Maria Schönfeld

Just to Love like This

Lyric Booklet

Playground

This was the first song I ever wrote so it has a deep place in my heart. It really sprung out of me out of nothing and was the first time I saw that I have words and music channelled through me that want to be written. It is a song that goes back to the bare boards basics of my journey- I am here to find the courage to stand with the deepest darkness inside of me, I am here to love my darkness into light. This is the message I always come back to, this is how I find my way back home every single time. What a trip.

Oh perfect darkness

You are the wick that is the essence of me

And the first time I met you and the next time I was with you I drowned

I had to drown

But in this playground I fall to pieces to be ok

Cause in this playground is where I met you as me

Know this illness is the grief of separation until we’re found

Until I find that it’s all so fluid and it’s all so borderless and it’s quiet, it’s so quiet

Cause in this playground I fall to pieces to be ok

Yes in this playground is where I met you as me

Running I’m still running, I’m running still running etc

And I’m here

Trains and Planes

This song is about learning to take it easy on ourselves. Like for real tho. It is saying: gently allow this conditioning of running towards a ‘better’ version of ourselves dissolve in our own unconditional embrace. We are perfectly imperfect, meaningful and important without having to do anything or be anyone. It takes courage to rest with everything that appears in our body and mind. It feels counter-intuitive and perhaps even dangerous to infuse with love all that we hate about ourselves. But we’ve tried the other way and we’re tired. So in our exhaustion, maybe we douse this one moment indiscriminantly with ‘it’s ok, I love you anyway’. And rest, just rest today.

Though mine's a glimmer of faith

Every beam that cuts through this old fog of war alights a thousand more

Although my presence is so contrary as myself I walk, walk through its door

When I tasted sound and rejoiced in the grass

I wasn't built for speed

I was made to be vast

So leave these trains and planes

Let them melt away

In unknown we are grown

The corners of the familiar are no place to roam

You know that feeling when you're sure of just one thing

Let that be your name

And rest, rest today

You can rest just rest today

Though mine's a newfound trust

Every root that grows into this richest soil can feed a thousand more

Although my peace is but shy

As myself I hear its echoes cry

When I understood that only we are time

I wasn't built for speed

I was made to be free and kind

So leave these trains and planes

Let them melt away

In unknown we are grown

The circus of the familiar is no place to call home

You'll know that feeling when it comes calling

And nothing will keep this curtain from falling so

Rest just rest today and let these changes speak your name

Just to stay here that is courage

Just to love like this

Just to stand here in these currents

Just to love like this

Just to breathe here through the aching

Just to love like this

Just to know beyond measure

Just to love like this

Just to stay here that is courage

Just to love like this

Just to stand here in these currents

Just to love like this

Just to breathe here through the aching

Just to love like this

Just to know beyond measure

Just to love like this

Just to stay here that is courage

Just to love like this

Just to stand here in these currents

Just to love like this

Just to breathe here through the aching

Just to love like this

Just to know beyond measure

Just to love like this

Outskirts

If there is a song that embraces the core message of the album/my life it’s this one. It’s the one truth always come back to and the one truth that saves my life over and over again. It’s saying that the way we heal, live, find our truth is by turning towards ourselves. No matter what. Again and again. Our only task here on earth (or my only task in any case) is to love all the parts of me into myself. All of the pain, all of the fear, all of the darkest, dankest spots in us are reaching out to us waiting for us to turn towards them, finally. So simple and so easy to forget and this song stands as a big, huge reminder of the very most essential truth of my life.

