The Green Wave

July 11, 2010

Thank you, Arthur.

Filed under: People, Spirit — kate @ 12:58 pm

You know, I need mermaids in the world.

I need talking trees.  I need foxes that transform at dusk.  I need enchanted apples.

Though he is wicked, I need Blue Beard.

I require the 13th fairy, meddlesome as she is.

I cannot do without the white deer that flashes through the darkening trees.

Selkies and sea-witches are a necessity.

The moon who recognizes me as a sister and a friend?  Absolutely essential.

And I need company in these requirements, and help seeing my world in its most beloved shapes.

This week, I’ve been reading Amanda Adam’s lovely book, The Mermaid’s Tale.  She’s a wonderful writer and she’s done all of us mermaid-lovers a great service by including reproductions of some of the most splendid fairy-tale art ever created.  There we find Arthur Rackham’s beguiling mermaid, sitting atop what looks like a huge carp while the blue-grey sea boils around her and meteors blaze down behind her.  She is a dangerous beauty, stirring up the storm in her own heart and by extension putting sailors into peril.

I stared at that picture for such a long time, just as I once stared at the sea-witch in my childhood copy of Hans Christian Anderson’s tales.

The longer I looked, the more I thought, “Thank you, Arthur.”  I felt increasingly grateful that Arthur Rackham bothered to portray what other people would deem so much pish-posh but which I myself find essential.  And the same goes for Edmund Dulac, William Morris, Kay Nielsen, Aubrey Beardsley…  All of these artists looked away from the smokestacks and the scandals, from the drab and the mundane.  They followed their own tastes and visions and loves, and they gave us a world that glows with enchantment, with promise, and yes, with beautiful peril.

The real world.

Yes, friends.  This beauty IS the real world – or a part of it that awaits our gaze.  Yes, smokestacks and drab scenes are part of the world, but while some people insist – yes, insist as though their lives depended on it – that this is the ONLY world, I cannot agree.  There is ugliness and cruelty, but always close by, there is beauty and kindness.

We make the world with our thoughts and especially with our habits of thought.  This week, looking at fairytale art, I felt grateful that Rackham and Dulac and their fellow artists used their thoughts to create a world of singing queens and trooping fairies, of banners flying over castles under twilit skies.

And I realized, almost with a start, that I am doing the same thing.  I am giving voice and space to the real world as I see it when I make a poem or song, when I write my novel or even when I give a lecture and share my loves and enthusiasms, my particular way of making meaning.  As much as I need Arthur and all of his visions, it struck me that someone in this world might require me and my visions.  Just thinking such a thought is like drinking from the Well at the End of the World, feeling all of my strength and courage return.

And friend, that goes for you, too, and for everyone we know.  It’s our world while we live in it.  We are the ones who can stir up the seas and endow every star with a freight of wishes.  We are the ones who can sing, talk, write, meditate on, engage with, summon, enlarge:  beauty, love, truth, honesty, honor, and possibility.

We are making this world, so let’s make it everything we love best.

To enchantment!

June 13, 2010

That Look

Filed under: Irish, Music, People, Spirit — kate @ 1:01 pm

Yesterday I played four mini-concerts of songs & stories for kids at the Worcester Irish Music Festival.  Despite the rain, there were still spirited crowds splashing through the puddles, gathering under the tents, and bellying up to the bars.  Inside the hall, the kids were wild and lovable, ready for stories and dancing.  I gave them a bit of both, telling some of my favorite tales and then, when a few kids could not contain the urge to run, just playing a jig on the whistle and watching with delight as they ran round and round in a circle on the dance-floor.

I love encouraging everyone to sing and so taught a fair number of chorus songs.  One of them was “Soldier, Soldier” – a great song in which the young maid asks the young man to marry her but he protests because he lacks the right clothes for a wedding.  The kids yell out what they think he needs – usually things like “a hat!” or “socks!” but yesterday that included “a visor” (by one little boy wearing, yes, a green visor which he deemed essential equipment) and the crowd favorite:  “Boxers!”

