Today's List

Thinking again... Every day I write a To Do list like a million other people who set out to accomplish something before their days are diminished by one. Today my list contained nothing one might consider "practical", but a few things I consider crucial for reasons I cannot seem to articulate.

Ideas, surprising affirmations, previous thoughts, wishing I could save the world, but I'm making quiche today (Bodhisattva? Maybe tomorrow). I found a few quotes I'd like to share and lost them on the way to the oven with the pie crust. Some things that made it to the page follow. What did you think about today that you can't check off your To Do list? 

“the play of opposites… cannot be abolished. But opposites can co-exist without challenging each other – and that is the secret. For wholeness to be a living reality one must learn to expand beyond the field of duality encompassing the most diametrically opposed qualities of life.” – Deepak Chopra, in Unconditional Life: Mastering the Forces that Shape Personal Reality (1991, pp. 253-254).

Expand to the field of balance, lose your balance, find it again, like a standing yoga pose.

life without stylistic dominance 

community through cooperation

coherence, congruence, synergy

coaching 

integration, harmonizing with the environment

song as expression of love 

music as a way of holding*

the importance of knowing how to rest comfortably where you are*, without feeling the need to master the next lesson (which rest, oddly enough, seems to be important preparation for learning the next lesson, but I'm not going there yet.. yum, rest, smell that quiche). 

I'm loving June Boyce-Tillman's book Constructing Musical Healing. You might too.

ETHEL, Social Innovation, and the Chickasaw Nation

Lately I've been poking around the Berkana Institute website reading (and rereading) Margaret Wheatley and her good work. The first thing on the website in big bold script: "Whatever the problem, community is the answer."
Tonight I had the great pleasure of hearing the string Quartet known as ETHEL. They were playing a free concert, the first in the Lincoln Center Out of Doors Series, which runs through August 15th. Ethel uses music as a medium for building connections between people, styles, and cultures. For the last couple of years they've produced a show called Ethel Fair, and tonight it was time for singer-songwriters Juana Molina and Dayna Kurtz to climb into my heart. I believe they'll be staying there. The concert at times seemed like an out of body experience, and even when it was just rock-n-roll, the addition of a string quartet was enriching for all and more fun than a barrel of monkeys.
About those connections Ethel's out there building: watch the video below and then check out their latest CD OSHTALI, where Ethel plays works for string quartet by student composers from the Chickasaw nation.
I love it when my worlds collide.

LifelineNYC

For the last couple of months, I've been co-leading the music at a recovery ministry called Lifeline. Lifeline seeks to help people attain a God-centered recovery from addictions, give people the opportunity to experience prayer, singing, and a pith instruction in a spiritual practice. The aim is to be an intentional community watering hole supporting the 11th Step (remember the 12 steps?): conscious contact with God through prayer and meditation.


Lifeline celebrates the God of all faiths with people of all faiths. The goal is to help each other grow along spiritual pathways as part of recovery from the effects of addiction and codependency. Gatherings include a diverse array of persons in recovery from addictions, persons affected by addiction, and persons who seek restoration and God’s help in their lives.


We meet in the church parlor of Park Avenue Christian at 85th and Park Avenue in NYC; a lovely, candle lit room,  with food served afterward. The singing is of the heartier variety, with new songs added on a regular basis, and most of it participatory. Improvisers are also welcome! 

This has been one of the most rewarding events I've done in a quite some time, and I always look forward to it. 


I'll be leading the music the following Sundays in August:  8/1, 8/8, and 8/22.  

Lifeline is open to absolutely everyone; people of all faiths or none, from any 12-step group or none. 


Join us Sunday (52 a year!) evening at 6:00 PM for music, a short teaching on prayer, an excellent speaker, and instruction on an aspect of meditation, followed by dinner and good conversation. Come, hang out with good people, and go home refreshed. The whole thing (including dinner) usually lasts about 90 minutes. 


