Grateful List #4: Lots

It's Thanksgiving week.  This is the time of year that people think about those things in life for which they are thankful.

My friend, Janet Broderick, preached about gratitude on Sunday at St. Peter's in Morristown.  It was a beautiful sermon and one I needed to hear.  Here's one of the points she eloquently made:

"It's not happiness that makes us grateful; 

it's gratitude that makes us happy."

What a revelation that was to me.  I've always thought that it's the things I have (not just stuff, but experiences, people in my life, places) that made me happy and that, in turn, makes me grateful. For those things (again, not just the stuff).  But that's not really it at all and that explains why the moments of gratitude are separated ... like dots on a timeline.  Why the time between the moments of gratitude are often unsatisfying.  

It's really the other way around.  Starting with a grateful heart, every minute, allows happiness to flood inside.  Starting from that place of gratitude, enables one to fully realize all the possibilities for joy that exist every day.  Starting from that place of gratitude unleashes the potential for unlimited ways to find happiness.

But gratitude is also a practice.  And those things we call a practice (living a life of gratitude, keeping healthy and fit, prayer or meditation, so many others), require practice.  We aren't good at them the minute we discover them.  We need to keep touching base with these things until they become second nature and are as deep-rooted in our lives as breathing.  Practice.

I needed that sermon on Sunday.  I've always been grateful for the things, people and places in my life. For my job, my fun, and all the rest.  But I've been miserable the last few months and now I know why ... I need to start from a position of gratefulness.  So let the practice begin.

Every day.

It's Thanksgiving Night ....

Today I'm grateful for

... my mom who makes the world's best turkey (for real)

... my children and all my family

... my friends here and there and my twitter family

... and Janet for her words last Sunday

My Own Calendar

We have all sorts of calendars in our lives.  Some run our lives forever.  Some are guides for a period of time.  Calendars help us keep track, mark seasons, remind us of anniversaries, measure our days.

There's the actual calendar year:  January 1 - December 31.  We begin the year with good intentions, resolutions and some looking back.  The calendar year contains birthdays, holidays, and deadlines (tax time, for example).

There's a sort of natural seasonal calendar.  For lots of people the new year starts with the promise of spring.  Bulbs bursting and new, warm sunny days.  The seasons follow one after the other with a predictable rhythm that's comforting and reassuring.

When you have children your life is governed by the school calendar.  Your new year's day is the first day of school.  The most anticipated holiday (for kids) is the last day of school.  Lots of other areas of life align with the school calendar ... sports teams, dance classes, scout meetings, piano lessons.  In most places, the school year is but 10 months long followed by a 2-month respite that is probably about 2 weeks too long for most parents.

In my life, the liturgical calendar drives much of how I perceive the year.  The liturgical calendar in mainstream Christian churches begins on the first day of Advent, typically shortly after Thanksgiving.  It is the Sunday nearest to St. Andrew's Day (November 1).  The seasons of the liturgical calendar have always made the most sense to me and, as an adult, especially while I was a church employee, I was "religious" about living my life according to the liturgical calendar.  I tried to keep a holy advent, the season of anticipation, not rushing headlong into Christmas (although I did decorate).  I kept Christmas for the whole of the Christmas season, leaving the decorations and lights up until Epiphany.  Lent, Easter, Pentecost ... these are the natural rhythms of my life.

I took a crazy class in college.  It was called The Psychology of Creativity.  I took it because I thought, since music was one of my majors, it would provide some sort of insight into ... I don't know what.  I'm not sure I learned anything--actually I'm pretty sure I learned nothing.  I think it was one of those classes where the students are all guinea pigs for a professor who's doing some sort of research.  We had to present a unique "creative" project at some point in the class.  I think we were supposed to come up with something totally original.  This was mine:  I made a calendar out of plasticine (that rubbery play dough stuff).  Even 'way back then I wished I could "shorten bad days and stretch out the good ones" at will.  My one and only friend in the class said my project was "lame."  (His was beer jello ... it was college.)

