Singing Bowl 2

July 13, 2016 / a samaritan woman / 1 Comment

I recently wrote about how a singing bowl came into my life. I’d wanted one for a while, but didn’t really know where to find one, and wanted to choose one “hands on.” I found the bowl (or rather, it found me) at the Summer NAMM show in Nashville in June.

This lovely purple Ovation guitar also found me at NAMM, but unlike the bowl, didn’t follow me home. whew.

The day I found the bowl was a Friday, and the next afternoon we were scheduled to play a concert featuring selections from Women at the Well at Grace Episcopal Church in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. We left the NAMM show at 6, ate supper and decided to do a quick practice. We use backing tracks for some songs and had recently decided to switch to using an iPad for tracks, and wanted to make sure everything went smoothly as technology has a tendency to invite gremlins and other “ghosts in the machine.”

One song (without tracks) is titled Our Father, Our Mother. It has sparse instrumentation, is a paraphrase of the Lord’s Prayer, and is…well, a chant. When I wrote it years ago, it came to me easily and suddenly. I love the song, and love singing it.

We moved quickly through the set, reviewing all songs with tracks first to ensure that the iPad would behave. So far, so good.

Then, I had an idea.

“Hold on a minute,” I told Bubba, and walked to where the bowl was sitting. I had just bought it that afternoon, and had been enjoying its tone in a more quiet environment. I picked up the bowl, struck it, and began singing.

Father, Mother, God, Creator, hallowed be thy name. Upon earth; thy will in heaven, be all things the same….

Bubba joined in on the keyboard. The bowl was the right pitch for the song. No wonder this bowl and I got along so well; I was tuned to it. I asked Bubba to keep the keys sparse, and we continued the song. To my delight, it worked…wow, did it work. What synchronicity!

Grace Episcopal Church, Hopkinsville, KY

Grace Episcopal Church in Hopkinsville, KY

The next day, we packed up the bowl along with our instruments and headed to Kentucky. It was an easy drive, a beautiful day, and a lovely church. Rev. Alice Nichols met us, and made us feel most welcome. I love older churches. Not only are they beautiful, one can feel the echos of generations of worship deep in the structure itself. We set up, and the sound of this handmade, prayer-filled bowl filled the church.

Setting up.

Even the iPad was still behaving! We relaxed and took in the sights of this lovely church, which included panels honoring church members who had fought in the First and Second World Wars. The needlepoint cushions at the communion rail were filled with rich symbolism, and the baptismal font told stories of generations of new lives.

Some of the needlepoint at Grace Church

The evening began with a Eucharist, and then it was time for the concert.

That was the moment that the iPad officially became an iPest. Or perhaps an iPain. The volume control, which had behaved perfectly during all run-throughs and tests, vanished. Well, not vanished, exactly, but the dreaded greyed out. It was visible, but infuriatingly nonfunctional.

It’s times like this that try the mettle of any musician. Happily, the congregation could all relate to techno-glitches, and when it comes to technology, we have triple-redundant backup readily available…so we switched to the CD player. (I figured that the iPad would find its wayward volume control by the end of the concert.)

In the meantime, it was the bowl’s debut. One strike, one tone, and I began to sing. I could feel the vibrations of bowl and voice. Later comments indicated that others felt the richness of the bowl in that song as well.

At the end of the concert, sure enough – the iPain worked. We all shared a good laugh, and then a lovely reception with fellowship and good food.

Grace has a beautiful labyrinth across from the church. Alice and I had originally discussed the idea of performing at the labyrinth, but it had been too hot (and humid) that day. After packing up instruments and gear, we took some time to walk over and enjoy it. I took a quick walk, breathing in the aftereffects of the concert’s energy.

Joshua at the labyrinth

The following day, we packed up and headed south, with a stop at Moony’s Market in Monteagle, Tennessee. We’d found this delightful health food store / gift and antique and herb / yarn shop on our April visit and performance in nearby Sewanee. Oh, the yarn! Oh, the food! I purchased a small African handbasket – which I later realized was the perfect size for transporting the bowl. More synchronicity, or at least my subconscious mind at work.

Ready to travel! And why not? Bowl and basket both have come halfway around the world already!

In addition to bringing me daily beauty and mindfulness, I think this bowl and I are meant to go places and make music together.

Filling in the Gaps

December 14, 2015December 18, 2015 / a samaritan woman / Leave a comment

Our church has a small but dedicated choir, but we often compliments such as “it sounds like the loft is FULL! It sounds like there’s a lot more people singing up there than there is!” It’s a lovely comment, especially as we’re often more of a quartet than a choir.

My friend (and fellow chorister) Margaret recently observed: “I think that God comes in and fills in the empty spaces for us.”

hymnals

We do sing with intention. We want to give our best to God, to our church family, and to Leon (our choir director who brings out the best in us). I think Margaret got it just right: God does fill in the spaces and magnifies our efforts. God can enlarge what we do if we allow it. Here’s an example from my own musical life:

On December 27, 2011, I lost my hearing in my left ear. Unable to find any other explanation for this sudden change (I’m meticulous about hearing protection when performing), my doctors figured it was the result of “a virus.” Over the next year I went through multiple tests, consultations, and listening to well-meaning folks telling me that it might just be wax in my ears, and why didn’t I just have surgery? I clung to hope of a spontaneous return of hearing (it might happen, my doctor said, we have to give it a year). I resisted the idea of a hearing aid for a while, and then began to look forward to the one year mark when I could begin the process of being fitted for a hearing aid.