Check out the Lifeline website here: http://lifelinenyc.org/
For a schedule of dates when I'll be leading the music, go here: http://events.myspace.com/Event/4092389/Lifeline#ixzz0uvXHQYva

Still Grateful After All These Years

In our last episode, I posited the following: How many things in this life conspire to support us in our work, and encourage (or push) us along the way? It seems there's been a fair amount of both encouragement and shoving to get me here. 


Today's trio of support, encouragement, and pushing begins with our musician (Hey, that's me!) living in a big red barn in Lansing, NY, owned by Cora Kay Breary. Cora was at least 80 and still sang soprano in the choir led by George Damp at St. John's, Ithaca, NY. I also sang in the choir, was about 20 years old, and had no idea what to do with my life. I needed a place to stay, and Cora needed some help on the farm, so I moved into her partially renovated barn in late summer and helped out through the following spring. 

The barn had a wood stove, a great room, a sleeping loft with a seasonal view of the Cayuga river, and no running water. There were red, white, and black raspberries, elderberries, English and Black Walnut trees, a bunch of fruit trees, chickens, and two cranky old goats (there was another one besides Cora). I learned more about myself, farm living, and hard work than I had ever known. One lesson was how to work the stove so I didn't freeze. Another was how to kill a chicken, but I didn't have the stomach for that.

It was a long, cold winter, and I remember Easter's being early that following spring because there was still a fair amount of snow on the ground after church on Good Friday. I came up the driveway and spotted a large box leaning between the doors of the barn. I received few packages, so I figured it was a mistake, but when I got closer, I saw that it was addressed to me. It was from a music store in Virginia, but besides my aunt Carmen, I didn't know anyone in Virginia. Aunt Carmen had never sent me anything, so I was stumped. I picked up the box, which was triangular (what could that mean?), and took it inside. I don't remember the sequence of events, whether I fired up the stove, or even took off my boots, but I do recall spending every free minute for months afterward playing the cool, black, acoustic Epiphone guitar that popped out of that box.

Turns out I'd been to a retreat with Walter Wink some months earlier at Kirkridge Retreat and Study Center in eastern PA, and had met some people from Richmond, VA. I didn't really pay much attention to where they were from at the time, but on the Saturday night of the retreat, a bunch of us had parked ourselves in front of the fire and played and sang folk songs all night. I didn't own a guitar, so I was just singing along with everyone else, when someone asked the guitar player if he knew some song or other, which he didn't, but I did. So he handed over the guitar and we sang for three more hours. I hadn't played guitar in quite a while, and wasn't old enough to be very good, but I played a lot that night and we had a great time. I didn't think anything more about it until Cornelia Keller of Richmond, VA - my very first patron - conspired to send me a guitar. 


You never know what those gods are conspiring to do, but I'm pretty sure you can think of something.  
  
This fall I'll be returning to Kirkridge to lead a Sound as Prayer Retreat on October 29-31. Click on the title to visit the Kirkridge website, or look up the Sound as Prayer Retreat on Facebook . I'd love to sing with you. 

Contest results (and a quote)

It has been months since I've been here, and I've pondered the entries for changing the name of this blog, and have decided (or been convinced by the angels) that Support your local sacred musician is going to be always and forever Support your local sacred musician. It's grown on me, and I've generated a few ideas since the last post - spring can do that to a girl. I've also been home for the longest stretch of time since last fall, about which more later.

Thanks to all of you who entered, but I just couldn't do it (an angel wrestled me to the ground when I tried). I  threatened not blogging ever again, and they laughed, and said "Maybe we'll give you a couple of months to get with the program".

Well, it seems the program has arriven. How many things in this life conspire (origin: L conspīrāre to act in harmony, equiv.to con- con-  + spīrāre to breathe; see spirant, spirit) to support us in our work, and encourage (or push) us along the way?
...

This morning's batch of prayers brought an Augustine quote:

Let us sing now, not in order to enjoy a life of leisure,
but in order to lighten your labors.
You should sing as wayfarers do -
sing, but continue your journey.
Do not be lazy, but sing to make your journey more enjoyable.
Sing, but keep going.
                                            - St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430)


PS - I feel better with books around the place. See ya soon.