The last few years I've reverted to my plasticine calendar.  I'm thinking about this today, a Sunday.   The Sunday on which we celebrated the Feast of All Saints.  No where near to Advent, let alone Christmas.  And yet I am unapologetically watching Christmas movies on television all night long.  Dear, sweet, romantic Christmas movies--not the goofy Santa ones.  This is the sort of thing I would never have done in the past.   I'd have railed at the networks for rushing things, for interrupting the natural rhythm of liturgical propriety, for skipping the getting ready of Advent and going straight for the prize of Christmas.

But I've loosened up in middle age.  I suppose I should deny myself this small pleasure to be truly liturgically correct.  But I don't care to.  I don't mind that Christmas has oozed ahead of Thanksgiving and has stretched itself into a larger part of the seasons of my life.  I love lights and red plaid bows, and cheesy Christmas music and sacred Christmas music, the movies and books.  I still understand the meaning of the seasons.  But it couldn't be wrong to enjoy my favorite seasons beyond the dates that bind them into their points in time.  Could it? 

This is my "lame" project coming to life.

~~~~~

Two songs I listen to "out of season:"

Sara Bareilles, Love is Christmas
Colby Caillat & Gavin DeGraw, Baby It's Cold Outside

Tagged ~ My Top Ten Favorite Albums

Here's the thing ... I just could do a list and leave it at that.  But I can't.  And you know why too; I'll be the first to admit it:  I'm a little verbose.  Or some days, a lot verbose.

I checked into Facebook on my lunch today and saw that I was tagged to list my top ten favorite albums (Hmmm, thanks Alexis!).  No time then to consider it and I worked straight through dinner until my evening meetings which ran until after 10:00.  That meant I had all day to ponder the question in the back of my mind and what could have been a list turned into a post.

Here's another thing ... I love everyone's lists on Facebook:  the albums, the books, the movies, the vacation spots, etc.  But what I really want to know is why?  Why is that book so important to you?  How did that movie affect you so deeply it made an indelible impression?

So here's my list ... plus a little more.  Feel free to read just the large print (the list) and skip my inevitable ramblings ....

These are in order--chronological order.

Pete Seeger, Children's Concert at Town Hall, 1963.  I actually wrote about this record recently.  A classic, the recording had a profound influence on my childhood and provided a framework, I think, for how my brain became wired for certain kinds of music--music that makes a statement or tells a story of some sort.

The in-between years:  The Beatles, The Beach Boys, Bobby Sherman, The Osmond Brothers, David Cassidy

John Denver, Poems & Prayers and Promises, 1971.  When I looked up the date of this record on line, I was surprised it dates back to 1971.  I think I listened to John Denver during my high school years (a little after 1971).  There are so many songs on this LP that I can still sing and that folk-rock-pop thing has stayed with me forever.

Seals and Crofts, Summer Breeze, 1972.  Love songs. Lovingly written and lovingly performed.  

Rick Wakeman, The Six Wives of Henry the VIII, 1973.  I played this album until the grooves were gone.  This is the first solo project of Rick Wakeman, a composer and keyboardist who may be best known as a member of the band, Yes.  It's an all-instrumental collection (in the classical world we would have called it a suite) of his musical interpretations of the personalities of King Henry VIII's wives.  As a pianist, my most successful performances were always of pieces by one impressionistic composer or another.  This album is very impressionistic.

Barry Manilow, This One's For You, 1976.  We played it to death on my floor of the dorm at my college--an all-female dorm.  On any given day some one (or more) of us was breaking up or making up with some guy (who probably didn't deserve us) and this was one of our soundtracks.

Willie Nelson, Stardust, 1978.  Thus began my love of both country singers and old standards ... an unlikely combination but if you listen to this record, you'll get it.

The other college stuff:  Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen, Barbra Streisand, The Eagles

The '80's:  Lionel Richie, Cyndi Lauper, more Bruce, more Billy

Garth Brooks, No Fences, 1990.  What Garth says about the 8th track, Unanswered Prayers: "sometimes happiness isn't getting what you want ... it's wanting what you've got."

