Becca – Page 2 – Modern Creative Life

November 26, 2017

Sunday Salon: The Quest for Quiet

The month before Christmas is probably not the best time to go on a quest for quiet.

But, here I am, doing just that.

This idea of getting quiet first nudged its way into my mind as I watched Office Hours, a series of short videos author Dani Shapiro offered through Facebook during the past nine weeks. Shapiro talks about this concept of making space for your words – not just in time or place, although those are important, but in your mind. Doing that requires a willingness, but also an ability to get quiet.

My mind is always a very noisy place. It’s filled with the din of worry (my little dog doesn’t seem like herself, is she sick?), or responsibility (so much music to practice with concerts coming soon) or wonder (what will life be like when my husband retires next year?) When I startle myself awake at three o’clock in the morning, these are just a few of the thoughts that begin to clamor inside my head, spiraling like ticker tape on an endless loop, each one another bad investment of time and energy.

Because it’s become increasingly clear to me that in order to create anything meaningful, you must find a wellspring of quiet within. Just like my office in the corner of our upstairs bedroom, you must retreat to that “room of your own” psychically as well as physically, must find a way to escape what Shapiro calls the “internal chatter” about life in general that can be so all-consuming.

But here we at almost December. It may be The Most Wonderful Time of the Year, it surely is one of the noisiest times of the year. For me as a musician, the “noise” is all too real. I play handbells in a group that travels with a truckload of bells and their associated equipment, a sum total of more than two complete piano keyboards full of noisemakers in varying sizes and shapes. The decibel level is astounding when you stand in the midst of it, as I will do for hours and hours in the coming weeks. There have been times in rehearsal lately when the overtones become literally deafening, and for a split second I lose the beat, the sense of rhythm that keeps me on track with the music.

The noise of the outside world is just as great right now, isn’t it? The sense of urgency to have the best possible holiday, to have the most elaborate decorations, to attend the most fun gatherings, to get that oh-so-perfect present. Over the years I’ve mostly given myself a pass on all that hoopla. Doing five or six concerts in the month of December, each one consuming anywhere from six to ten hours of time (travel, set up, rehearsal, performance, tear down, travel), is more than enough excitement for me. By the end of a weekend of concertizing, all I long for is Quiet.

Where do I find it?

Yes, it’s here in my comfortable chair in the upstairs bedroom, with stacks of books and journals piled on the ottoman beside me, making space for the words of a favorite author or poet.

It’s sitting at the kitchen counter, drinking a cup of cinnamon tea, reading or staring out the window at birds flitting back and forth from the maple tree to the feeder and watching clouds skate across the blue sky.

Also on the yoga mat in my basement, moving my body through strengthening and stretching exercises, being aware of air moving in and out through my heart and lungs.

Quiet is in slowing down, taking time, noticing, focusing, breathing.

What I must remember in this quest for quiet is this: Quiet will not come to me unless I seek it out, unless I consciously make a place for it, a space for it. Unless I take myself upstairs to that chair, brew myself that cup of tea, unroll that mat on the basement floor. Why is that sometimes so hard? Why do I so often let the clutter and distractions – the Noise of life – become an overwhelming melange of sound until I’ve lost my sense of direction?

I wish it were as simple as stopping the sound of a ringing handbell, a technique called “damping.” Most often it’s done by placing the rim of the bell against your shoulder. Sometimes, with larger bells, you need to press them into the padded table. With very small bells, you can damp almost furtively by touching the bell with your thumb.

I suppose the varying degrees of noisiness in life require similar variations in technique to quiet them. The clamor of those middle of the night high-anxiety sessions will need to be pressed firmly down, while the lesser noise of daily living – Facebook! Email! Commercials! – can be controlled with a flick of an “off” switch.

“I’ve come to realize,” Shapiro says, “that the thing that stops me isn’t the puppy, the e-mail, the UPS truck, the school conference, the phone, the laundry, the to-do lists. It’s me that stops me.” She recalls an osteopathic physician from whom she once received treatment. “’Things get stuck,’ he said with a shrug. He gestured to the area where the neck meets the head. The place where the body ends and the mind begins. Things get stuck. It sounded so simple when he said it. It’s me, and that things that are stuck. Standing in my own way.”

Standing in my own way, making my own noise.

And so the quest for quiet begins but also ends where everything else does: with my own conscious effort and intention.

