My Web of Wonder

When it’s time to release a loved one to the Summerland, or heaven, or Valhalla, or wherever you believe we go upon death (if anywhere) perhaps you’ll use my song Web of Wonder in the funeral rite. It’s on the Crow Women’s first album: Crow Goddess. In this post, I’ll tell you the story of that song, which is a favorite of our pagan and Wiccan listeners. I’ll also share with you my experience of singing it at end of life rites of passage for three people I have loved very much.

A song for a beloved mentor

Web of Wonder is something of a play on words. I wrote the song for Albert Webb. The blurry photo above is of Albert chopping down a tree, to make a new maypole for the New Mexico pagan community to use for Beltane. The one I became May Queen under was developing cracks and the community decided it was time to retire it and create a new one. The tree pictured here was the one that became the maypole I rode into the circle on at the end of my reign, just before choosing my successor. Albert was one of the people who selected the tree and, as you can see, cut it down.

Albert was a delight to be around. He was the man who welcomed newcomers and helped them integrate into the community. As I grew to know him over the years I appreciated the way he had of making me feel valued. Albert had a talent for helping others believe in themselves.

When he died unexpectedly, I wrote Web of Wonder for his wake. As is so often the case, composing the song helped me process my feelings and find closure. The song affirms the connections we feel to those on the other side.

Web of wonder, web of wonder
I’m a thread and you’re a thread
Web of wonder, web of wonder
Weave the web, weave the web

All’s connected in the web
All the living, all the dead
Through its fabric we are met
Intertwining, sorrow mend

I can feel you, love
I can feel your love

music & lyrics © Alane Susan Brown (ASCAP) 2005

Many of the Crow Women had known Albert, and it was our honor to sing a selection of songs at his wake, including Web of Wonder. It was even the theme song for the annual meeting of Covenant of the Goddess (Merry Meet) the year after Albert died. He had given a lot to CoG, and many were saddened by his loss. “Weaving a web of wonder” was the motto that year. The Crow Women sang my song for the assembled paganfolk in a concert at that Merry Meet.

A performance and recording favorite

Web of Wonder became one of our signature songs. I think we’ve sung it in every one of our concerts, including early ones at Dragonfest (pictured above) and right up to our most recent performances. I’ve written a lot of songs, but Web of Wonder remains one of those that means the most to me. Here it is, so you can listen to it.

Web of Wonder was recorded on Crow Goddess, our very first album. That project was mostly covers of pagan favorites by other songwriters, with a few originals shyly joining them. Nowadays, we record only originals, but back then in the early 2000s, it was a big deal for me to put a song I’d composed out there for the public to hear.

Singing by the deathbed of a friend

When my beloved friend Donna Pauline was dying, I had the priviledge of keeping vigil at her bedside all through that last night of her life. Donna was a lead singer in Crow Women, with a gorgeous voice. That night she lay in a coma, yet seemed to respond when we sang to her. The close friends gathered around her sang to her on and off all night long. Web of Wonder was one of those songs. It is all the more sacred for having been part of that liminal night. The Crow Women also sang it at Donna’s wake a few weeks after her passing.

Each year on the anniversary of her death, I make an altar for Donna, including a glass of mead. We made many batches of mead together. The photo above is of one of those altars. You can see the sarong from that Merry Meet when Web of Wonder was part of the theme. I light a candle and sing Web of Wonder to her.

Singing for my father

My parents moved to Albuquerque in the early 90s. I lived in Durango, Colorado then, but whenever I came to visit, my father and I would go out hiking. He knew all the most interesting places to hike in New Mexico.

I moved to Albuquerque in 2018, when my father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s dementia. The long goodbye of dementia is a very difficult journey–heartbreaking for our family but especially hard for him, a brilliant mind, disintegrating. Here’s a poem I wrote about that.

Lost in the whiteout, where are you now?
You’d find your way home if you knew how
It’s a snowstorm of confusion in your mind
You reach out blindly for any sign
But your brain is full of tangles
The world is all just shapes and angles
You don’t recognize people, or the things that you own
Your channel is tuned to a screen full of snow
Just a blur of white all around
Dementia’s winter wind–such a lonely sound

“Whiteout” by Alane Brown (c) 2020

He died in April, 2021. His career was in computers, but the thing my father loved best was hiking. He hiked with his father as a boy, hiked with me as I was growing up, and when he retired to Albuquerque, he developed a senior hiking program that was the center of his life. He wanted to be cremated and have his ashes scattered in nature.

My mother and I chose to scatter his ashes at a trailhead on Sandia Crest. There’s a beautiful vista across Albuquerque, and several trails lead away from there into the woods or along the ridge, trails he had hiked many times. We had planned to have lots of friends and family there. But, in this time of the surge of the Delta variant, we cancelled those plans. Just six of us drove up the mountain to release my father, earlier this week.

We said a few words, and then my daughter and I sang Web of Wonder. She had grown up with Crow Women rehearsals as a regular feature in our house. After years of hearing these songs, and singing them along with us at events, she knows much of our material by heart. I asked her on the spot if she would sing it with me for her grandfather. She said sure. Here’s a video my cousin took of us singing. The beginning and end of the song are cut off and it’s only cell phone quality, but you can listen if you like, and be there with us in spirit for a moment or two.

Web of Wonder is the first song of my very own that I put out into the world. In a way, it was the birth of my passion for songwriting. But more important, it is the song that has been there with me in some of my deepest moments of loss. It reminds me that I will always be connected to those I love. We are all part of the web of wonder–the web of spirit. When I sing this song, I can feel their love.

More songs for Rites of Passing

You can find links to all our blog posts about rites of passage here, and the ones specifically about death rites here.

I have a playlist in which I collect songs for passing over. (The link is below.) There are several posts here on Pagan Song that feature songs on this Spotify playlist. It begins with Web of Wonder, the subject of this post. Also included is Sisters Waiting, which Mama Gina wrote about in Celebrating Our Elders, Honoring Our Ancestors, a perfect companion post to this one. Tara Kreauweaumonn wrote about her song for Donna, Your Voice Still Lingers, in her post Music and Our Mighty Dead. I featured my song She Calls, another song about dying, in my post Befriending the Dark Goddess. And, just last week, Deb Kroehwimwin posted about the song Breaths, another sweet tune for honoring the ancestors.

There have been so many wonderful songs written for the Wiccan, pagan and goddess spirituality communities that explore our ideas and feelings about passing over. If you know of others, let me know in the comments, and I’ll add them to the playlist.

cover photo of spider web by Robert Anasch 

For more information about the Crow Women pagan choir, and access to all the blog posts by Alane and the other 9 crowsingers who have written for Pagan Song, you can visit the Crow Women author page here on Pagan Song.

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