My lost years:  Stephen Curtis Chapman, Soundtracks from Sleepless in Seattle and You've Got Mail and not much else.

Gavin DeGraw ~ His Whole Catalog (2003-2014 but not discovered by me until 2012).  This is what I call a phenomenon in my life.  I can't explain it.  I just continue to ride it and go wherever it takes me.  And I can't pick just one record.  I play them all--all the time.

Michael Franti and Spearhead, All People, 2013.  I first heard of Michael in the context of a Gavin DeGraw concert and was immediately a fan of not just his music but his very ethos.  A force for good, a champion of justice, a poet ... when you hear him live, you fall under the spell and he makes you want to be a better person.

Sara Bareilles, The Blessed Unrest, 2013.  Every song reminds me of a prior chapter of my life or points me to the future I hope to have.

There are so many other recordings that belong on this list, chief among them the Horowitz live recording of the Rachmaninoff 3rd piano concerto with the New York Phiharmonic.  Unspeakably beautiful.  The Mozart and Durufle requiems belong somewhere here too.  And don't get me started on cast albums ... Les Mis, The Man of La Mancha, Chorus Line ...

I need to stop.  This was a fun exercise but I'm sure I'll never be tagged for one of these lists again.  Thanks for indulging me!

Memories and Memorials

It's September 11.  I live not too far from New York.  It goes without saying I suppose that this day is a sad one for all of us and maybe particularly for those who live or work in those areas of impact where the lingering scars in the landscape and proliferation of memorials from local structures to the larger nationally known monuments at the sites themselves are daily reminders from which we cannot run.

There are those empty spaces in the New York skyline that have yet to cease feeling like a punch in the gut when I get to that spot on the ride into the City and realize anew every time that the missing pieces are gone for good and how they came to be that way--what the significance of their absence means ... the monumental loss.  I'm continually surprised each time I see the new Freedom Tower in the skyline as though my brain can't accept it--how did that get there, it seems to wonder.

So like millions of others I've been remembering all day ... where I was and who I was with.  The collective television watching with the same horrific images repeating over and over.  The local reports of people who made it home, covered in ash, being hosed down at local train stations.  The local people who didn't make it home.  The gamut of emotions that raged over the course of the days that followed but mostly the extreme sadness and then the empty feeling after you just couldn't cry anymore.

After the news cycles eventually returned to normal and the events of September 11 weren't the sum total of the morning and evening broadcasts, those in the greater New York area still heard stories on a daily basis during the long recovery process.  We followed the debris as it made it's way out of the hole and went to stations for sorting.  Years later there were still stories almost daily about the aftermath of illnesses that befell first responders and those who worked in the pit, the reparations and donations.  The New York memorial services are still televised live on the 11th every year.  They still read the names of every person who perished.  If I am able to tune in, I still listen for the names I recognize.

I have other memories that really stand out:  twisted metal on trucks.  It happened more than once during the first years following the attacks.  I'd be on the highway going who-know-where and I'd pass or be passed by a flatbed truck carrying one or two or perhaps three lengths of twisted, rusted metal.  I didn't have to wonder what it was or where it was going.  It just took my breath away each time.  The beams, always lying tied to the trucks, appeared to me to be prostrate in a sort of twisted permanent agony as they traveled to the myriad communities that built memorials to honor the memories of those who died, the service of those who responded and the pain of the families left behind.

I see two such memorials fairly regularly and another almost daily.  There is one in a sports field complex in the town where I work.  Our county memorial is near a building where I sometimes have to attend meetings.  The one I see often--almost daily--sits along the road that I travel from where I live now to the town where I grew up about 10 miles away and where my mom still lives, where I go out to eat, shop, attend church, see doctors, spend much of my life.