With stepping out of my own way and stepping into the quiet spaces around me.

May you find all the quiet you seek in these days ahead.

About the Author: Becca Rowan

Becca Rowan lives in Northville, Michigan with her husband and their two dogs. She is the author of Life in General, a book of personal and inspirational essays about the ways women navigate the passage into midlife. She is also a musician, and performs as a pianist and as a member of Classical Bells, a professional handbell ensemble. If she’s not writing or playing music you’ll likely find her out walking with the dogs or curled up on the couch reading with a cup of coffee (or glass of wine) close at hand. She loves to connect with readers at her blog, or on Facebook, Twitter, or Goodreads.

October 22, 2017

Sunday Salon: Passion Project

“Let the young soul look back upon its life and ask itself what until now have you truly loved, what has raised up your soul, what ruled it and at the same time made it happy? Line up these objects of reverence before you, and perhaps by what they are and their sequence, they will yield you a law, the fundamental law of your true self.” ~Friedrich Nietzsche, Philosopher

My five year old grandson is passionate about playing the piano. When he was three, I bought him a tiny toy piano for his birthday and it was in his playroom when he walked in that morning. He set eyes on it, said matter-of-factly, “Oh, the piano is here,” as if he had been waiting his entire life for it to arrive. He walked directly and purposefully to it, never taking his eyes off it, sat firmly on the bench, and began to play.

The next year I bought him a full size keyboard. He started taking group lessons and quickly graduated to private lessons. His mother reports that he plays the piano before going to school, and goes back to it as soon as he comes home. He has perfect pitch and is “composing” prolifically, excited about learning chord structure and theory.

He has identified a passion. In Nietzsche’s words, he has found a thing that raises his young soul, that rules him but also makes him happy. What a lucky boy.

Passion projects are immensely important in living a fulfilling life. As artists and creative people, most of us have identified at least one such project in our own lives, at least one “object of reverence” that adds meaning and purpose to our days. To find these passions at a young age is truly a gift because they provide a safe haven from a world that is often noisy and less than gentle. It’s a world that doesn’t always encourage passion pursuits in its youth, but instead goads them toward things that are most lucrative and prestigious.

I recently read a novel called The Admissions, by Meg Mitchell Moore. One of the characters is a high school senior whose entire purpose in life is to be admitted to Harvard. When her application is rejected, she tracks down the admissions officer and asks him why. She has not only completed but excelled at every class, every activity, every sport required – she had worked extraordinarily hard her entire young life, why was it not enough?

“Unfortunately, the extraordinary has become commonplace,” the admissions officer tells her. “We get many applications from students who are broadly accomplished, but who are not deep. We are looking for the extraordinary and the deep. Students who have found their one single, driving passion.”

Finding your passion is one of life’s most important tasks, and the earlier you acknowledge it the better. But just identifying it is not enough. You must dedicate yourself to it in a meaningful way, give it time and attention, allow it to “rule you” so you can fully explore it and reap its benefits. You must go “deep” into it at every level. And sometimes that means you must make hard choices about where you place your attention.

Author Madeleine L’Engle writes of her belief that a “gift is bestowed on every infant…a gift to which that child will be responsible: a gift of healing; a gift for growing green things; a gift for painting, for cooking, for cleaning; a gift for loving. One has to listen to a talent, and whether the talent is great or small makes no difference.”

Although I can’t say for sure, I predict my grandson will continue to dedicate himself to his passion for music. But even if his passion project changes over time, he has already become acquainted with the way it feels to care deeply about something, to dedicate time and effort to it, and to reap the pleasure and benefits it brings. That knowledge alone is worth celebrating.

How about you? How did you discover your passion project? How do you “listen” to it?

About the Author: Becca Rowan

becca_rowan_bio_may2016 Becca Rowan lives in Northville, Michigan with her husband and their dog, Molly. Her new book, Life Goes On, a collection of personal and inspirational essays about women’s experiences with family life, aging, and loss, is available at Amazon in print and on Kindle, as well as on her website. She is also a musician, and performs as a pianist and as a member of Classical Bells, a professional handbell ensemble. If she’s not writing or playing music you’ll likely find her out walking or curled up on the couch reading with a cup of coffee (or glass of wine) close at hand. She loves to connect with readers at her blog, or on Facebook, Twitter, or Goodreads.

