Spirit in Action
Canadian Conscience - Eileen McGann
Singer/songwriter/activist Eileen McGann weaves powerful themes of healing the world through much of her music, embedded in a spiritual depth and consciousness. Care for the Earth & all its creatures, war, democracy, economic fairness and equality are just some of the concerns that Eileen sings compellingly about.
All the songs in this program are performed by Eileen McGann:
- Broadcast on:
- 04 Apr 2011
- Audio Format:
- other
[music] Let us sing this song for the healing of the world That we may hear as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along And our lives will feel the echo of our healing [music] Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark helps me. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred food in your own life. Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world That we may dream as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along Today for Spirit in Action, we'll welcome singer, songwriter, and enduring activist Eileen McGann. I had Eileen as a guest on my song of the soul show as well. When it became clear that I needed more time to focus on her songs that are aimed at healing the world And the things that she had to say about that. I'm sure you'll find Eileen McGann to be a deep thinker as well as a beautiful voice. But what made this imperative for me is the way that she weaves her spiritual outlook into all of her music. Because Eileen is an avid participant in the outdoors, you'd perhaps expect her songs about caring for the natural world. But you'd have to take into account her wide-ranging mind and extensive studies To predict her messages about the economic and political structures of our world and how they have to change. Eileen McGann joins us today from Vancouver Island up in Canada. Eileen, it's great to have you here for Spirit in Action. It's great to be talking to you Mark. Just a little bit ago, we were talking about the situation up there in Canada, Which has its own echoes of what's happening down here in Wisconsin, where I am. Want to give us a little overview of what's happening, a upcoming federal election up there in Canada, right? We have a minority government situation in Canada right now and have had the last number of years, Which means the government could potentially fall at any point. And in this coming week, it looks likely that they will fall and we will have a federal election. It's not clear from polls and the like whether or not it's going to make any real change and what's going on. So we may just have an election and it won't really change much or we could actually have a change in the party that's running things. And that would be good from my point of view. Are you a political activist? Like do you work on campaigns? Have you done that? I know you've got a lot of politics in your music and a lot of concerns that you live out spiritually and politically and musically. Are you also an activist in terms of going door-to-door or having a campaign sign in your yard or however that goes up in Canada? I used to be. I spent a couple of decades going door-to-door and campaigning and carrying placards and going to many, many demonstrations of different kinds. Until the point that my music career took me on the road for so many months a year that I couldn't be involved in anything that was ongoing. And so at that point I focused on activism through music, getting the word out and trying to do both the things that I think political music is supposed to do. One is to encourage the troops and the second is to potentially change minds, to add clarity to a situation and show another point of view through the music that people might not be exposed to especially in the current media situation. So in other words, you're doing a kind of an educational function. I suppose you could call it that. Yeah. Encourage the troops and give them a course to sing along with and feel solidarity when they are working on a campaign together to give them themes and anthems and things to sing along with when they get together in groups to raise money for a cause or to raise awareness on a cause. And also when playing to the general public to give a point of view or to suggest another way of looking at things than the one that is most generally presented in the media. Well, I think what I'd like to have you do, Eileen, is to educate us a little bit today with your words and with your music. You want to get us started on that? Well, one of the causes that I marched for the most and collected petitions over and saying it benefits for has always been environmental issues and in particular, trying to save the trees. It seems an absurd thing. Sometimes when I go to England and talk about trees, they kind of look at me like, well, isn't Canada nothing but trees? And yet the politics of forest is so important and the forests of Canada are not what they once were. The giant trees have been falling and continue to fall surprisingly for many people until there's almost none of them left. I grew up in Ontario and there an old-growth forest would be about 400 years old and the boreal forest is now finally getting some worldwide attention for its importance in terms of carbon in the atmosphere and the lungs of the planet, but also in terms of the ecosystem and the animals that thrive in the boreal forest, which is huge in Canada, goes from Newfoundland all the way northwest in this great swab of the Canadian shield right up to the Arctic. And so boreal forest is finally getting some