It seems the only constant here is a constancy of words run astray

Frantic history keeps suspending me in this rapid fire

These fragments form to brave the icy waters of unsafe

Fragments melt to show the incandescence of our break

So wrap me around these fractured outskirts

To shine some light on these streets

And we will come home now and every time

To our depths of peace, our depths of peace

It’s clear the only comfort here is in feeling the rawness of the breeze

Checkered history leave your pieces be, be still and heal

As wholeness forms in slighted corners heard and embraced

Wholeness speaks through tears sprung from the warmth, the warmth of our grace

So wrap me around these fractured outskirts

To write my song on these streets

And we will come home now, now and every time

To our depths of peace

Give it some space now to round the edge

Give it some time now to know the way

Give it some trust now to feel out strength

To feel such strength

Wrap me around these fractured outskirts

To shine some light on these streets

And we will come home now and every time

To our depths of peace

Give it some time now to know the way, to know the way

Explore Her

This song is a joyful celebration. It is the divine singing to us. It is my most purely ‘channelled’ song- it really, really wrote itself. This song is saying that it’s all God (universe, spirit, the force, whatevs), it’s all the divine’s lila, it’s all God. “What is this humanness when there is nowhere I don’t live?” When we think we aren’t whole, when we believe we are somehow incomplete and unworthy, even in the midst of our pain and suffering, that’s when the divine ‘bleeds’ to bring us back to ourselves. To make us look, deeply, to see whether what we are experiencing is actually unbearable or whether our loving acceptance of it can lead us back to peace somehow. We’re here to find God in even our most reviled parts, to see that it’s all love.

I am not her

And she is in me

Fastidious explorer, oh, show me the hues I can be

Her stories tower to meet

that place where grace is the sweetness of grief

she is a scroll to behold and to unfurl and to unfold

Hieroglyph of my heart

What is this humanness

When there’s, nowhere that I don’t live

Can she feel these fingers heal

Revere what’s here and reveal what’s real

Can she see it’s me who bleeds when she believes that I’m not all she needs

So that she’ll reach so deep to breathe the peace

The cosmic sigh of relief

I am so full of life

That I cannot be contained

And like a wave

I spill over the page

Timeless capsules

Dropped from my pen

Ink-stained elixirs

To the everywhen

4 Walls

This song is a call to arms- in the most gentle way. It is a battle cry for all the ones fighting for air from their homes. The chronically ill ones, the depressed ones, the anxious ones. the ones who need to find purpose in their lives outside of the socially accepted ways. “I watched an empire fall in these 4 walls”- I watched my allegiance to our conditioned norms fade away as I dug deep in myself without leaving my home, my room. This illness was/is my (fierce!) teacher and the more I open to its wisdom, the more I let go of who I used to be. In this space of unknowing I find fulfilment beyond anything the mind could ever conjure up- a well of contentment that does not depend on anything or anyone but this very moment, softly holding me as I realise the love that I am.

This icy fear lives in all the places where, where our hearts had to harden against the pain of this unworthiness

This callous fear lives in all those places where our childlike hearts had to shield us from feeling unsafe

Falling fall let them fall away falling fall

Travelling light on the inroads that we’ve made

Call calling out the game calling call

Gathering bones for a world that we create

As I’m making sense through it all

I watched an empire fall in these 4 walls yeah

I found the pieces of me in all the places I don’t want to be as I’m watching the goddess reappear

This sharp fear lives in the gaps between who we are and who we think who we think we should be

This knowing fear asks us to listen oh so carefully as it whispers what we need to be free

Falling fall let them fall away falling fall falling fall away

Calling call calling out the game calling call

Feeling ok about being in the in between

Cause I’m making sense through it all

I watched an empire fall in these four walls yeah

It all became, became so clear as I’m watching the goddess reappear

As a matter of fact the tunnel of lament has no beginning and has no end look up now look up now cause we’re already home

Safest we’ve ever been

This song is a lullaby. It’s main message is that we can relax because there’s no judgmental god waiting to punish us for our sins- we’re the only one judging us, we’re the ones with the power to set us free in forgiveness whenever we want. We can be the hand on our own back pardoning us. It’s kind of scary to have this realisation though- that we’ve always had the power- that there’s no big zaddy in the sky who will praise us for being a good little boy or girl. We are what we’ve been looking for- although we might not quite be able to see that yet and that’s ok too! We can let others reflect it back to us until we can. This song is sweet and coated in such softness and such soft sounds and such a loving, ethereal, warm embrace- just like our loving hearts.

I’ll sit this out

Where my love speaks out loud

And let the wind dance with the shadows of a former self

Cause I feel too deep to live in the scattered man’s hand, by this shattered man’s land

And if thinking things is what makes them so

Then I’d best wake up to the things I think I know

And hey cause I know they forgot to say

The truth hurts and heals

But it’s me and it’s always been

And as the lights come on

We’re safe now

Behind the lines of this prize fighting mind

A roundness sounds in which forgiveness knows no bounds

Oh endless vast terrain

What sweet relief that every thought weighs the same

Yes in this kindest of spaces where words are set free

It’s my hand on my back now pardoning me

And hey cause I know they forgot to say

The truth it hurts and heals

But we’re here and we’ve always been

And as the lights come on, we’re safe now

And as the lights come, we’ve always been safe now

Trust we are more than the shapes that we take

This beautiful ruse

The plans that we make

Trust that its only ever our fear of it staying forever that’s keeping it here

Trust in our yearning for a simple love

where this moment is true and we’re always enough

feel how we can both hold and be held

and rest in the palm of the hand that we’re dealt.