One little girl, Grace, participated in this song-game with a special intensity that I recognized right away.  She watched me like a hawk, she clapped along, she quickly learned the words – ALL of them, too, and not just the choruses – and when I asked her to sing, she jumped in feet-first with a blend of passion and enthusiasm that inflamed my heart with a protective tenderness.  As the Irish say, Aithníonn ciaróg ciaróg eile, “One beetle recognizes another,” and I recognized her:  Singer.

I asked Katie O’Neill, a splendid singer and one of the festival organizers, if she’d noticed Grace.  “Oh, yes,” she said.  “She’s hooked.”

Later, I met her parents and told them what we’d noticed.  They were delighted and proud and not too surprised, which is wonderful.  They really see her, thank heavens, and I bet they’ll give her every chance to do what she loves.

I don’t have children, a choice I’ve thought and re-thought hundreds of times.  Sometimes this choice seems to leave me out of life’s largest motions and movements, its greatest dramas and joys and sorrows.  Sometimes I accuse myself of terrible things because of this – of laziness or cowardice, to name just two things (though I should say that I did try for a time; the trouble is, you can always try harder, take more extreme measures, or adopt, and in the end, I decided against those things).  Other times I feel proud to have stayed true to myself despite the huge weight of general expectations, the subtle and not-so-subtle pressure by well-meaning people, their questioning and bewilderment.

But when I see a girl like Grace taking wing, or any young singer, poet, writer, or creator, I feel that I do have a place in the greater Family.  My job is recognizing “that look” and helping a little to inflame those passions, that self-trust, that questing, beautiful spirit.

In Committed, Liz Gilbert gives childless women a brilliant and self-respecting name, “The Auntie Brigade.”  The Aunties of the world provide those extras that can make a difference – the extra attention, books, time, treats, and love that help young people (and everyone, for that matter!) to thrive.  I love that, and I’d like to go one better and remove the gender filter because this idea pertains to childless men, too (even though they don’t bear the same stigma we do).  After all, the great Merlin didn’t have a son, but he taught Arthur everything he knew about magic.

We seasoned creators are the same, I think.  When we look at a crowd and see the one face that is enraptured, something very essential in us wants to foster that spark.  When we do, even for a moment, even just by recognizing “that look,” we foster it in ourselves all over again.  The living line of singer-to-singer, creator-to-creator is nourished, and we get to witness the great hope of another person coming into her magic.

I’m wishing you a magic life, Grace, and all the pleasure and power of your own magic.  Sing out, Singer!

May 30, 2010

Emily & Eternity

Filed under: Poetry, Spirit, Writing — kate @ 1:24 pm

You’re a busy creator and you spend your days making things (songs, stories, poems, essays…) that fill you with passionate excitement and purpose.  When you wake in the morning, your thoughts fly to your latest projects.  You are eager to get to the piano, the page, the harp, the stage, the laptop, the studio.  When you are away from your creating, when you are trapped in a meeting, when you are passing from one place to another, you can still find the energy of your making within you.  It burns and shimmers and warms you.  It’s the most delicious secret, the most powerful source of fuel, pride, happiness, and hope.

But there are questions sometimes, aren’t there?

In weary or fearful moments, you become susceptible to doubt.  Someone’s voice disturbs the peace in your mind and asks:

Who cares about all this creating?

How much did you earn from that song/story/poem/essay/performance?  Oh!  Only that?

What does all of this creating do for the world?  For you?  For anyone?

Who do you think you are?

And then it sneers:

No one will remember any of this when you die.

