I am truly grateful for my friends and the people I have met along my magical, musical path in this life.
One of my many awesome friends is Kathleen Hannan who I met at the Gulfport Women’s Music and Spirituality Festival. The timing was around Fall of 1991 or ’92 (we can’t quite remember). I had brought the women in KIVA at that time – Diana McFadden, Kestryl, and myself. And I invited Barbara McPherson and Robin Burdulis – two amazing drummers that had helped me record my second album, Renewal.
I met many amazing women there and Kathleen became a lifelong friend. She was teaching Tai Chi and I joined her class. She shared a song with Kestryl and myself called Maria which KIVA later recorded with her permission. Kathleen played Maria and another song called Loving Ourselves Into Love (alternatively The Fat Song).
Maria
When I was a child, my goddess stood alone in corners everywhere
Patiently listening to the grandmothers’ troubles,
her own story never shared
Maria stood in the gardens from January till December
Waiting in silent white plaster for us to remember her
Excerpt of lyrics from “Maria” from the album “Count My Heart” by Kathleen Hannan. Full lyrics are here.
We played, for Kathleen, a song that we were occasionally performing at the time, called Witches and Amazons by Lady Isadora which has a verse about Maria.
I dreamed I stood in a church and just stared
To find the Goddess enshrined even there
I saw a statue of Mary on high
But there were tears in those masquerade eyes …Witches and Amazons
Matriarchs long gone
I know your history
And I will keep it alive in meExcerpt of lyrics from “Witches and Amazons” from the album “The Witching Hour” by Lady Isadora with Lord Pan. Full lyrics are here.
I am so grateful to have met Kathleen. Soon after meeting her, I invited her to come up to the studio I was using called Peach Orchard Productions where we recorded her first official studio album.
Kathleen later wrote a song that is about thankfulness and gratefulness called Rain Prayer. She shared the song with me and my band so that we could sing it with her when we did performances at Free Spirit Gathering in Maryland and at my music events called Cerridwin’s Coffeehouse that I ran for about 15 years.
Rain Prayer
Rain Prayer is a beautiful tribute and prayer about returning to peace and wholeness. KIVA later recorded the song on our most recent album – KIVA’s Odds & Ends. (We are working on 2 new albums at this time… more when I have it.)
My bandmate Tigre and I sing the 2 vocal parts of Rain Prayer and a few years ago Tigre went to Ireland with his beloved, Michael, and proposed to him (they got married soon after). Michael videoed Tigre lip-synching his vocal parts of Rain Prayer in the beautiful Irish landscape. At about the same time I went to Mexico for a destination wedding of a friend of mine and recorded my parts of the song.
I hope to release the video by 2026 and I’ll put it on KIVA’s YouTube channel and hope to add a link to it here as well.
With every step I took, I knew I knew you
In every drop of rain, I knew I knew you
They say it’s you who always stays
It’s me who falls away
Oh show me how, I’ll come back now
This is all I prayTook a walk, in the rain, and for a while
I knew you
In every drop, I heard your voice, just for a while
I knew you
They say it’s you, who always stays
It’s me who falls away
Oh show me how, I’ll come back now
This is all, this is all
This is all I pray
Lyrics for “Rain Prayer” by Kathleen Hannan & Lyndsay Hester
Click here and scroll down the page, to listen to Kathleen Hannan’s recordings of Rain Prayer.
Thank YOU for taking a rambling journey with me.
Ariana Lightningstorm of KIVA
For more information about Ariana, including her collected articles here on Pagan Song, her bio, and links to KIVA’s and Ariana’s sites on the web, check out Ariana’s page on Pagan Song.
Learn more about KIVA here and listen to their music on KIVA’s YouTube channel.
Featured photo by Evgeniya Kuzmina
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