So Many Ways (2022)

words & music by Doug Howell • © 1974 Trinity Sound Corp, assigned to Creative Measures LLC

today
I watched the morning sun
come up red
come up warm as it blushed
to kiss my cheek
the birds singing love songs
in my head
in my heart they sang things
that no one could speak
and the dew drops were sparklin‘ just like diamonds

you show me your love
in so many ways
why can‘t I ever find a way
to show my love for you

today
in the meadow
in the green, green grass
in the clover I lay
and looked up there
the clouds floated free
and as they passed
they would make me laugh
and I didn‘t care
and a butterfly was dancing through a sunbeam

you show me your love
in so many ways
each and every day
why can‘t I ever find a way
to show my love for you
for you

and best of all
you give to me
people to share
who‘ve known your joy
who‘ve known your pain
and the love there can be
and I wonder how I ever lived without you

you show me your love
in so many ways
each and every day
Lord, won‘t you help me find a way
to show my love for you
for you

Reviews

I remember singing this song all the time as a young teenager. What a pleasant surprise to hear it again this morning, thank you! —AwesomePossum Studios

And I thought this was a new song, never heard it before. Lovely! Thanks for posting it. —Cy T.

Beautiful beautiful memories! —Lela F. A.

Beautiful! God be praised for memory and for the music that is born from it! — Marylisë R.

Such meaningful words. —Carol W. K.

How sweet to hear this lovely song again, with some new twists. —Cindy K. Z.

…brings back so many memories. Your sweet mother, the orchards, the skating pond and dear friends. Thanks for sharing this new version of this great song. —John B.

One of my favorites! I played it for Steve and we were harmonizing on the chorus with David before it was done! —Carol L. S.

Love it! So sorry for the loss of your mother too —Janet W.

I almost felt like I was sitting on that rock pile… beautifully told my friend! —Elizabeth S.

So very sentimental —Georgia E.

You have such a beautiful way with words —Sam R.

Absolutely beautiful, so much meaning. Peace to you as your Mom is dancing in heaven. Always love the soul in your songs. —Kaye F.

Beautiful! I understand! I’m a country girl! I love nature tin roofs thunderstorms woods fields animals sunshine barefoot in the grass wading in the creek tree frogs crickets the moon shining in the windows and love! —Patricia C.

The tender wisp of joy… Love the backstory with the moment of St. Francis of Assisi feeling of God in all things. It shows in the song and the recording. Perfect balance tween the acoustic guitar & piano…and then…your voice. Please keep sending dear friend. It helps to keep me going with this walk through the world. Onward! —D. B.

2022 Notes

This song tells the story of one magical day on the family farm. One special day where God seemed to be in everything, from blushing sunrise to golden evening, in every moment, behind every apple tree, guiding every insect, sculpting each cloud, unfolding some heavenly plan right before my eyes—all to show his extravagant love for me.

This summer we gathered at the family farm one last time, without Mom. One by one, we climbed the stone pile in the back 40 and told, through sobs, our deepest remembrances.

Many of us weren’t quite sure what we would say, but as we climbed the old stones, memories came to us while we held her precious ashes in our hands. Memories of the particular varieties of love she lavished on each of us, child, spouse, grandchild, just the kind we needed. She was the most scrupulously fair woman we had ever known: we all received the same amount—but not the same kind. And we realized through the telling how important that love had been in each of our lives, a truth sealed now by our tears. The tears and words fell together on the old stones, mixing with her ashes. We let them fall to the earth, where Dad’s had fallen those 16 years ago, and somehow we lost him afresh. We lost them both in the green cathedral. We lost them by the stone pile we had built, stone by stone, preparing the field for planting, as others had before us. We lost them both, but we took them with us as we walked back, hand in hand, past the craggy trees, past the apples that now hung so haphazardly, toward the old house: “Unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (John 12:24)

As we sat together later, reminiscing in the evening gold, we were surrounded by many moments from long ago. They sat around the yard with the rest of us, leaning back, waiting quietly until it was their turn. Some never spoke. But some did, and I remember:

Jumping out of our playhouse door right on top of a nail; lying on my back between the trees, imagining how many years ago the light left each star, my back pressed against the green globe, looking out the sky; my college friends strewn all over our old farmhouse in sleeping bags; the air fragrant with apple blossoms; never being able to find the tool Dad wanted me to get; holding the hand of a friend on the diving board, trying to gain my courage, and wondering why his hand felt so cold; running through the orchard in the middle of the night, hoping to die, but suddenly stopped in my tracks by a falling star; singing along with Dionne Warwick on the tractor; great-grandma Nellie falling asleep listening to me practice drums in the living room; climbing the willow—no longer there—carrying my hurts and questions up into its swaying arms and dreaming that there were answers; playing “Alfie” (from my very first LP) on the record player between our beds, and hearing “MacArthur Park” on the lawnmower; practicing the piano while the TV was blaring in the living room—and all my cousins standing around that same piano, singing choruses while I played; pulling water sprouts endlessly and pruning and thinning and plowing and cultivating and feeling the grasshoppers landing on my bare legs and taking off again, and feeling the cool wheat pouring over our hot dusty bodies in late July, and hauling the harvest to the town elevator for weighing; gorging on innumerable bowls of Mom’s special potato salad on tables surrounded by various collections of relatives and friends; a reunion, a wedding, a burial (a pet); a pair of new eyeglasses, lost in the mud but retrieved; Dad saying “Now that looks like a tree,” after teaching me to prune a new dwarf variety in the east orchard; mowing, always mowing!, and being afraid to mow that one hill in the Macintosh orchard; eating as many apples as we wanted, green, red, yellow, soft or hard, grabbing them right off the trees; walking back behind the barn with Mom, explaining that I wasn’t going to change…

And all the songs that were born within that humble 80-acre plot: a half-dozen in my room; one in the driveway; a couple in the back orchard; one as I was pruning the Macintosh trees; one or two I was reworking in my mind as I lay here trying to sleep just last summer… And of course, that magical morning I awoke at age 20, looked out the east-facing window in the room I’d shared with my brother, and felt the sun kiss my cheek.

The song asks a question at the end: “Lord, wonʻt you help me find a way to show my love for you?” I see now, of course, that the song itself was the answer to its own question, along with all the songs that have followed it. But somehow, it’s never quite enough.

Music Notes

The fall after I wrote this we began to perform it with New Jerusalem, and recorded it on our first album (Bobbi Page sang a duet with me. See previous posts to hear the original version.) At one of those performances, a child came up and handed me a crayon depiction of the song, which I carried around for years, writing on its reverse side lists of possible songs to perform. The thought of rerecording this song made me remember that drawing, and I decided to use it for the cover art. My thanks to that lovely anonymous child who drew what he heard and gave it as an offering.

I remember that this was one of the songs New Jerusalem performed in Livonia for a summer concert in 1974 that also featured the Good News Circle, artists on Ralph Carmichael’s Light Records label. It was the first time I’d heard them. I had a chance to meet the group members, and as things worked out, I ended up joining them that fall, traveling and performing with them for two years (along with Dan Leonhardt, as a matter of fact).

Many thanks to my two band members: Dan Leonhardt, for his expertise on six-string and nylon guitars. When I heard his parts, I knew I had to rerecord the piano! And David Glaser, for his most excellent background vocal stylings.