attention. A bit more attention has been paid to our west coast temperate rainforests where the giants continue to fall. And that's where I live now. I live on Vancouver Island. I have seen trucks go by carrying the remains of an old-growth tree. And it's an appalling thing to think of what a magnificent creature, what a magnificent life has just been ended for the sake of board feet when we have so many second-growth trees. And if the forests were managed properly, there shouldn't be a need for taking down any more of the old growth. So right from the beginning of my music career and from a very early age in my life before I began my music career, I've been involved in trying to raise awareness about the importance of old-growth forests and the need to protect them. The song Requiem for the Giants was written about one of the boreal forest areas in Ontario where I had actually conued many times in an area called Temogamy. This song is on one of my earlier albums, The Turn It Around album, and it's both a lament and I guess a bit of an Irish style rant about the taking down of living beings who have been here for, well, since Shakespeare was alive. Requiem for the Giants, Eileen McGann. 400 years ago, a seat-jens fallen grew, in virgin forest land that never white man knew. In woodland silence it rose and flourished, by northern wind was shaped from earth and sky was nourished. White pine, silver birch, sing their names in requiem, Giants of our northern land. We'll never see your likes again, White pine, silver birch, sing their names in requiem, Giants of our northern land. We'll never see your likes again. 200 years ago, the Giants ruled the shield, Till white man came and saw the profits they could yield. They fell like thunder and left no trace. But giant stumps that stand as headstones in their place. White pine, silver birch, sing their names in requiem, Giants of our northern land. We'll never see your likes again, White pine, silver birch, sing their names in requiem, Giants of our northern land. We'll never see your likes again, In north Ontario, some giants still remain. Though few were number now, The Axeman comes again. What will you tell them when your children ask you why? Our last remaining forest giants had to die. White pine, silver birch, sing their names in requiem, Giants of our northern land. We'll never see your likes again, White pine, silver birch. Sing their names in requiem, Giants of our northern land. We'll never see your likes again. And what gives them the right I ask to take what's not their own? To kill a living beauty that 400 years is wrong, To take and sell our heritage, To fill pockets for a day. And when this crop is gone, What will they say? And when this crop is gone, The trees are gone, The wild is gone, And the beasts are gone, And the tourists gone, And the money gone. What will they say? White pine, silver birch, sing their names in requiem, Giants of our northern land. We'll never see your likes again, White pine, silver birch, sing their names in requiem, Giants of our northern land. We'll never see your likes again, White pine, silver birch. We'll never see your likes again, White pine, silver birch, sing their names in requiem. Eileen McGann's masterpiece, Requiem for the Giants. And I call it a masterpiece, Eileen, in part because I featured it on some programs when I've had guests talking about environmental issues on my program, my spirit and action program. I've sometimes featured that song because I think it's so heartfully and artfully captures a love, importance, the story. We sometimes have a perspective that is so limited, so narrow. And thankfully, your music helps widen that perspective. Was there some kind of a campaign going on? Do we always lose out to the companies who want to cut it down to build new houses or make paper? Not always. There have been some good victories. We've managed to get some areas designated as National Park or Provincial Park or to get some kind of protected status. One of the problems, of course, for all environmental issues like this is that the environmentalists have to keep winning and the developers or the lumber companies have to only win once and then it's over for them. We have won some good victories recently, which are really important to celebrate, but often it turns out that something we thought was a victory has to be fought again 10 years later. We need to keep up the fight and keep up the awareness on these issues and realize that every time, every time a piece of old growth is taken out, that's something that we won't get back again. Well, maybe not for a couple thousand years anyway, if you're talking about West Coast forests. There's some good activism going on on the coast right now about old growth forests and more people are becoming aware and getting involved and going out to the woods and seeing what it's like to encounter a 2,000-year-old tree. There's a grove right in the middle of Vancouver Island called Cathedral Grove. That's probably the most famous grove or old growth that all the tourists go to. It's surprisingly a very small area when you get there. They now have it so there's some great walking trails where you pull your car off and go for a walk among the trees. And it's so important for people to understand the difference between an old growth forest and a second growth or younger forest. The quality of sound is like nothing you've ever experienced. There's quality of silence and the movement and encountering such an enormous living being, such beauty and strength and