"Healing Heart." I wrote "Healing Heart" in 1993 as part of the work for my master's degree in counseling. Instead of a "thesis," we were asked to do an "Integration Project," which had to demonstrate in some right-brain (i.e. creative, non-scholarly) way what we'd learned about or integrated in two years of graduate school. I wrote "Healing Heart" to characterize counseling and life as a journey, a journey in which both the counselor and the client learn from each other. The faculty and my classmates loved the song. Since then,  I've been asked to play "Healing Heart" for weddings, workshops, and many other contexts. I think a good song exceeds the conscious intentions of its composer,  taking on a life of its own and evoking things for listeners that the composer hadn't considered. For guitar players, "Healing Heart" is played by putting the guitar in "Open D" tuning (DADF#AD), then placing a capo on the first fret (so the song sounds in the key of Eb). Ken Calandra and Mark Iler had to twist my arm to let them try some harmonies on this tune; I'd always felt it was a solo piece. Listen to the CD (or the sound clip below), hear what they came up with, and you'll understand why I can no longer imagine this song without their harmonies.

To listen to a sound clip of "Healing Heart," click here. The sound clip may take a few minutes to download, and "Healing Heart" may play intermittently while it is downloading. Once it's finished downloading, you should be able to play it clearly and without interruption from start to finish. This is an MP3 file, and may be played using Windows Media Player or whatever MP3 player you may have on your computer.