This week my dear friend Lauren and I made the pilgrimage out to Amherst to visit the Dickinson Homestead.  We were very fortunate to meet up with an eloquent and knowledgeable young tour-guide who gave us an hour of poetry, humor, inspiration, conjecture, and stories.  We were both deeply moved by her presentation and by Emily’s commitment to her own art.  Emily decided early on that she was a creator, that her greatest pleasure and purpose on earth was thinking and catching the “mint” of inspiration as it fell all around her.  She penned some 2000 poems in her lifetime, and one year, when she was 32, she wrote a poem almost every day.  Despite some discouragement and her own disinclination to market her work for publication, she never wavered in her creating.  She seems also to have had great faith in her own genius and to have seen herself as part of a large and vibrant world of creators.  I loved seeing portraits of two of her heroes, George Eliot and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, on her bedroom wall.

And yet, when she died, all of those poems – all of that fiercely and joyfully lived life – nearly vanished into a parlor fire when her relatives found themselves uncertain what to do with her legacy.  In the end, her sister Lavinia prevailed upon their brother’s lover, Mabel Loomis Todd, to edit and publish the poems (which was a herculean task, given all the alternatives Emily penned in the margins).  Emily died in 1886 but a complete edition of her work didn’t appear until 1955.  It really is nothing short of a miracle that we know about her, that her work survived, that caring people took an interest and recognized her gift.

Just considering how near we were to NOT knowing Emily, this genius creator, left us both dizzy and somewhat shaken.

And that necessarily raised the question of our own work.  Will any of it endure?  And leaving aside the issue of whether or not it belongs in the same category as Emily’s genius, how do we reconcile ourselves with the great possibility that all of this joyful, busy, intense creating might not survive in this life, much less the eternity that lies beyond it?

I have no easy or comforting answers to these questions.

Neither did Emily, I imagine.  Like us, she created amid immense question marks.  She never knew that she would one day be mentioned in the same breath with the writers she most admired.  She never knew that people all over the world would devour her words, argue over them, find solace in them, feel a kinship with her through them.  She didn’t know that those 2000 poems would live beyond her.

But she wrote them anyway.

And thank heavens that she did!  That’s the central point of all of this:  she DID write them, giving them a chance to survive and to reach us, to strengthen and delight us.  If we are all making this world together – and I truly believe we are – Emily did her part.  She made her peace with eternity by creating in the present.  And even if these poems had been consigned to the flames, she still would have done her part not just for us and for all creators but for herself.  Just that – choosing to spend a life making poems – is a powerful declaration of freedom that reverberates even now.  She spent her days making poems and wisely let eternity take care of itself.

Thank you, Emily.  You help me answer that snide voice:

I don’t have to know where any of this is leading.  I don’t have to be famous or earn high fees or win critical acclaim.  I don’t have to do anything.

But I choose to create today, and I choose to believe that it matters.

And now, back to the shadows with you, sneering one.  I’ve got a poem to write!

April 4, 2010

The Step Between Shore & Ship

Filed under: Pleasures, Spirit — kate @ 10:39 am

Yesterday I donned my faithful red wellies and set off down our street, pulling my kayak along behind me on its wheeled dolly like some huge rubber duckie on a string. It’s a quarter mile or so to my put-in place. Neighbors have gotten used to seeing me parading up the road with my woven hat, boat, and wellies – and also the huge smile on my face that says I’m about to surrender to one of life’s sweetest pleasures.

But before that blissful moment arrives there is necessarily some awkwardness and even, on occasion, some mess.

First I must slide the boat down over the tar slip and nudge it through the rocks which stick up more or less depending on how much rain or sun we’ve had. Once the kayak is afloat I decide how much of myself I’m willing to soak. Most times I can stand with one foot in the water while swinging the other one into the boat, taking a breath and then sitting down carefully with only a little rocking and spillage; then I hold the wet foot out of the boat at a comic angle and shake it a few times to dry it off a little before folding it into place.

Other days when the water is too high or I lose my footing, I more or less fall into the boat and go out on the lake with wet knees and a soaked lap.

I don’t mind, of course.

The joy of exploring, of encountering the sunlight so directly, of paddling right into the wind and feeling the boat respond to every single thing – all of this is worth any little awkwardness in the transition from being an earth-creature to being a water-creature.