height and resilience for 1,700 years for some of these trees. It has a big emotional impact and it reminds us of our connectedness. When you leave that grove, you can drive a couple of miles into a clear cut and it hits you like a punch in the stomach. Yeah, it should. Unfortunately, some people may just be looking at their computer screen all day and don't think that's necessary to have the real thing out there. Well, trust me, there's a big difference between encountering a tree and seeing a picture of a tree. You can get some sense of the size of the bottom of the tree and how impressive it is from that. But you get a very limited view of what it is, just from looking at pictures. You really have to encounter it. And I'm very fortunate where I live. I live surrounded by second growth. The area I live in was logged about 100, 120 years ago, but that's given the trees a chance to come back. I do appreciate the beauty of the second growth force and the value of the second growth force, but there really is a difference when you encounter the really old forests and the old undergrowth and the nurse logs that other trees have grown from. The whole ecosystem has a presence that's different from anything I've ever experienced. Do you share your music in a lot of venues where you can, it might be an invitational by a group that is environmentally oriented? Or are you just doing concerts, house concerts, that kind of thing regularly? Are there benefits? Do you get to lead the demonstration to get people to stand in front of them and say the bulldozers won't be coming? Again, I used to do a lot of those in recent years with heavier touring. I've been able to do fewer of those, but I still get involved when I can. But I would say most of my activism has been recently through my music rather than through direct action or direct carrying of placards. Have you been to jail for justice? I have not been to jail. You kind of make a choice there. With many of the demonstrations I've been on, they'll ask you, are you willing to be arrested or not? And since a lot of my music takes place in other countries, a lot of my touring takes place in other countries, it really makes it difficult to cross borders once you've been arrested. So I've mostly stepped into the second line and said, I would prefer not. But I have tremendous admiration for those who will step forward and go to jail, like Betty Crocek. Do you know about Betty? No, who is Betty? I am afraid I don't know her. She's sometimes called Elahoe Betty because she was arrested famously at protecting the Elahoe Valley on the lower name land near Vancouver. She has been to jail countless times. She's in her 80s now. She has spent a cumulative number of years in jail when you add up all the different jail sentences standing in front of the bulldozers trying to protect the old growth. I have just enormous respect for her. She's a hero in Canada. She just recently lost another case where the prosecutor actually suggested that she be designated a dangerous offender because she has accumulated so many arrests. A dangerous offender designation is something very rarely given in Canadian law and mostly given to violent repeat offenders who can't be trusted not to hurt the first person they come across when they get out of jail. Isn't it crazy? It is scary to them though because if we do not obey, they can't do their manipulations or injustices or can't accept the bribes and follow the bidding of the people who bribe them. If we will not obey, the power structure will crumble. I'm thinking about that a lot these days because of what's going on in Wisconsin and what appears to me to be a very unjust situation. Well give us some more music, Eileen. Talk us more about how you use your music to make this world a better place. Besides the wonderful music itself. One of the things I think is the job of the folk singer. But of artists in general, our main job is to speak truth. However we speak it whether you're a painter who's painting your particular vision of the world and sharing it with other people. We have an obligation to speak the truth of our hearts out loud. Not because an artist's truth is any more important than anyone else's truth as a truth, but because an artist is in a unique position to express a truth that perhaps many people are feeling. To say powerfully and publicly what people may only feel in their hearts. And if there isn't that connection between what the artist says and the beliefs and thoughts of the people around them then they won't get heard very much. And sometimes they won't get heard because the truth that the artist speaks is not in line with the beliefs of those who control the media. Who as you say are frightened of people speaking the truth because often the truth points out what they're doing that they don't want us to know about. And so we can be pretty scary truth speakers. So I think it's my job to see as clearly as I can to use my experience and the stories that people tell me and the education that I've been fortunate to have to pull things together and to try to give an analysis that will help to make things clear and especially to make connections between things that are not normally connected. Sometimes we get focused on the particular thing that has happened. I'm afraid I've become very disappointed in journalism in this last couple of decades. The journalists no longer seem to see their mandate as reviewing the hidden truths and digging deeper and making the connections. The internet has given an opportunity for people who