September 24, 2017

Sunday Salon: The Shadow Side

My cousin called me the other day, checking in as she is often so thoughtful to do. “How are you doing?” she asked. Normally I answer those kinds of inquiries with a “fine,” or “good,” no matter what the real truth of the matter might be.

But that day, I decided to tell the truth.

“I’m just sitting here having a little cry about my dog,” I said. (Our beloved Shih Tzu, Magic, died in July.)

My cousin has a multitude of struggles in her life right now, struggles which were increased by the loss of one of her pair of sheepdogs a couple of months ago. “Aw, I know,” she said. “I still cry about my dog.”

We discussed the trauma associated with that loss, how horrible it seemed in so many ways. “And if one more person says something to me about that stupid Rainbow Bridge I’m gonna slap their face!” she said laughing.

“I agree,” I said, chuckling in spite of myself. “Sometimes I just don’t want to hear those happy little stories.”

A few minutes later we ended our conversation feeling immensely better for having admitted that sometimes we’re not filled with sunshine and light, even though we might pretend to be. We’ve become conditioned to hide our darker emotions – grief, fear, loneliness, anger – because society seems to frown upon them. We’re encouraged to “look on the bright side,” or “find the silver lining.” Our spiritual friends will advise us to “give it all to a higher power” because “it’s in their control.”

And what if we can’t? What if we live in the shadow of our grief, our loneliness, our fear for longer than society deems acceptable? The task of trying to “get over” those feelings becomes overwhelming of itself as we begin to feel inadequate in our life and perhaps our faith.

Later in the day I had lunch with a friend I hadn’t seen in a while. “Are you okay?” she asked at one point in the conversation. “Sometimes when I read things you write, it seems as if you’re sad.”

My first impulse was to deny it, to reply quickly, “Sad? No, I’m not sad.” Instead, I answered her truthfully like I had answered my cousin earlier in the day.

“Sometimes I AM sad,” I told her. “I think there is always an undercurrent of sadness within me. It’s been deeper lately because I’ve had some pretty significant losses, but there is always a shadow side to me, one that’s extremely sensitive to pain and injustice and loss and loneliness and fear. Maybe we all have that and some people are more in touch with it than others.”

In her book Learning to Walk in the Dark, Barbara Brown Taylor writes: “When I stopped trying to block my sadness and let it move me instead, it led me to a bridge with people on the other side. Every one of them knew sorrow. Some of them even knew how to bear it as an ordinary feature of being human instead of some avoidable curse.”

As artists perhaps we are more often aware of this ambiguity, this tendency to live in more than one emotion, to feel joy and sorrow, irritation and satisfaction, hope and despair, all at the same time. A character in Grace Paley’s short story “A Woman Young and Old,” says: “I’m artistic, and sometimes I hold two views at once.”

There is no profit to denying the shadow side – it exists in our spirit just as it does in the celestial sphere. Sadness and joy dwell simultaneously in us at all times, just as the moon remains in the sky during the 24-hour cycle even as the sun shines brilliantly above it. Honesty about my feelings of sadness yesterday provided a bridge between myself and my cousin – it gave us both an opportunity share feelings with someone else whose own shadow side was predominant, and freed us to move forward into the day feeling connected with another human being who understood. “Sadness does not sink a person,” Brown continues. “It is the energy a person spends trying to avoid sadness that does that.”

Last month the moon totally eclipsed the sun, in one of those rare celestial events that draws a great deal of scientific and popular attention. Nature has much to teach us about the inner workings of our emotional life. There are forces of darkness at work within each of us. We’d likely all be better served if we took time to become aware of them, and learn to live comfortably with them.

About the Author: Becca Rowan

Becca Rowan lives in Northville, Michigan with her husband and their dog, Molly. Her new book, Life Goes On, a book of personal and inspirational essays about women’s experiences with family life, aging, and loss, is available at Amazon in print and on Kindle, as well as on her website. She is also a musician, and performs as a pianist and as a member of Classical Bells, a professional handbell ensemble. If she’s not writing or playing music you’ll likely find her out walking or curled up on the couch reading with a cup of coffee (or glass of wine) close at hand. She loves to connect with readers at her blog, or on Facebook, Twitter, or Goodreads.

