No News Commutes ~ Greg Brown is searching for Rexroth's Daughter

Who are you searching for?  Maybe the tune will float up some people from your past. Sometimes I wonder how long this man could sing to a tune.  

just plain baffled...

now I am baffled, because... Last Sunday I sang a hymn.

Well, I have a memory of singing a hymn, so I took Red's advice and went to the band and asked them what the closing hymn was the previous week. They showed me. I said, "That's not it. It started with a line about falling to one's knees and at the bottom of the music it said it was based on the third chapter of Ephesians." They pulled out their play list and we went through the whole service. Nothing.

was I dreaming? mystical experience? elaborate conspiracy to drive me loopy. I came home and talked to Mosaic Woman about the experience, and did one more quick google search for the hymn. I walked up stairs to my studio, pulled out a cassette from my past and this was the first song. and yes, this did happen and yes, I will let the mystery be. Mosaic Woman asked if I had chosen this song to play because of my experience at church. I hadn't.

Maybe an answer will arrive to explain what happened last Sunday. maybe it was a way to walk up the stairs at church and have someone in the band ask, "What instrument do you play?" Twelve hours earlier I had been talking to Mosaic Woman about how listening to an old guy play piano had yet again rekindled my desire to create music.

The song also took me back to a movie. A movie in which the song was used much to my delight. The beginning of Little Buddha...

tugged by Christ, some responses

While taking a break from preparing for the Belsnickel craft show, I read a short story while my oil was being changed...

Near the end, a woman decides to help a person who was asking for food in order to feed his dog. She turns and sees a man with an empty tin cup...

He had seen. And I was giving him---- nothing.

How far do you take a thing like this? I think you take it all the way to heart. We give what we can----- that's as far as the heart can go.

from ..Nashville Gone To Ashes by Amy Hempel.

This past Sunday I heard the great Judgment classic sermon on Christ is King.

Over at Quantum Theology, my friend Michelle wrote about trying to see Christ in the poverty poverty one experiences while walking the streets of Philadelphia.

How to respond? I will steal the above... The key is to take it to the heart. The response will arise and we may all respond differently.

donate, volunteer, write, work, play, love, struggle, bring joy, or...

what you can do is respond with music and lyrics...

A plane carrying "deportees" crashes and Woody Guthrie's heart responded, "Is this the best way we can..."

Years later his son Arlo Guthrie and EmmyLou Harris make a video of the song...

Arlo Guthrie and Emmylou Harrris - Deportees

[via FoxyTunes / Nanci Griffith]

shower curtain art, mosaic and mandala

It goes like this...

You get a phone call from your friend who lives down the street.

You tell your wife the woman from Texas is on her way.

She arrives with two things in hand--- her most highly favored shower curtain, and her medicine cabinet door.

She tells mosaic woman to match the colors.

You cut strips of glass that match the colors. You make a pile of the glass in case more strips are needed.

The mosaic....






You draw a mandala and need to pick colors. You see the pile of glass you had made. You could put it away, or you can use it as inspiration. The shower curtain Mandala comes to life...




side notes...

to see our ETSY shop click here.

another glorious trip to Willow Creek Orchards... they still have peppers and tomatoes from PA! we also got Chinese cabbage, radishes, cheddar cheese, milk from pasture fed cows, maple cream, sweet onions, potatoes....

I am going to make bread tomorrow. I've been itching. Mosaic Woman has been craving.

I am going to see The Turtle Island String Quartet tonight play some standards favored and written by John Coltrane. Here is story on NPR about the Love Supreme with links to their music.

Searching for a cassette by The Cure, I found another memory from 1986: a sweet voice that led me down the road of folk music...

The album ends with a song that is sad yet hopeful...

