Other notes - Robles

Growing up in Syria, not far from the sea of Galilee, Lebanese-American poet and visual artist Gibran Kahlil Gibran had a deep connection to Jesus the Galilean. In my choral setting of this excerpt from Gibran's book "Sand and Foam," I wanted to celebrate the poem as a microcosm of the biblical account of creation and God's love. To me, the poem contains both the old testament and the new testament. I imagine the speaker is both God and us, creating and creating until creation and creator become one, embodied theologically as Jesus (a man looking upward). The transcendence of death and the union of God and creation are represented in Gibran's concept of the "song of exceeding sweetness."