Knowing the pleasures ahead makes it easier to be brave. But what about those times when we don’t know if what lies ahead will be worth it? What about the many journeys into the unknown we all make in this life?

Well, at least it helps to know that the changes may be awkward. And it helps me to know that they’re also funny sometimes. And finally, it helps to remember that being stuck with your leg in the air and your lap full of water means that you are in it, as the Irish say: you exist, you are alive, you are a vital piece of energy struggling into a new form. Funny that is, yes – and noble, too.

And so worth it.

March 7, 2010

Blessings of the Green Days

Filed under: Celebration, Irish, Music, Spirit — kate @ 12:47 pm

If we’re friends or if you look at my performance schedule (which probably means we ARE friends), you know that I’m about to enter my busiest time of the year.  I am a lucky duck to have all these chances to do what I love best and also to share music with so many musicians I love and admire.  I am blessed to be able to really celebrate this season of Irishness and to help other people feel included in it, blessed by it, uplifted by it.  Lucky, lucky girl!

You might be surprised to learn, though, that I tend to get nervous at the start of all this bounty.  I can engage in very crazy thinking on the cusp of such opportunity.  If I’m not careful I can talk myself into feeling that I’m not up to the task, that I don’t have enough fresh repertoire, that I’ll get sick with all the driving and racing around, that there isn’t enough time to do things well, that I’ll disappoint listeners or myself… I could go on longer, but I’d rather not.  These fears and nagging whispers are not what’s important.

What’s important is what I hope:

  • I hope that the music, stories, and poetry I share help people feel that the beauty of the world belongs to them.
  • I hope that my performances bring pleasure, respite, engagement, fun, and warmth to my audiences.
  • I hope for moments of wit and levity, for moments of sweetness and warmth, for moments of imagination and the opening-up of possibility.
  • I hope to feel, at the end of this little “tour,” that I have really celebrated the vitality of what I love:  connection, inspiration, courage, humor, imagination, warmth, and a certain jauntiness that looks right into the face of fear or heartache and says,

“Be that as it may:  here’s a little tune I invented for the occasion!”

February 28, 2010

Mistakes

Filed under: Music, Poetry, Spirit, Storytelling, Writing — kate @ 2:43 pm

I woke up thinking about mistakes because – well, you guessed it – I’ve made a spate of ‘em recently.  At a concert on Friday night, I bungled some harp parts.  I tripped over a wire.  I forgot an important (and funny) detail in a story I told.

Was the performance ruined?  No, it wasn’t.  And did I do do other things well?  Yes, I did.  But what woke me up this morning?  The memory of my mistakes.

I make mistakes all the time, but only some of them rankle.  In my Irish classes, I regularly forget a word or mess up a spelling.  As a writer, I occasionally revisit my essays or poetry and find something that is over-written or factually wrong.  In my performing life, I miss notes, chords, words, and even whole verses from time to time.  But many of these mistakes are easy to laugh off, excuse, or forget.

So why do some mistakes feel so important?  Why do some of them char into memory and leave that awful burned smell in the mind?

I recognize the big-deal variety by the kinds of things I hear in my head:

  • I should be past that by now.
  • I should have known that.
  • I can’t believe I did that in front of her.
  • Now they’ll think they wasted their money.
  • Now they’ll know I’m nothing special.

The killer mistakes – or the ones we allow to turn into killers – are rooted in shame and vulnerability.  We feel we should have known that fact, or that we should be beyond getting so rattled by a funky microphone, or that a really good musician doesn’t make such slips.  From there, it’s only a short step to:  “I know less than I should know.  That means I only appear to be an authority.  That means I’m a fraud.  That means that I’m deceptive.  That means that I’m worthless.”

Ouch.