Nanci Griffith: The Wing and The Wheel

The wing and the wheel... they carry things away
Whether it's me that does the leavin' or the love that flies away
The moon outside my window looks so lonely tonight
Oh, there's a chunk out of it's middle... big enough for an old fool to hide

Where are all the dreamers... that I used know?
We used to linger beneath street lamps in the halos and the smoke
The wing and the wheel... came to carry them away
Now they all live out in the suburbs where their dreams
Are in their children at play

There's a pale sky in the east... all the stars are in the west
Oh, here's to all the dreamers... may our open hearts find rest
The wing and the wheel are gonna carry us along
And we'll have memories for company... long after the songs are gone

unsettled

That's how it feels right now. and I don't know how to write about it. So I turn to Julie Miller.

Her CD, Blue Pony, is one of my favorites and I had not listened to it for a couple years. I hoped something would resonate.

I have been openly telling my life story to a new friend, who I wish lived closer. She came to my school on three occasions to train us teachers this past year. After the second visit I e-mailed her and said I thought we would be friends if she lived closer. She agreed, but I did not keep the messages flowing. After the third visit, I e-mailed her to say that I would have made an attempt to be social with her, except for the fact that I had signed up for a silent retreat which started two hours after the training. She e-mailed with questions about the retreat and I did not stop the flow.

The scientist inside wants to know why I can see a person and sense a new friend, or in the case of Mosaic Woman, a person to intimately share a life. But the part of me which is glad the world is still filled with mysteries, is feeling joy when yet another e-mail arrives from my new friend and is glad to leave it there as a mystery. I fall into a trust as I tell her how I have arrived here in 2008 over a series of e-mails, and I am blessed as her story unfolds in the messages sent back to me, and I listen to Julie Miller sing these words:

By Way Of Sorrow (Julie Miller)

You've been taken by the wind
You have known the kiss of sorrow
Doors that would not take you in
Outcast and a stranger

You have come by way of sorrow
You have come by way of tears
But you'll reach your destiny
Meant to find you all these years
Meant to find you all these years

You have drunk a bitter wine
With none to be your comfort
You who once were left behind
Will be welcome at love's table

You have come by way of sorrow
You have come by way of tears
But you'll reach your destiny
Meant to find you all these years
Meant to find you all these years

All the nights that joy has slept
Will awake to days of laughter
Gone the tears that you have wept
You'll dance in freedom ever after

You have come by way of sorrow
You've come over a stoney ground
But you'll reach your destiny
Meant to find you all these years
Meant to find you all these years

Tinkie Tunes(ASCAP)/Martha Road(ASCAP)

Peace

translucent soul

so, I am feeling a bit disappointed for I could not find something on the web. isn't everything there.

As we got set to drive to Lancaster to visit family, I grab 5 Cd's from our pre-jazz days. But the song that most touched me on the first CD is not to be found as video. now for the exercise...

So, I am to be joyful. Seek joy. spread joy. easier said than done. I glance to my left and see JOY hanging in the window.

The disciples were filled with doubt at first. They were not ready for the joy of the resurrection.

But before I got there Ignatius wanted me to imagine a conversation between the risen and his mom. I see a son coming for some answers and he needs some family history. "Hey Mom. What the .... is going on here?" OK, so I gave him a bit of my angry young man attitude.

Mary realizes that the angel had spread the news correctly back in the day. She is so filled with joy and grace as any doubts brought on by death fleeing her... "Well son, there was this angel........" What a conversation ensued. Family secrets told.

Well, now it seems like the song I originally wanted to blog about fits the blog.... an angel with a message comes to Manhattan.

The song I couldn't find, Translucent Soul, is how Ellis Paul describes his best friend. That is where Jesus goes next. as does Patty Larkin on the CD we finished with on that road trip. OK, so that isn't on the web either....

but look what I found... another song about the person he most craved to see, by another favored performer, Richard Shindell.

Last week, Mosaic woman asked how I was dealing with something. I said it was good to have a friend who listens when I talk. a friend I trust. the next day I thanked her for the gift of friendship.