Morris Plains, NJ

I don't pass one of these installations without remembering.  I saw landscapers tending to the Morris Plains memorial the other day--the day before the 11th.  I imagined that their chores, performed routinely elsewhere, took on something of the sacred in that small patch of green on that day.

I wonder about the children who play on the soccer fields in Boonton Township where I work.  Most of them weren't born when the planes hit the towers.  How do their parents explain the tall pieces of steel to them?  How can they ever understand?

Do we now even understand ourselves?  I'm pretty sure I don't.

But I'll never forget.

The Whole Shebang ~ Another Gavin DeGraw Weekend (A SummerFun Chapter)

I can't wait to visit this venue in Hyannis again.

 It was a rather epic weekend.  Road trip to Massachusetts, 3 concerts, visiting my daughter, meeting lots of friends.  Days later, it's all jumbled together in my head:  one whole shebang*.

The week had started out with some disappointing news ... my daughter (a restaurant manager) would have no time off while I was in Boston because it was restaurant week.  She would not be able to go to the concerts either.  She indulges me once a year.  And this year I'd purchased meet and greets for us both.  I had my heart set on her meeting Gavin DeGraw so she'd know first hand what I know--how genuine and lovely he is in person.  I called the hotel and cancelled three of my five nights and regrouped.  I knew Phyllis had tickets for some of the same shows and was so happy when she agreed to travel with me for the three days.  I was still hoping for a last minute reprieve for my daughter too ...

The drive was slow ... an hour to get over the George Washington Bridge alone.   Texting with my daughter as we went, she confirmed she was working at both restaurants until past midnight.  I told her we'd be drop in to The Marliave for a late lunch to see her and would miss her company at the concert.  And that is how Nicole came to join us at the Blue Hills Pavilion harborside in Boston.  Let no ticket go unused ...

Miles of Smiles~ Philadelphia, Connecticut, Gavin DeGraw (A SummerFun Chapter)

Friday morning.  Two days of roads trips.  More anticipation.  More exhilaration.  The #SummerFun14 tour is hanging around the East Coast for a couple of weeks.

Tonight's show is in Philadelphia.  I can't think when the last time I visited Philly was.  It may have been a Girl Scout trip with my first troop--so maybe twelve years ago.  And we're not really going to see much of the city--or really any at all.  A hotel room and a concert venue on the outskirts of town.  That's all.  But it is enough.

So I drove south to Phyllis's house and she got us the rest of the way to Philadelphia.  We were both still on that proverbial concert high from Wednesday's Central Park show and adventure in the Village that followed.  We checked in, relaxed for a minute and, because this was a seated show (therefore no need to wait in line), went in search of dinner.   Then on to the Mann Center to meet up with lots more friends, this time from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia, New York (our Buffalo area girls again!) and Maryland.  Most of us had front row tickets because the concert karma for this show was unprecedented.  Some had meet and greets tonight so I grabbed a beer and found my oh-so-close-to-the-stage seat, silently blessing my friend for inviting me on this trip.

That Other Day I Was Spontaneous ~ Joey DeGraw at The Bitter End

Sometimes, you can get a cab right away in New York.  Sometimes, you have to work for it.  After the concert at Central Park's SummerStage, it wasn't that easy.  But with the number of people pouring out of the Park at the same time, it was no wonder.  Eventually, the four of us piled into the cab that stopped and for some of us, it was the first time we'd sat down in about 7 hours.  When a New York City cab feels that comfortable, you know you're a little tired.

We'd just seen Andrew McMahon, Matt Nathanson and Gavin DeGraw play to a sold out audience on a beautiful summer evening. We'd waited in line since noon for the 6 PM concert to be assured of the front row.  We were riding that well-known post concert high and now were on our way to The Bitter End for more because no one wanted this night to be over just yet.  Joey DeGraw was holding another "open rehearsal" tonight and although it would be tight making our connections to buses and trains, we decided we had to go.  Phyllis and I had had a good time last week listening to Joey and I wasn't sure when I'd have this chance again.