May 7, 2017

Sunday Salon: Sands of Time

“Lately I’ve been hearing a whispered admonition in my ear as I go about my business. Or perhaps admonition isn’t quite right. It seems more of a quiet, urgent instruction issued from a place in the deep anterior that holds within it everything I still need to know… Be careful, the voice says.” ~from Hourglass, by Dani Shapiro

Hourglass, Dani Shapiro’s elegant new memoir about her marriage, arrived in my mailbox early last week. The timing was perfect – my own wedding anniversary is tomorrow, and reading this book provoked much thought about the nature of long term relationships, the role of memory, and how our expectations change.

The book’s structure mirrors thought, so it feels as if we’re inside Shapiro’s head as her thoughts bounce back and forth between the present and various memories of her 17 year marriage to film-maker Michael Maren (whom she refers to only as M. throughout that book). She quotes from her own journals, the ones written on their honeymoon and in the early days of the marriage. She recalls events in their lives that illustrate the complexity and steadfastness of their relationship. She interjects pertinent quotes from writers and philosophers that illustrate her thinking, like this one from philosopher William James that stands alone in the middle of a page: “The constitutional disease from which I suffer is what the Germans call Zerrissenheit, or torn-to-pieces-hood. The days are broken in pure zig-zag and interruption.”

Looking back over the course of a long-term marriage – and mine spans 41 years tomorrow – it does seem marked by thousands of zig-zags and interruptions, any of which could be altered and the course of life changed forever. What if – we had moved from our old neighborhood a long time ago? What if we had had more children? What if one of us had taken a different job?

But it’s useless to dwell in the land of might-have-been. What concerns me at this stage of the game is the what-will-be. At 61, there isn’t nearly as much of it left as there once was. It’s important to handle it carefully and thoughtfully. Shapiro seems to be coming to that conclusion herself. That whispered admonition she writes about, the one that hold within it everything she needs to know. “Be careful,” it says.

“I’ve become convinced that our lives are shaped less by the mistakes we make than when we make them,” she writes. “There is less elasticity now. Less time to bounce back. And so I heed the urgent whisper and move with greater and greater deliberation. I hold my life with M. carefully in my hands like the faience pottery we brought back from our honeymoon long ago. We are delicate. We are beautiful. We are not new. We must be handled with care.”

After 41 years, a marriage is, in many ways, a sturdy old thing, more like a strong wood box than a delicate piece of pottery. But lately I too feel that whispered admonition. Be careful. I want to shield our time together from outside intrusion. I want to protect us from the stumbles and falls that would have quickly healed in our younger selves, but that could be disastrous at this stage of life. I want to hoard every moment of tenderness and passion against the time when one of us might be left alone.

Time. Memory. Like sand shifting through the narrow passage of an hourglass, piling at the bottom of the glass. I look back and see the kaleidoscope of years: the white wedding dress, the chapel filled with people, countless dinners cooked, holding hands on the sofa watching endless television programs, pushing a stroller and walking our dog, being separated with traveling for work and long days and nights alone. One parent dead, then two, then all four, gone. The loneliness of a child moved far away, the joy of a grandchild’s arms around your neck.

Four decades of marriage. A lot of sand in the depth of that hourglass.

Time to turn it over now, let the new memories begin.

About the Author: Becca Rowan

April 2, 2017

Sunday Salon: Seeking the Still, Quiet Voice

It’s a lovely, sunshiny morning here in southeast Michigan. I have about an hour to spend before the rest of the family rises, so I brew a cup of tea and park myself at my desk upstairs. I even open the window beside me because I want to hear the birds singing, although I need to wrap a soft scarf around my shoulders because the incoming breeze is still cold.

I was hoping to access a still, quiet voice inside me this morning, but, like so many mornings lately, the terrible din of the outside world has intruded and my still, quiet voice has been drowned out.

Like many people, I’m increasingly disturbed by the situation in the world. Our leaders often seem inhumane, lacking in decorum, diplomacy, and democracy. Their actions and ugly rhetoric are an endless piercing screech in my ears.

As someone who believes in the power of art and literature, I had hoped to use whatever small talents I have in those areas to inject small moments of beauty and clarity and thoughtfulness into the world around me.

As someone who believes in the power of compassion and empathy and kindness, I vowed to use those traits every day in my dealings with people on every scale, in hopes that such small acts of goodness could multiply and grow and help to heal this fractured world.