The other kind of mistake is more like a sneeze than a deadly virus.  I recognize them when I hear these things in my head:

  • Well!  That was silly!
  • Gracious, I’m just tired tonight.
  • Oh, well, I didn’t hear her right is all.
  • Oh!  Now I understand!  They wanted this and not that.  That’s easily fixed.
  • No biggie.  Anyone could forget a thing like that.

These mistakes seem unattached to me somehow.  They are simply a part of the weather – external, natural, changing, neutral.  I don’t take them to heart.  Yes, they are often smaller (like missing a single letter in an Irish word, as opposed to forgetting a pivotal concept), but they don’t touch my self-respect or my notion of myself as competent and worthy of people’s trust.

So the big difference between the ranklers and the non-ranklers is my own idea of who I am and who I should be.  Like so many things, this is a story I tell and a style I choose for telling it.

I could tell a new story about a woman with a huge thirst for life who takes on millions of creative, artistic, and scholarly projects.  I could say that this thirst for life is more important than being right all the time.  This desire to use all the gifts and try out the wings and test the skills necessarily means there will be some mistakes and failures.  I could gently pry away the shadow of shame by respecting the attempt more consciously.  I could re-imagine mastery as a fluid process, rather than as a static destination.  I could decide that mistakes are the buds that flower into something new.

Even as I sometime writhe over my mess-ups, I’ve always believed it important to live a life marked as much by mistakes, attempts, and experiments as by success, achievement, and mastery.  Otherwise, one’s tenancy on Planet Earth is rather dull and uneventful and we never even try to use all the fantastic equipment we came with.  Living that way is like falling out of an airplane and refusing to pull the parachute ripcord because it might not work.  There are many things worse than failing.

Not failing, it turns out, is one of them.

And since I’m in no danger of that, I’m a success!

January 24, 2010

Piggybacking

Filed under: People, Poetry, Spirit, Writing — kate @ 2:34 pm

There are a million great reasons to roll up our sleeves and get cracking on our creative projects.  Here are just a few:

  • the excitement of being busy and engaged
  • the excitement of turning an idea into a creation we can share
  • the excitement of being artists who regularly make art (on this point, my dear friend Lauren Passarelli has written an an inspiring, helpful, and generous essay on her blog, Pass Words; don’t miss it!)
  • the excitement of seeing our body of work grow and change over time
  • the fantastic feeling of flow and power that comes with making things!  (doesn’t matter if it’s a book or a Zentangle:  just making something produces great satisfaction and pleasure in me)

Today I’d like to highlight another reason – one I think of as  Piggybacking.

By this I mean that sometimes, creating one thing greases the gears so powerfully that another creation follows close on the heels of the first.  And often that second creation comes with very little effort or struggle – a benediction after hours of fasting & praying.

I first noticed this when I was writing my dissertation and found that after a good work session, I was often so charged with a poem idea that the need to write it down felt as urgent as the need to drink when you’re thirsty (or visit the loo afterwards!).  At the time, I thought of the dissertation-writing as “throwing off sparks.”

I’ve noticed it, too, when I sit down to write poems for an “assignment” – usually an agreed-upon topic with Cheryl Perreault, my Friday morning poetry partner.  I might start in a cheerful but dutiful way and find that the first poem is fine but that the second poem shows up unbidden on the winds of real inspiration.  This phenomenon I think of as “stirring up the mud.”

(These little aphorisms sound like katas in some ancient Asian martial art:  “First, perform “stirring up mud” and then leap straight into “throwing off sparks.”  Then you are the Master!”)

This week I took on a new writing task:  fashioning an artist bio for my friend, marvelous singer-songwriter Nancy Beaudette.  I worked for hours on this project and found that every part of my brain was engaged and excited.  Getting the tone and shape right was a little like working at a puzzle, and as I sharpened and brightened the piece, I felt tremendous satisfaction.  When I finished, I could have turned cartwheels!

At the same time, I thought that was enough work for the day, and I decided to give up the evening to a well-earned rest.