are not journalists to do it, to blog or to write or to put something on YouTube to try to make the connections but they tend to get ignored. So I think it's important that as much as possible all of us journalists and artists and radio hosts and people on the street look to make connections and to see how the thing that takes place in the highest realms of power actually does make a difference on the street. So I bet you have a song about that. Well I actually have a couple of songs about that. In a democracy there is supposed to be a sense of public accountability that the people that we vote into office represent what people actually want. We're coming to see more and more that in fact that's a bit of an illusion. The people who are in power have learned very well how to keep power and how to manipulate the news and how to manipulate even facts. We think a fact is a fact but facts can be slanted in different ways to make a thing can feel different things. And then sometimes it seems that they can just outright lie and get away with it these days. A few decades ago a lie from a person in public office would mean their instant dismissal or resignation. And we have seen blatant lies from people in power recently and not only has nothing happened to them but they've carried on to do what they wanted to do with the result of their lives. The biggest issue that is in that line is of course the Iraq war which most people did not want that was not connected to 9/11, Saddam Hussein and Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. In fact he did not get along with Osama bin Laden. They had all sorts of religious and political things that divided them. So he had nothing to do with it and yet 9/11 was used as an excuse to invade a country that had not in fact attacked any western country. And also was not likely to. So facts were manipulated, people were manipulated, the media was manipulated and next thing you know we had a war. And no one was ever held accountable for that. The problem with that was not only that it led us into a war but that it changed the culture of politics and seemed to say that manipulation of truth is an okay thing if it serves your ends. One of the things that offended me most about the way that that war was told was the two people who were selling it, Tony Blair in Britain and W. Bush in the States, were both public Christians. And both of them at some point in selling their war said that they consulted with their God over it and it made me wonder who that was that they were consulting with because I don't remember Jesus of Nazareth saying anything like that. So that's where this song came from. And also the sense that once you start lying, you've broken a bond of trust between communities. To lie about something as important as a war, when you're sending off young people to give up their lives in a cause, you really need to be telling them the truth about why they're doing that. When you take into account the civilian casualties in Iraq, it's just overwhelming and appalling. And it's not just about somebody else's children being killed. It has an effect on every human being in the sense that we're all interconnected and if we give our consent to lies, we're only going to get more lives. If we give our consent to the killing of innocence, then we're just going to get more of that and it's just the way just the way energy works in the world. And so to stand up at a certain point and say, this is not acceptable, that we need to speak truth about what's going on in public policy. We need to speak truth about war and peace. And I'm not saying there's never a case for going to war. Perhaps there is, but that wasn't it. But we need to know what it is. We need to speak truth to each other in our private lives. And certainly if you're going to be a public face of religion or a face, perhaps you should speak truth about what that religion and the leaders of that religion actually set and actually stood for. But as far as I'm concerned, Jesus of Nazareth, who is called the Prince of Peace, was not a warmonger. And that comes through in this song. This is How Many Wars on the Pockets of Lebron's album. Take a field of ignorance, plant it full of fear. Water it with semi-truths, and watch hate grow from year to year. Watch it spread from field to field by seed and hidden root. Then we gaze so sad amazed to harvest bitter fruit. How many wars? They storm how many lies? How many times? Can we justify our tightly closed eyes? Turn away again until the soul of the stars. How many turns? How many wars? How many lies? I do believe they do not know that Christ was not a CEO who never trilled for oil boys and never killed for a gain. A convex death of a birther carpenter. No net worth do you think they'd listen for a minute if you came again. How many wars? They storm how many lies? How many times? Can we justify our tightly closed eyes? Turn away again until the soul of the stars. How many turns? How many wars? How many lies? I do believe they cannot name the price we pay to play this game. Not imaginary money, but another nation's child. Every innocent that's lost, it's actually on a vessel cost. Every soul diminished, every plate of grass to find how many wars? Based on how many lies? How many times? Can we justify our tightly closed eyes? Turn away again until the soul of the stars. How many turns? How many wars? How many lies? Find a heart with openness, plant a seed of peace, water it with wisdom, and then listen for the sweet release. Among my one we ship the field in which our leaders stand. Up some day we'll find a way to peace in every land. How many wars? They storm how many lies? How many times? Can we justify our tightly closed eyes? Turn away again until the soul of the stars. How many turns? How many wars? How many lies? How many wars? Based on how many lies? How many times? Can we justify our tightly closed eyes? Turn away again until the soul of the stars. How many turns? How many wars? How many lies? How many turns? How many wars? How many lies? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? How many wars? But of course your Catholic upbringing values were part of this mix. How did that enter into what they thought, what was discussed at home, and where you went eventually? My mother was the most committed Catholic of the family. And she supported groups that I guess would be called on the left wing of the church. Those who were doing social justice work in South America for instance. And she read newsletters about that. And so I think her Catholicism and her values certainly impacted where she put her attention within the Catholic church. For my father I think Catholicism was a little different and separate. He saw political activism as something that wasn't directly involved in the church. My father was very involved in helping the poor of the parish, for instance. He was involved in looking after the food bank, but it was the equivalent. They didn't have food banks back then. But about working with and giving assistance to people who needed it when they were down on their luck in the parish. For him it didn't matter if they were Catholic or not. It was just were they in our neighborhood and did they need help and was there something that he could do through the church organizations to give a hand. I remember watching him get involved in this stuff and he worked very hard at a working class job in a factory and he would come home and he'd have dinner and he'd go out to the church to deal with food issues for people in the parish. And I would sometimes go with him on these missions and I was certainly very impressed. So yes, I'd say that my current example and their beliefs had an impact on how I looked at the world and my own activism and the way that I approached the music that I do. And Eileen, how did that continue for you? I know you no longer consider yourself a Catholic or practicing Catholic. I know that because you were part of this, you know, roots Irish family that you got raised Catholic, but you left that pretty easily and went on to something else. Are there elements of that that are influential or what would you say is the essence of your spirituality and which drives your activism today? Let's say that it comes down to a worldview that's a holistic worldview, that's a worldview that says we are all connected in spirit, that not only are all humans connected in spirit that we're all, I think, when you get down to it, we share a single spirit. We are all part of the spirit of what makes up humanity so that if we do harm to another human being, we're harming ourselves in a real, not just a metaphorical fashion. That sense of interconnectedness extends, in my belief, to all other living things, to the trees and the animals and all aspects of nature. We're all interconnected. We're all inter-creative as well. We have an effect on each other. That view, I think, is what primarily informs my activism, whether it's environmental, political, or personal. It comes from that sense that we're all interconnected and that there is a spirit of goodness that we should be striving for and that things like goodness and justice and beauty and clarity and health and joy are universal principles that we all can participate in. That we all do participate in by just the reason of our being here on earth and that we communicate to each other and strive to surround ourselves with beauty, truth, and justice. And we know what they are, and we can pretend that we don't know what they are and we can get distracted from that knowledge, and there are some who decide that that knowledge doesn't serve them in their particular goals. But ultimately, I think that there are threads that connect us to those universal principles, whether we like it or not, and that the road to health and joy and purpose and all the good things that we say we want for ourselves and for our children and for the planet are in the direction of those universal principles. So when I look at the specifics of things, even if it's sorted politics, even though those things get corrupted and get lost and get muddied, sometimes just by the nature of politics and sometimes by deliberate action to muddy the waters and confused people, I think if we look hard enough, we can find some clarity and find whether a particular course of action or a particular party's goals are in line with those things or not in line with those things and make our choices accordingly. And I don't think it's about choosing my well-being over somebody else's well-being because I think we're all in this together. We live on a tiny little planet that the choices we make have to take into account the fact that we live on a tiny little planet and that we are all interconnected and we need to make the choices that take into account the big picture and that interconnectedness between all beings. And we're finding now that we've been using the planet as a resource center and a dumping ground and that that can't go on, that it's finite. We need to expand that into our interactions with each other personally and politically