As someone who believes in the lessons of history, I had hoped that at least some of our leaders would recall the examples of the past, that they would find the courage of their convictions and rise up to resist those outlying forces of evil attempting to usurp our very fabric of government.

And yet those screeching voices silence my efforts and my hopes, make them feel ridiculously ineffectual and send them slamming into oblivion,

John Adams had a simple prescription for a civil nation: “To be good and to do good,” he advised. “It’s all we have to do.” Where is the “good” right now? What “good” are they trying to achieve? What examples do they set for future generations? For now we must teach our children to be not as they are, do not what they do.

More than ever it feels to me as if it’s up to The People – meaning You and Me – to do good ourselves, and insist upon it amongst those who purport to lead. Already, it feels like an endless uphill climb. And already, I am tired.

So more and more I seek the still, quiet voice inside me. I toss the newsmagazine in the nearest trash can, only half read. I switch the television channel from CNN to the latest episode of PBS Masterpiece. I swipe the screen of my iPad clear of Facebook, Twitter, The Washington Post. I try to silence the bitter noise from the outside world. I turn on Mozart piano concertos, Beethoven quintets, Scarlatti sonatas. Even Chopin nocturnes sometimes, although they often make me cry. I lose myself in novels, in memoirs, in poetry. In those voices, I’m able to forget for a while, able to quiet the anxious beating of my heart, quell the angry bile that rises in my throat.

Nancy Peacock, a writer I admire, recently wrote this on her Facebook page:

“I feel that I am pulling too much out of my gut without replenishing the well. So I am off to write and walk and visit the big rocks at the top of the hill. I am off to watch the turtles in the pond as they vie for basking space on the half-submerged log. I am off to cook some good food and feed my soul in the kitchen. I am off to do research and highlight paragraphs in yellow and read novels.”

Sometimes the traumas and troubles of the world threaten to drain the wells of our creativity. I have been struggling to find ways to restore that flow, to heal those wounds that threaten to destroy the enjoyment of my creative living. I hope to find it in the easy domestic routines of spring days like today, enjoying the sunshine and cool breeze blowing in the window, sipping tea and delving into the pages of a good novel, writing in my journal, copying out favorite passages from books and poetry.

From sitting with the still, quiet voice in my own heart.

About the Author: Becca Rowan

March 5, 2017

Sunday Salon: In Search of a Perfect Morning

More mornings than I’d like begin long before the crack of dawn, begin with the whimper of a elderly dog whose bladder won’t wait another moment; begin with the apnea induced snoring of the man I’ve slept beside for over 40 years; begin with my own anxious thoughts rolling ticker-tape fashion through my only half-lucid brain. I’ve heard that disrupted sleep is the curse of middle age, this tendency to waken at ever increasingly early hours, unable to return to sleep. And so I accept and endure, as I do with much of life.

Though not “perfect” by my standards, these early mornings and I have come to an understanding. Usually I ease myself out of bed and creep down the stairs to the kitchen, brew myself a cup of herbal tea, warm my lavender scented heating pad in the microwave, and settle back into bed with a pile of pillows. With the heating pad at my back, a light shawl around my shoulders, and the dog curled up at my side, I take up my book and read. Thus lulled from my anxious thoughts, warmed through and through with hot beverages and comforting heat wraps, many times I will drift off for another hour or two of sleep.

Sometimes I take these early morning wake up calls as a gift. I go full throttle into morning mode and make a short pot of coffee (four cups instead of the usual six), emptying the dishwasher as it brews. Once it’s done, back upstairs I go into my “office” and take up my journal or fire up the computer and write.

When I grouse about having woken early, my friend Christa reminds me that in days of yore it was customary to go to bed at dark – what else could one do before electric lights, television, or social media? – and then rise during the middle of the night. Creative people especially made remarkable use of those early hours, to write, paint, sculpt, practice the lute (or whatever medieval instrument they favored). Fresh from sleep, undisturbed by the tasks of the day, it was a time when creative energies surged and they made good use of it.

Though there is truth in that, and though I’ve made my peace with these early mornings, they are not my idea of “perfect.” No, the perfect morning is a leisurely wake up at 7 or 8, the stairway to the kitchen illuminated with sunlight. A perfect morning is two cups of coffee and hot buttered toast, carried upstairs on a tray. A perfect morning is me, sitting in the sunny alcove of our upstairs bedroom reading my book, while my husband sits in bed reading the morning news. A perfect morning is 30 minutes of journal writing, a walk around the neighborhood with the dogs, time at my desk with the windows open and birds singing.