But out of nowhere came the thought that I could write an introduction to my new book of poems if I’d just sit back down and try, that I had not only all the information I needed but also all the inspiration.  I didn’t think or worry or assent consciously but obeyed the impulse.

Less than an hour later there was the introduction – a completed project I’d been thinking about for 3 weeks!

If I hadn’t worked so hard and so pleasurably on Nancy’s bio, I don’t think that would have happened.  I would probably be still thinking about the introduction and assuming I needed to do research and thinking before digging into it.

Instead, I went to bed feeling like a busy, excited, productive writer!

Try it yourself with any of your projects.  Do some Piggyback Writing, some Piggyback Painting, some Piggyback Jewelry-Making, some Piggyback Cooking, some Piggyback Dancing, some Piggyback Photography!  Anything at all.  We’ve all heard Goethe’s brilliant words, but they bear repeating again and again and again and again:

“Whatever you do, or dream you can, begin it.

Boldness has genius and power and magic in it.”

(He probably came up with that bit of timeless insight after writing a business letter.  Early 19th century Piggybacking!)

January 14, 2010

Tracks

Filed under: People, Pleasures, Spirit — kate @ 2:15 pm

On Sunday, I rose early to go with my friends Kathleen and Craig to the Oxbow National Wildlife Refuge for an introduction to the basics of tracking.  We had the great good fortune to land in the group led by Rona Balco, an inspiring teacher and experienced outdoorswoman.  Let me put it this way:  while most of us tromp down the path, perhaps noticing the warmth of the sun on our shoulders and commenting on the odd birch tree, Rona reads the natural world the way an English professor reads Ulysses.  It is a huge sounding board of intricate signs and signals, replete with tales and tragedies, good characters and savages, hard luck and fortunate moonlight.  She is a native speaker of the woods – or at least she has become so fluent in nature that she passes as a native.

In her company I began to sense the possibilities for interpretation, the many clues to read and wonder over, all played out on the vast canvas of the snow.  Thank heaven for the snow!  For without it, a complete newbie like myself would have a much harder time even seeing the signs, much less understanding them.  Rona told us that in deducing the story behind the signs, you have to take everything into account:  time, habit, preference, ability, environment.  When the tracks end, as they do many times, you look a little ways off and realize that the creature has traveled for a time under the snow where it is warmer and safer.  (We do this, too, of course; the tracks of our lives disappear briefly when we go under the snow for safety and respite).

I came away with deeper respect for the wisdom of the creatures who really are the First Peoples of this planet:  for the beavers who teach their one-year-olds to build dams but who are willing to accept these youngsters back if things don’t work out in the wide world; for the coyotes who trot in tandem over the ice and work as a hunting team; for the deer that sniff out hunters and take themselves without further ado into safer territory, like people without drama leaving a mean party; for the trees themselves that pass along word of changes or dangers through chemical signals in the soil.  Through Rona’s eyes, I saw an intricate web singing with vitality, cleverness, generosity, bravery, instinct, adaptability, and wisdom.

Rona herself is leaving such beautiful tracks.  She is a consummate teacher – passionate, patient, eager to see us all learn and love what she loves – and she is also an advocate for better communities, for better stewardship of the earth through wiser use of resources, and for the Oxbow, which seems to be her dearest dear.  She is also a woodcarver, a mother and wife, and a wonderful friend to the people in her town.

If we followed her tracks we might see them disappear at the edge of the river and wonder where she went.  But we could use all she taught us to deduce the real story:  this is where she took to the wing.  What a life and gracious, what lovely tracks!

December 24, 2009

Scrooge & Me

Filed under: Celebration, Spirit, Writing — kate @ 5:44 pm

I’ve spent a batch of happy hours this week reading Charles Dickens’ wonderful book, A Christmas Carol. Like many people, I’ve seen the play a few times, and the story itself is ubiquitous almost to the point of losing its punch. We all know about Scrooge and the three ghosts, and how the miser is transformed into a warm and joyful human being by book’s end.

