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Music’s Power to Change
The past three weeks I have been hard at work practicing Mozart’s Requiem. Last week, I had the pleasure of performing this Requiem with a choir of 20 choristers and a small orchestra of 9 instrumentalists. During the rehearsals we were still learning this difficult piece. The night of the performance everything changed. The rhythm became faster and it was musically sound and passionate. Of course a lot has to do with practice, but most of all we had the audience. We came alive and our voices and instruments were inspired by Mozart’s marvelous work. Music has the power to transform us and affect our minds. When I sing I forget…
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Forever in the Stream
In the Fall my appetite leads me away from prose and seeks out verse. As the earth turns brown and the trees turn red and gold, it feels natural to reach for the kaleidoscopic lens of poetry. The poets Mary Oliver and T.S. Eliot are personal favorites – her love of nature and living and the cadences of Eliot’s Four Quartets, “Murder in the Cathedral” and other poems. I feel the rhythms of the poor people of Canterbury as they mirror persons left behind in our world. What can I do to better understand Eliot’s powerful cycle of life (renewal) and death? How can I walk in the woods seeing…
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Times they are a Changin
The 2019 Nobel Prize awards are being announced. I remember when Bob Dylan won his Nobel Prize three years ago. In 2016, Dylan received a Nobel Prize in Literature for “having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.” At the time, Harvard offered a seminar called “Bob Dylan,” and the professor and students there celebrated with cup cakes. Many critics opposed giving this award to a songwriter. But the beloved Joyce Carol Oates tweeted: “Inspired &; original choice…. His haunting music &; lyrics have always seemed, in the deepest sense, literary.” Early on, the young Joan Baez recognized Dylan’s ear and talent for poetry and writing. They…
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Terrible Beauty
“Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.” — Frederick Buechner, Beyond Words: Daily Readings in the ABC’s of Faith I am a lover of nature and animals. I don’t use binoculars, but I am always on the lookout for animals on the move. Many weekends I live in Dutchess County, which is full of animals of all kinds. One of the most common – and least beloved – is the deer. I happen to love deer. I grew up in Western Pennsylvania which has a lot of deer, but in my youth they were still quite hidden and tucked away in the higher parts…
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A Solitary Orange Tree
Today I heard a 9 year old child named Colin who has brain cancer say: “If you want to be a fireman, then be a fireman.” Here is a young boy facing his own immortality speaking with words of wisdom and courage. Too often it takes us years to do what we have always wished and dreamed of. It didn’t take him long to follow his heart’s desire. Recently they declared him a policeman in Ithaca and his spirit soared. Unless a miracle happens, he will not be able to carry out his duties for very long, but I believe he has already fulfilled more than most of us. He has…
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The Shape of Grief
I did not know the shape of grief until my healthy father and my vigorous mother died a few short months of each other. I find myself sifting through the old coins my father left me and I am not counting the value of money, but I am feeling each one as though I was he. There are the coins from Reykjavik, Iceland where he was a sailor in WW II in 1942. And all the silver coins feel so thin in my fingers – so worn and so wonderful. And my mother – there is her light green night shirt from Orvis that I gave her to wear after she returned from…
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Sailing Close to the Wind
When I lived in Annapolis in the 80’s, my husband taught at the U.S. Naval Academy. I was lucky enough to be allowed to sail in their fantastic sailing program. This is where the plebes get their feel for water – its power as well as its splendor. There are valuable lessons to be learned on sailing vessels. One afternoon I watched several plebes sail an 18 ft. boat hard into the slip with the mainsail still flying. They had ignored our cries to drop the mainsail and they tried to stop the boat with their legs. This proved a painful lesson for them. Many afternoons I would climb on…
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The Silent Battle
I used to spend some of my day feeding young cats in Fort Greene Park near my old apartment.Taking care of them was one of my daily rituals. I met Christopher doing this. He is a young man who lives in a wheel chair. Half of his leg is gone. He works out with his trainer near where I fed my cats. He has a big smile and a fierce determination. Now when I look at him, I see the man and not the chair. One day we were talking about what we did. He told me he had a blog. Later that night I read his story. When he…
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A New Purpose
When I first began writing this blog, I was in the midst of grief. Both of my parents had died a few months apart and it had naturally thrown me into a difficult period of mourning and missing their physical presence in my life. Eventually I was able to enjoy the memory of their wonderful teaching and embrace the gift of having such good and loving parents who provided for all of us in a tender and generous way. Now in this move I am experiencing loss. It is different than grief, but perhaps it is a cousin of grief. It does not compare to the loss experienced by someone…
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Post MidLife
I often find myself in the midst of discussions about work, relationships, moving, change, and midlife. I have to stop for a second. Are we really still in midlife or did we pass through it while working? Are we now post-midlife? NPR had an essay on surviving midlife. It was called: “8 Ways You Can Survive – and Thrive In – Midlife.” It was written by Barbara Bradley Hagerty, a former NPR writer and author of Life Reimagined.* I got some clues from this superb essay and podcast. 1.) Be a a rookie at something. Why? Try new things and if you fail that’s okay. You can be a “rookie”…
