over and over again for thirty minutes. The four lines of the chant take twenty seconds to sing, so each minute you sing it three times and over thirty minutes, you sing it ninety times. It wasn’t actually Walter’s chant. I think it was Native American, but for me it is always associated with him. The words are:
Oh great spirit,
Earth, sun, sky and sea,
You are inside,
And all around me.
It was wonderful. I relaxed into it. It felt like it got deeper and deeper inside of me. The interesting thing is that in the days and even weeks to come, when I wasn’t even thinking about it, that chant would emerge and I’d find myself humming it or singing it. It was just there.
And I learned that music can deepen and become a part of you.