But I’d never read the book, and that, as Frost says, has made all the difference. For one thing, after a forced encounter with Dickens in high school, I’ve hardly paid him any notice, and now I see that the loss is entirely my own! What a writer he is!

He has a marvelous sense of humor and sometimes seems to nearly wink from the page as here when he describes dead Marley’s face: “it had a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar.” A bad lobster! Those words elicited from me a snort of pleasure!

Dickens’ imagination roams among many characters and places; he introduces us to thieves and miners, sailors and lighthousekeepers, country people and London merchants. He takes us far out to sea and underground, into the city slums and business quarter, into sitting rooms and counting houses. And most wonderfully, he tours the past, the present, and the future and carries us along for the ride.

And he’s not afraid of sentiment – OK, I can hear some of you thinking: I’ll say!. But overall, he strikes me as much like a great cook who aims for a perfect balance of flavors, and so some sentimentality is perfectly acceptable alongside the more piquant tastes he offers. It’s that bouqet garni that allows us all to come along with Scrooge on the journey he makes: without the blend of humor, sentiment, hope, and the acknowledgment of poverty and hardship, we would only observe Scrooge changing, rather than going along with him and changing ourselves.

That is what really struck me in reading A Christmas Carol. I am Scrooge. No, I am not as mean or miserly or cruel. But I have missed opportunities to show kindness, to be generous, to forebear offering an opinion and instead to uplift and encourage. When Scrooge sees the young Tiny Tim ailing in his chair by the fire and when the spirit tells him that this will likely be the little boy’s last Christmas, I felt such a pang of understanding. I, too, have seen suffering and turned away.

Sometimes it all seems too much to address in any meaningful way. Yes, we have limited resources of time and money, and the world cries out for help and healing. All the time. All the time.

But Dickens doesn’t bang us over the head with piety or tell us that we’ve got to give up everything we own in order to be spared from the fate the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come shows Scrooge will be his own if he continues as an old skinflint. Just being a champion laugher – like Scrooge’s nephew of whom Dickens writes, “If you should happen, by any unlikely chance, to know a man more blest in a laugh than Scrooge’s nephew, all I can say is, I should like to know him too. Introduce him to me, and I’ll cultivate his acquaintance.” – seems to elevate a person. If you are prepared to smile and celebrate, you are lifted up, too. And if you are blessed with extra wealth and if you should spare some of it to help the poor, you will not die alone and unloved for you have “sent your spirit abroad” as Marley tells Scrooge we are meant to do in this life.

After his encounter with the three ghosts and the visions they show him, Scrooge learns how to send his spirit abroad into the world in a useful way. He gives a large sum to charity. He gives a raise to his clerk, Bob Cratchit. He sends a turkey to the Cratchit family and takes an interest in Tiny Tim that ultimately prolongs the boy’s life. But he doesn’t save the whole city. He can’t fix all the problems in London.

But he can do his best. He does what he can, and he does it with a joyful heart. He knows there is no time to lose and he throws himself into the business of being joyful and generous with his whole heart.

Having read this magical book, I am inclined to do the same.

Merry Christmas, friends! God bless us every one!

December 6, 2009

If you can’t sing…

Filed under: Music, Poetry, Spirit — kate @ 12:43 pm

I’m fresh out of vocal cords today: no singing for me today at the benefit concert for my dear friend Kathleen’s uncle. Instead, I’ll be blowing the flute (and sipping throat coat between tunes), strumming the harp, and tickling the ivories.

Lately, some days I haven’t felt up to doing even those things, so I’ve stayed in bed, written poems.

And when I don’t feel up to writing a poem, I think about words.

And when words seem distant, I imagine beautiful things.

I can always imagine beautiful things. I am an expert day-dreamer. I am an artist of lovely inner visions.

If you can’t sing, why not fly?

Photograph by Kathleen Callahan

Photograph by Kathleen Callahan

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