That was not to be. The sensorineural hearing loss I have does not respond to a hearing aid. Welcome to life in monaural. I cried a river.

I’ve had to adapt. In the case of Epiphany’s choir, small is a blessing for me. I’m able to hear and enjoy the other parts without being distracted or confused. You can’t sing harmony without listening to what else is going on. While that’s not a problem with two working ears, it’s very tricky with only one. Unison singing can be challenging if we’re not all completely unison. My fellow choir members have become used to my moving around to find just the right spot to stand in the loft so that I can hear. At least solos are easy.

Recording vocal parts requires adjustment, too. My music partner Joshua and I recently remixed and re-recorded some demos from our Women at the Well program and released a short CD. A main objective was to re-record vocals and add vocal harmonies on several of the tracks, and there’s where God filled in the blanks.

Adding the harmonies required overdubbing – me singing different lines over myself. You can’t do that without hearing everything, and hearing everything with only one ear means the brain is processing some signals differently. I can’t exactly describe it, but I do know I had to completely re-learn how to manage this.

Since the only budget for this project was earmarked for CD replication, we were recording at Joshua’s house. The bathroom was the vocal booth. Contrary to what you may think, that’s not because of “bathroom acoustics” but rather because it was the quietest room in the house. Since a vocal booth needs to be “dead,” we had a lot of blankets and towels draped everywhere!

It’s a pretty funny picture. I was standing in a tiny bathroom, blankets draped over the shower curtain rod and piled in the bathtub, a big stuffed teddy bear crammed into the closet-without-a-door, scribbled notation taped to the wall in front of me so I’d remember exactly what to sing (what line am I singing now?) and I’m holding one headphone a couple of inches away from my ear so I can hear where to come in – but not so much as to be confusing….In the middle of all of this, a daddy longlegs spider appeared in the corner to watch.

Our budget also doesn’t allow for autotune, so it had to be perfect.

When I heard the final product, I cried with joy and relief. I’d feared I’d never be able to do this again, yet there it was, beautiful harmonies and all.

One of the first people to hear the final product was our friend Danny, who plays keyboards and sings backup in a world-touring zydeco band. Danny knows of my hearing loss, and also understands what’s necessary in overdubbing harmony lines. How did you do that with just one ear? he asked. That’s a miracle.

God stepped in to fill in the blanks inside of my head and ears. A next-to-nothing budget, Joshua’s considerable production skills and a whole lot of Divine assistance gave us a CD we could be proud of, that we could offer to those who heard our Women at the Well program and wanted to revisit the music again and again.

God fills in the empty spaces wherever we allow God to do so. My hearing loss makes me realize that if I’m going to keep doing what I love, I need God to fill in those empty spaces.

This morning I was fixing my tea and thinking about Margaret’s comment, our “heavenly choir” and how God fills things out for us. My eyes fell on a mail order catalog that my husband had left open on the kitchen table. There was a teeshirt that simply said:

God greater than

God is greater than. Can I get an AMEN? God is greater than anything and will fill in the blank spaces when we allow it.

To learn more about the Women at the Well program, visit www.women-at-the-well.com. For information about the Living Water CD, visit www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbontherock The CD page has the latest recordings.

A Shawl for Jean

January 21, 2015 / a samaritan woman / Leave a comment

My fingers move quickly, a bright red aluminum crochet hook dancing around and over and up and through soft green yarn. I think of Jean, whom I do not know, but is sister to a friend and who has lost her second child. My friend told us the story this evening at our prayer shawl gathering; her sister had lost her daughter (aged 54) several years ago and now has lost her son as well. None of us could possibly imagine her pain, her grief.

It must be agony that only Divine Love can heal, and even that takes time. I don’t even pause to wonder; I pull out the soft green yarn I bought a few weeks ago. I didn’t know who that shawl would be for when I bought the yarn, I just knew that it would be for someone in need of prayer. Tonight, I know it’s for Jean, and I start to stitch.

I watch the hook, feel the yarn. This is a particularly soft yarn, a single ply acrylic with long, subtle color changes in hues of green with occasional gold tones. My hook slides around it like butter, and I am soothed by the simple act of yarn over, pull through. I think of Jean, praying for her, hoping to send just a little of this simple serenity her way.

I think of my own two children, both young adults. They make mistakes, and are trying to navigate the world in that collegiate neither-land between “home” and “on their own.” Sometimes they frustrate me, and sometimes they surprise me with spurts of maturity. I give thanks that they are both healthy, vibrant, good and kind, realizing the rest of responsible adulthood will come with time. I realize that door has shut for Jean’s children, and I pray for her comfort. I feel assured that she will have it; I also know it will not be without great pain.

My house is quiet, and it is nighttime, so I chant the 23rd Psalm very softly, the sound soothing much as the yarn. I release these simple acts and prayers into the Divine, back to where they came from. I feel a soft ripple in the Universe, and imagine wings as angelic helpers tend to Jean here on earth.