Call them rituals or routines, the way we begin each day has a profound impact on the way we carry on with the hours that are left. My persistent early morning wake ups led to the need for new routines, new ways to respond to circumstances that weren’t ideal but were reality. So whether my day begins “perfectly” or not, it begins in a controlled and orderly fashion and in a way that’s meaningful to me.

That’s about as perfect as I can make things in this crazy mixed up world we live in.

About the Author: Becca Rowan

February 5, 2017

Sunday Salon: A Room of My Own

As I write these words, I’m sitting in a soft chair, upholstered in warm buttercream colored fabric, my legs tucked underneath me, my computer propped on the chair’s wide arm. There is a cup of coffee on the walnut cedar chest beside me, along with piles of books I’ve been reading lately – poetry books and memoir and Zen Buddhism philosophy. A summer breeze shushes through the open window, and it occasionally strikes a chord on the wind chimes, which hang from a strong tree branch outside.

There is a desk in this room, a wide topped writing desk, on which stand pictures of my son as a baby, another of my two dogs nestled side by side, and one more of my mother holding my grandson on her lap. A cup filled with pens, pencils, markers and reading glasses is close to hand. There are two heart shaped paperweights which I sometimes use for their original purpose (propping open the pages of a book) or occasionally as something to hold in my hands while I ponder my next move on the page. More books stand in the corner, books I refer to time and again when I need some inspiration to keep me moving – through writing and through life. I’m careful to keep nothing on this desk that doesn’t pertain to writing – no bills, no to-do lists. All those practical matters are taken care of in the kitchen at a small counter I’ve appropriated as a daily desktop.

This desk belongs to me and to my creative work. So does this room.

We just got home after spending six weeks in a rented vacation home in Florida, a lovely home with a heated pool, a water view, within a stone’s throw of lovely restaurants, shops, and sunsets on the beach. The weather was warm, the sun shone every day, and I began to see the appeal of leaving midwestern winter winds behind for an annual sojourn in the sunny south.

You wouldn’t think there was anything missing from this scenario, would you? And I feel selfish even suggesting there was. BUT, although there was plenty of time for musing, there was no room of my own, no quiet place to retreat where I could enter into the world of my own thoughts and imaginings.

It was novelist Virginia Woolf who first introduced the idea of a woman needing such a room. “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write…” she says. Of course, she referred not only to the need for space, but also to the need for time. For most women, writing time comes in fits and snatches – after coming home from a job, feeding children, preparing meals, helping with homework, walking the dog, collecting the laundry, watching a soccer game, paying some bills, putting gas in the car, reading bedtime stories …and on and on and on. Finally, at the end of all this, there is a few minutes to gather thoughts together and put them onto paper – that is, if there is one ounce of energy left.

My child care days are over, and my working life has winnowed down to mostly volunteer activities. I have room and time and space in my life to create. I am so fortunate to have a sanctuary in my house, a place where I can retreat at any time of day to read, write, meditate, listen to music, or even take a nap underneath the cross-stitched quilt my great-aunt made for me when I got married over 40 years ago. The furnishings are feminine, gentle, and meaningful. The room is on the second floor, it’s bright and quiet, and I’ve set my desk in the corner between two windows so I have an expansive view of the yard and street.

It’s perfect. It’s mine.

A room of my own.

About the Author: Becca Rowan

January 22, 2017

Dear Storyteller

Dear Storyteller,

Right about now, you may be thinking that what you do isn’t very important. After all, in this uneasy, divided world, with threats abounding on so many fronts, what’s the use of telling stories? How important can it be to share our experience, to open our hearts on the page, to put words to passions and feelings and long unexpressed truths?

Let me tell you this, Storyteller. You are more important than ever. Those stories – your stories, my stories, the stories of our sisters and brothers all over the world? They could be the one very important thing that makes all the difference.

The other day I read a newspaper article which quoted a very wise man who said: “The thing that brings people together to have the courage to take action on behalf of their lives is not just that they care about the same issues, its that they have shared stories. If you can learn how to listen to people’s stories and can find what’s sacred in other people’s stories, then you’ll be able to forge a relationship that lasts.”