and see that there needs to be a common sense of what is good and right in just for everyone, not just for small privileged fruits on the planet. I like the way you think, Eileen. It really captures so much of my own thoughts. I said this when I had you on to share your song of the soul. I find so many of the words coming out of your mouth are words that come straight from mine. I guess that maybe has something to do with why your music attracted me so strongly. Would you care to share some more of that music about how you were working to change the world and maybe one of those songs that you put out there to help motivate people? One of the things that's going on in the big context that doesn't necessarily get the pieces connected in the media is globalization and it's an issue that has been in the public eye only. It seems when there's some kind of big protest or there's a big meeting about globalization, but the fact is that it affects us in our everyday lives, what we buy and where it comes from and who's getting paid to make it or not getting paid to make it. It comes very close to home, the whole issue of making things in other countries and sending them around and whether or not this is going to raise the standard of living around the globe as is claimed by the people who are for it or whether or not it's actually going to lower the standard of living around the planet. And then attached to that is the question of whether the planet can sustain a universally raised standard of living. Dr. David Suzuki says the standard of living of North Americans, if it was worldwide, what the planet can sustain on a long-term basis is about three or 400 million people, which means that if globalization continues, perhaps the standard of living is going to significantly lower in first-world countries and hopefully rise in third-world countries, but whether the population can be sustained on an ongoing basis in a modern consumer culture is pretty questionable. So one of the things that I was thinking about was, and it's very applicable to what's going on in Wisconsin right now, 150 years ago, the division was between the owner of the factory and the factory workers. And a lot of the conflicts in labor history and business history are around that conflict between the owner of the capital and the workers who make that capital turn into more money and profit down the road. And it occurred to me that although things were bad in those days, and there's lots of terrible stories, at least it was clear who the sides were, who the owner was, who the workers were, what they each wanted. That was all clear in these days, it's not clear anymore because you may work for a corporation that's owned by a consortium that's owned by another corporation, and there may be five or six countries involved. And all of them report to their shareholders who were anonymous people who no one can actually contact and say, did you know that a subsidiary of this company that you've invested in has invested in this other subsidiary company that is doing something that is doing harm in this country? Well, it just gets so tenuous that nobody feels moved to act. So this long as about trying to make those connections between the big picture, the little picture, and the fact that that globalization is something that affects us in our daily lives, and I don't have an easy answer to it. And certainly globalization has no clear future either, given that we may be reaching in the not too distant future, the end of oil and the end of the ability to ship goods and money around the globe the way it has been going. And this last bursting of the bubble was actually predicted in this song, which I wrote in '91, the bubble has burst, the economic bubble has burst around the globe, and yet the people who had a lot of money before the bubble burst have even more now. I recently read an article that said that it's been the biggest transfer of wealth in human history from lower to the very top of the upper classes. That's what happened in this last bursting of the bubble. So this song is about the internationalization of commerce and the internationalization of law that makes it possible for corporations to basically do as they want and be free from any kind of democratic checks and balances from the people of the nation where the company is operating or the people of the nation that the company belongs to initially. So this song is called 'No Countries Law' and it's on the 'Beyond the Storm' album. It used to be owners would live near the factories with faces and names and places they shopped and they might have been hard and they might have been cruel but you knew where the buck should be stopped. Now there's senior executives making eight figures who answer to boardrooms who answer to all who invest in the company, nobody knows them, so nobody knows who to call. But profits keep rising from quarter to quarter to feed the great gaping anonymous smile. And they keep all their money in all the sea shelters and answer to 'No Countries Law'. They've broken down barriers in between nations so your kids can wear clothing that children have made with no education, no hope for the future that thankful for pennies they've paid. While here job securities late and lamented you work while you can and prepare for the worst and hope you stay healthy as you watch your debt growing and pray that the bubble won't burst. But profits keep rising from quarter to quarter to feed the great gaping anonymous smile. And they keep all their money in all the sea shelters and