Stretching into Something More

by  Connee Chandler

 Produced by Erik Balkey 

Wait for stream to download.

In November of  2007, I commissioned my friend,  amazing young poet/folk singer/songwriter, Erik Balkey, to write a song inspired by something I wrote earlier in the fall of 2007. Instead of writing a song based on my words, Erik appreciated what I wrote so much that he just edited my words and then worked with gifted singer and musician Tom Prasado-Rao to showcase Stretching into Something More in this beautiful production. I am thrilled with his results and feel Erik really amplified the impact of what I wrote.  I hope you like it. 

Erik has allowed me to make Stretching into Something More available in streaming audio on this website.  If you want to get a copy in MP3 format, please contact me, at connee22@verizon.net.  For now, my arrangement with Erik is that you can pay me $1 for the MP3 and I will pass all the proceeds on to Erik until he has the song available on CD in the future that can be downloaded from MP3 sites.

If you have a person, family history or other story that you would like Erik to write a song for you about, contact him via his website, www.erikbalkey.com.  I now highly recommend his work, both for his songwriting and his production skills.  Erik is highly connected in the folk arena and can call upon amazing singers and musicians to make your song that he writes for you even more amazing.

---

Stretching into Something More

by Connee Chandler

Stretching into something more
Waking up with poetry flowing in my mind
Following a stretch into wholeness, oneness and peace
Expanding my vision to beauty, gentleness and joy
Allowing the impulse to move my body to the words that flow around and through me
Loving the being of words and life following the long movement
The pleasure of the tiny “something more” that comes at the end of the lengthening

Every turn's an open door
Stretching into something more

Feeling the expansiveness now of boxes of pens and reams of paper
Limitless opportunities to expand into the stretch of words
Stretching with crisps and crackles of mind that open doors
Doors to greater freedom of movement in thinking and life

The movement of the body opening doors to
The movement of mind and heart that carry me to a deeper knowing of wholeness
The expansion of perception in and through the sacred dance of life itself
Feels like joy, like freedom, looks like beauty, smells like creation unfolding
Tastes like wonder and laughter and new friends

Every turn's an open door
Stretching into something more

I am grateful for the ease of this movement in this darkness
Leading to the flow onto the page in the light
Little need for full stops, mostly commas, and slight pauses
The smoother unfolding, evolutionary flow that is why we are born, into the love
Deeper into the love of the night and the life and the love that was here all along

All along this path of life
The words lead in this direction and that
A full extension and then a “something more”
That slight turn to hear a new voice singing love songs
Singing into my newly opened ears
And pouring beauty into my freshly willing heart

Every turn's an open door
Stretching into something more

May this day be filled with full extensions gentle stretches
The willingness to open to the something more that follows
Keeping the tiny stretches in mind and heart as they are the doorway
The doorway to the big ones rising through an arm or a thought that carries me
Carry me to my full range of motion, in my hip, my shoulder, my life

And there’s no stopping the endlessness of this inspired movement
Even in sleep it continues with the sudden sigh
Relaxing into the deeper comfort of greater connection explored during slumber
Rising to the waking surface as a new vision of life itself as today’s wonder

Every turn's an open door
Stretching into something more

Each moment is its own wholeness, each one, the One
This one as precious and full of love alone with my pen
As those surrounded by strangers or family
Each moment perfect, whole, complete Revealing yet another reflection of Spirit Life in form infinitely deep in love, eternally graceful in ongoing creation
Offered as the next gentle step for me to be even more fully who I am

A wholly organic revolution inspired by the sweet passage through yet another doorway
A doorway to the infinite, midwived by love in friends, and the contrast of seeming foes
Foes who turn in the mirror of time into liberators from outworn structures
Yielding to newly perceived freedom to be
Yet more than I was -- which is ever less than I will be -- in the next moment of perfection

Every turn's an open door
Stretching into something more

Let the light shine in the loving willingness and wonder of this full day of grace before me
Taking each tiny stretch that yields to a graceful extension
Ah, the pleasure of a spiral or a swirl, a whirl of music
Amazement that I can feel this good in the clarity of right now
Right now with the pen on the last two pages of the old notebook
With the knowing of an infinite supply of pens and notebooks
And moments and lives stretching before me in smiling repose

Traveling the path of now into today back to sleep with appreciation
Before the light shines anew on this side of the earth
I am reminded of the sun ever shining, sometimes where we see it
Other times where it is seen by those who travel and live elsewhere
They communicate back that the light is never lost, never for a moment falters
If we know where and how to look for Life expanding across the Universe
Birth and death of the lights that seem individual
Yet all engaged in an impulse, explored to full extension, then gently turn into something more
Or perhaps explosively turned into something more
The amplification of a major black box, invented to guard against a fearful illusion of threat.  Letting go of the illusion, downstream beacons, and the oars fly away
Today calls us to a small impulse that is the beginning of yet another tack along the harbor side
Each one leading to a new bay, a new sea, a new deep ocean of love.

Stretching into something more
Stretching into something more, into something more

Return to Connee's Home Page