Trust we are more than the shapes that we take (if it doesn’t change, love, love it)

This beautiful ruse

The plans that we make

Trust that its only ever our fear of it staying forever that’s keeping it here

Trust in our yearning for a simple love

where this moment is true and we’re always enough

feel how we can both hold and be held

and rest in the palm of the hand that we’re dealt.

Trust we are more than the shapes that we take (if it doesn’t change, love, love it)

This beautiful ruse

The plans that we make

Trust that its only ever our fear of it staying forever that’s keeping it here

Trust in our yearning for a simple love

where this moment is true and we’re always enough

feel how we can both hold and be held

and rest in the palm of the hand that we’re dealt.

Upwards Now

This song is about surrender. It is about letting ourselves see something bigger than ourselves and to learn to cry to that instead of our small contractedness. It is about stepping into a whole new paradigm, into the arena where our old ways of seeing are blown away by the blazing sun of realisation. It’s a song about embarking on an adventure that we don’t quite understand yet, we don’t know the way and we don’t know the territory and it’s scary but it’s what our heart has been yearning for. It’s the most overtly ‘spiritual’ song on the album and I like the way that is reflected in the vocals in the outro- serving multi Maria church choir realness. It is reaching for something deeper, something unknown that beckons us, that blazes from within our hearts.

This time maybe, yeah yeah

This time maybe

Oh tender heart, hold out your hand to love

Crowded mind crowded eyes

You can surrender to breathe

Because spirit soars where spirit was once allowed to ache

Maybe just maybe it’s time to look out from this battered old cave in this rock solid me

Maybe just maybe we’ll take off this cloak that keeps us from feeling these winds set us free

Oh tender heart hold out your hand to love

Cause I cry upwards now in this arena vast and open

Trusted sand your rub feels strong against my skin

As I blink into the sun

Restless mind and these restless eyes surrender to see

And the vividness of truth lives in allowing, allowing what’s here

This time just maybe our respite will chime with every moment and breath that we take

This time just maybe the change in these currents will show us the infinite ways we are whole

Oh yearning heart blaze through this doubt to love

Cause I cry upwards now

In this arena vast and open

Trusted sand your rub feels strong against my feet

As I blink into…

As we hear to hold

As we hold to know

As we know to be

As we are to learn

As we learn to sing

As we sing to hear

As we love

Over and over and over again we jolt and we shake as we love it all in

Over and over and over again we breathe and we ache as we love it all in

That One Line Is For The Girl On The Wall

This is the last song I wrote for the album and was written a while after the others. It came in the midst of a period when I was running around looking for answers outside of myself. It is a gentle reminder that our love and unconditional kindness to ourselves is the greatest medicine. When everything hurts so much that we think we can’t bear it we just want to escape the pain however we can. And that’s ok. That’s part of the journey too. In the end though, maybe once others have helped us build the strength, we can ‘courageously turn the other way’ again and experience the unending embrace of our biggest self. There is nothing more healing than knowing it’s never too late to find the love that we are. No matter what we’ve been through and no matter how crazy/fucked up/traumatic our story- we can find our joy by gently allowing our emotions, knowing there is room for everything in the loving embrace that we are. Facts.

I was blessed when I said yes

To this brave restless self

Furled around holding aground

The dreamed seed of my loneliness

To water to water

Lawless friend

Your darkness your darkness

Was the light in the end

And what strange luck to see

A hand where my pain’s meant to be

And this depression is a child longing for connection

Homeward bound oh ancient sound

Let my arms (these arms) be your protection

To water to water

Flawless friend

Your darkness was my sight in the end

And what strange joy to see

Everyone dying into me

And all of the kind men are telling me

To run and talk and pray

When all I need to courageously do

Is turn the other way

And all the mistakes that I needed to make

Bring me back to the song of my soul

That the only truth in any ache

is forgetting we’re already whole

That I would be blessed

oh that I would be blessed

by the seed of my own loneliness

That I would be blessed

oh that I would be blessed

by the seed of my own loneliness