answer to 'No Countries Law'. Now they're forming world governments, you don't elect them to pass legislation for companies who can rip up the planet or poison a nation if you try to stop them they'll sue. So sing out the mantra now global economy, fill any thought that might get in the way and don't think your government's able to stop them, they're signing your powers away. But profits keep rising from quarter to quarter to feed the great gaping anonymous smile. And they keep all their money in all the sea shelters and answer to 'No Countries Law'. Yes profits keep rising from quarter to quarter to feed the great gaping anonymous smile. And they keep all their money in all the sea shelters and answer to 'No Countries Law'. If you just tuned in you're listening to 'Spirit in Action' and my guest today is Eileen McGann. That was her song 'No Countries Law' it's from 'Beyond the Storm'. She is my guest today for 'Spirit in Action' because her music is so transformative it helps motivate, inform and lead people to take action to better this world. Our mental certainly is part of it we've just heard about the way that people have to be civically engaged. We've also heard about war and military her concerns about justice in that venue. She's already told us that she's never been to jail for justice. That's a song that Anne Finney wrote, 'Have you been to jail for justice?' Anne was my guest earlier this year. But Eileen you said when you were talking about 'No Countries Law' you don't have the answer. And that's a big problem for a lot of us. I mean a lot of us can see, going into Iraq was ill-founded, it was deceitful, it was unjust, it was hurtful. So we could just say okay not Iraq. We don't know what to do about commerce, isn't it a mind bender to try and think about that? Because we want to think globally and we don't want walls between the nations of the world. But then of course multinational corporations help bend that association in a way that lines their pockets. And we don't want people in third world countries to not have jobs. And if they're being offered jobs that are better than what they can get, is that a good thing or is that a bad thing? And we look at what they're getting offered to work and we think well that's terribly exploitative and I don't want to participate in that. But the context is everything and it does get complex. I guess the questions need to be, well as they say on the cop shows, follow the money and you'll find the motive. Is the process that we have now working towards a more just society or a less just society overall in the world? And I think the answer to that is pretty clear that this isn't working. So if I were made King of the World tomorrow, no I wouldn't know what to do. But I know where I'd put some smart people to go study and figure it out. I guess that's the most I can say. And what I do with my songs is I try to raise questions and I try to ask people to listen and think and maybe come up with their own solutions or come up with another way of approaching it because they've been challenged to think. My spirit and action guest today has been singer, songwriter and activist Eileen McGann. Originally I thought to try and capture her message and music in a single program but there is just too much to share. And so you just heard installment one and Eileen will be back next week for part two which will include some of her songs like Too Stupid for Democracy and Medusa. Right now to tide you over till next week and with Earth Day in Mind will send you out with one more of Eileen's songs, Last of the Truly Wild. See you next week for spirit in action. ♪ ♪ A roar in the darkness, a painted tornado ♪ ♪ Last of a dummy guard, savage and calm ♪ ♪ But where could you run to when the guns roared around you ♪ ♪ Last of the truly wild, going, going ♪ ♪ A storm on the prairie, a thunder of the feats ♪ ♪ The west wind made visible to gallop on the earth ♪ ♪ Untamed and untamable, but where could you run to ♪ ♪ Last of the truly wild, and what's a wild thing worth ♪ ♪ ♪ Last of the truly wild, what will remain ♪ ♪ When you are finally lost, will stand alone ♪ ♪ On an act of filed and crow about the gain ♪ ♪ But who will count the cost, oh last of the truly wild ♪ ♪ Last of the truly wild, last of the truly wild ♪ ♪ Last of the truly wild ♪ ♪ A lumbering avalanche, like salmon from a clear stream ♪ ♪ A fragment of the midnight sky, lumps down the hounds ♪ ♪ And giants whisper over you, but where could you run to ♪ ♪ Last of the truly wild, when paradise is found ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Last of the truly wild, what will remain ♪ ♪ When you are finally lost, will stand alone ♪ ♪ On an act of filed and crow about the gain ♪ ♪ But who will count the cost, oh last of the truly wild ♪ ♪ ♪ Last of the truly wild, last of the truly wild ♪ ♪ There's a place in my heart that is a war in the darkness ♪ ♪ A wind on the prairie, out at the moon ♪ ♪ A lumbering avalanche, a whispering giant ♪ ♪ Last of the truly wild, last of the truly wild ♪ ♪ Last of the truly wild, we follow you soon ♪ ♪ ♪ Give us our trespasses, we follow you soon ♪ ♪ ♪ The theme music for this program is "Turning of the World" performed by Sarah Thompson. This Spirit in Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, at NorthernSpiritRadio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. ♪ We rejoice with every song. We will move this world along. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. And our lives will feel the echo of our healing. (upbeat music)