Mystical Monday: a day late ... Changing times or not

More and more churches are accepting of jazz these days, which was once considered the devil's music.

I wonder if the men at the Vatican have shunned Nuns in the US for digging a righteous riff as they have been shunning them for their thoughts recently.

so things have not changed as far as Catholic women being brave in expressing themselves ...


CONSECRATED

All have been consecrated.
The creatures in the forest know this,

the earth does, the seas do, the clouds know
as does the heart full of
love.

Strange a priest would rob us of this
knowledge

and then empower himself
with the ability

to make holy what
already was.

St. Catherine of Siena

Jazz Poetry: William Matthews mourns Coltrane

Church of the Coltrane from the Flickr set of Damian 

The Saint John Will-I-Am Coltrane African Orthodox Church (now at 1286 Fillmore St. San Francisco)
Photographer: Damian Rafferty

Musicians connect to us and their passing can shake us. One of the first I was introduced to was Johnny Cash and I remember the waves traveling through my car the day I found out he had died...  I should have pulled over.


Blues for John Coltrane, Dead at 41

Although my house floats on a lawn
as plush as a starlet’s body
and my sons sleep easily,
I think of death’s salmon breath
leaping back up the saxophone
with its wet kiss.

Hearing him dead,
I feel it in my feet
as if the house were rocked
by waves from a soundless speedboat
planing by, full throttle.

By William Matthews


... then there is the joy of stumbling into videos for a blog post.  Coltrane playing an appropriate tune & the video was posted by a lover of Cash and Coltrane

Find it in the other direction

Arrived at the Lutheran church to hear
FFEAR
the music was beginning.
Sax, trombone, drums, bass

We climbed to the balcony
row of chairs lined up in the back,

Margaret tapped me.

Her hand directed my eyes
inches from my head.

respecting the band's desire
to not be photographed,
I peered down the wall of glass.


What will awe your senses if you turn your head? What is your partner missing?

Mystical Mondays ~ some thoughts on Wisdom

My time at Wernersville has introduced me to Lady Wisdom, and inspired my Sophia spiral design

Wisdom is there to bring us awe each and every moment of the day. I hope to be awed at least daily if not each moment. Maybe one day I will be so wise to live within the constant flow of awesome moments.

Last night it happened within a drum solo


WHEREVER YOU MAY LOOK

Wisdom is
so kind and wise
that wherever you may look
you can learn something
About God.

Why
would not
the omnipresent
teach that
way?

St. Catherine of Siena

Doodling with glass and Red Garland

Last night I featured my bucket of shards and spoke of the process of how the above piece came into being. I hope that I found the shape that each shard desired to be as I took them from bucket to grinder to soldering iron to bedroom window.

Disappointed to say that I could not find a video of a tune from Red Alone, but I am quite amused to post yet another version of Willow Weep For Me...

Shards of possibilities

This afternoon, I put on some solo piano and reached into this bucket of shards. When a piece spoke to me, I spoke back with the glass grinder. Again and again I reached in... Not even stopping to get a bandage till I felt enough pieces had come into being.

Then I washed off the glass and bandaged my thumb.

One by one I took the shapes and wrapped them in copper foil. The jazz played on as a design came into being.

This is doodling with glass

This is finding use of scraps

This is shards of possibilities

Tomorrow .... It will be held up to the light

Jazz and poetry... Ira Sadoff

I believe that music was created to help us experience emotions. Nothing moves me quite like music. 




At the Half-Note cafe
                               for Gene Ammons

Once I heard him play
"Willow Weep For Me"
in a tone so full
and sentimental, I felt
a gap between my ribs
and lungs, a dearth of air,
sorrow soon enough would fill.
I found the blues unfair
to boys like me who came to bars
unprepared for grief
that wasn't strictly personal ...

By Ira Sadoff


Maybe one of the hardest things we face is to feel joy in the midst of pain, but I do believe God desires us to feel emotions as pancakes.  They come in stacks, not just one at a time.  We tell ourselves it is wrong to be happy or the pain of an event masks the joyful moment that fills the present moment.  In 1956 Gene Ammons gathered with some of the best to record some music.

 here is the title track, The Happy Blues...




Individual musicians touch our lives and when they pass away tributes emerge.  Here is one made for Etta James, in which she sings the song, which touched Ira Sadoff, when it emerged from Gene Ammons horn...