Hi, I’m Mona West, and listening to chant and singing chants have always been grounding spiritual practice for me, especially in these challenging times. I find that the words of the chants settle into my body and throughout the day and even in the night, they will arise. Just when I need them.

I believe it was Saint Augustine who said the one who sings, prays twice. Chants are simple, songs that ground deep and tensions often involving the heart.

Here are the words to some of my favorites:

Give peace in every heart.

Open my heart.

Come and fill my heart with your peace.

Let go.

Come in.

Let nothing trouble you.

Chants are beautiful when they’re sung in different languages, such as Latin or Spanish or Hebrew. And there are many sources for listening and learning chant. And I want to share with you just a few that have been my favorites and have been helpful to me over the years as I learned to chant and practice it as a spiritual discipline. And these sources or resources are available on music platforms like Apple Music or Spotify.

So some of my favorites are: A Chant from the Monastic Community in Taizé, France, and they chant in a variety of languages with an English translation. The Recordings of Chants from Around the World by a musical artist called Robert Gass. And then Chants recorded by a musical group called Harc.

So I want to teach you a chant that has been particularly helpful to me during these challenging times, and the words are very simple. They are “let go, let go, let go some more. Let go of everything. Love is all. Come in, come in, come in some more. Come in, I welcome you. Love is all.

So I’m going to sing that through a few times to teach you the tune and then there are actually some little hand movements that go with it that helped to ground those words in our body. And the hand movements are let go. Let go. Let go some more. Let go of everything. Love is all. Come in, come in, come in some more. Come in, I welcome you. Love is all.

So this is how the tune goes.

“Let go, let go, let go some more. Let go of everything. Love is all. Come in, come in, come in some more. Come in, I welcome you. Love is all.”

So now we’re going to put our hand motions to this chant.

“Let go, let go, let go some more. Let go of everything. Love is all. Come in, come in, come in some more. Come in, I welcome you. Love is all. Let go, let go, let go some more. Let go of everything. Love is all. Come in, come in, come in some more. Come in, I welcome you. Love is all.”

And may it be so.

Rev. Dr. Mona West is the Director of Adult Christian Formation at St. David’s Episcopal Church and a past part of the clergy in Metropolitan Community Churches. Rev. Dr. Mona West holds a Ph.D. in the Hebrew Bible.