feels like a new music is a'bornin'

The time has come for me to start thinking seriously about creating new music. Now that I am in my part-time gig - and loving it - it has become clear that my old ways of making music have run their course.  It was beautiful in its time, but to everything there is a season, n'est-ce pas? (Ecclesiastes 3)
  

This thought has been wafting through my heart for the past year and a half but I haven't tried to make anything happen. Too many conflicts to take the next step. But after visiting with my sisters again yesterday, and reflecting on how much death we have encountered together over the past five years, I found my heart calling me back to my first love. Listening to the "All Songs Considered" podcast re: the 150 greatest albums made by women was another catalyst. (Check it out here @ http://www.npr.org/2017/07/24/538387823/turning-the-tables-150-greatest-albums-made-by-women) To paraphrase Jean Vanier, this would be a "second calling," one that is more tender and less ego driven than before, more collaborative, easy-going and intuitive, too. "Life is too damn short to do otherwise" was the song that kept playing within as I sat by the lake with my precious sisters and their families.

So, as this stunning summer slowly winds down, I am starting to take the next steps in turning my dreams into deeds. (Hebrews 12) I want to play in support of a few other's music. I want to deepen the connection between the inner and the outward journey. I want to lovingly challenge the culture of cruelty that dominates so much of public discourse. And I want to celebrate the exuberance of music shared for the pure joy of creating and sharing it. For whatever time remains for me - and I know it is certainly fleeting - let Naomi Shihab Nye's poem, "Kindness" be my creed.

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and
purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend

And may sister Lisa Fischer be my muse as well.