There is something magical about sharing stories, whether they are bound together in the pages of a book, typed out in an email, scribbled on a notecard, or lovingly penned on fine stationery. Whether fact or fiction, they allow us to enter into the hearts and minds of others and obtain a glimmer of what life is like for someone who might be very different from ourselves. Stories incite compassion and empathy. They provide knowledge and information. They astound and confound.

Most importantly, they connect. They enable us to “forge a relationship that lasts.” My friend Andi Cumbo-Floyd (who writes wonderful stories by the way) recently said: “We tell stories because they connect us to one another in a way that facts and culture and experience sometimes fail to do. They tie us together – barbed and gorgeous as we are – at the heart.”

What we need, my storytelling friend, is to re-connect. In these days when we so often feel at odds with our fellow man and the world seems to be drawn into boxes surrounded by thick black and white lines, what we need it the color and nuance that story provides. We need to have thoughts deeper than those incited by a 140-character Tweet. We need to enter into the world of an African American nurse who is wrongfully accused of manslaughter in the death of one of her patients. (Small Great Things, by Jodi Picoult). We need to become acquainted with a young man who grew up poor in a rust belt town but graduated from Yale Law School and wrote a book about it all. (Hillbilly Elegy, by J.D. Vance). We need to revisit the the poets and philosophers who wrote of nature and contemplation and knew that mankind was only an tiny speck in the infinite lifespan of this great universe. (Wordsworth, Emerson, Thoreau)

I read another article last week (I’ve been a reading a lot these days, dear storyteller) based on an interview with President Barack Obama. In it, he spoke of the importance of reading and stories throughout his life, and how particularly important it’s been during his tenure as President of the United States. “Fiction is useful …as a way of seeing and hearing the voices, the multitudes of this country,” he said. “It’s a reminder of the truths under the surface of what we argue about.”

So, dear storyteller, don’t for one moment think that what you do isn’t valuable, isn’t necessary, isn’t important. People have been telling stories ever since they could scratch symbols into the walls of their caves. This is definitely not the time to stop.

President Obama concluded his interview with these words: “The role of stories is to unify – as opposed to divide – to engage rather than marginalize. It is more important than ever.”

I believe it is certainly more important than ever, my storytelling friend.

Go read stories, and go write stories.

Go out and tell YOUR story – let it echo far and wide.

And make them hear you.*

With love from one storyteller to another,

Becca

About the Author: Becca Rowan

*Make Them Hear You, from the musical Ragtime

January 8, 2017

Sunday Salon: Resolute

“Resolutions are often heavy, self-imposed expectations. Better to open your heart to life’s invitations and opportunities.” – Thomas Moore

To resolve, or not to resolve. That is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to determine a list of sure-to-be forgotten promises, or to forgo the whole process altogether in favor of a more spontaneous approach to life in general.

With apologies to The Bard, you can probably tell I’m not fond of New Year’s resolutions.We are already a week into the new year, so perhaps it’s a moot point anyway. This year we are spending the month of January in Florida, renting a home on an island near the Gulf of Mexico. January is normally synonymous with snow and icy winds, and while the warm Gulf breezes are welcome, they are somewhat disconcerting to this displaced Midwesterner.

So no resolutions. Not even a new calendar. And anyway, after 60 years I recognize the veracity of Thomas Moore’s assertion: Resolutions are heavy, self-imposed expectations, all too easily cast aside, leaving the resolver feeling guilty and disappointed.

How much better then, to do as he suggests: Open my heart to life’s invitations and opportunities.

If I were to open my heart, what would I invite it?

I would open wide the door to Music: To more time at my piano where the intricate harmonies of Chopin or the joyous and orderly progressions of Mozart might knit the frazzled pieces of my mind.

I would throw open the window sashes to Art: To beautiful paintings and shapely sculptures, to delicate blown glass and vibrant fiber art creations.

I would unlock the portal to the magic of Words: To reading the stack of books piled high on my shelf and stacked next to my bedside table, to learning from authors, to falling into the worlds of others.

I would take every opportunity to Dance, even if it’s most often alone, my dance floor the hardwood surface in the dining room in front of that window I find myself gazing out of so often.

If I were to Resolve – not that I will, mind you, but just saying if I did – I would be Resolute in accepting every invitation life might offer to soak up the sights, sounds, and sensations of ART. It is the medicine my world-weary soul needs. It is the mandate for 2017.

So often we forget our most effective medicines. We get caught up in habits that suck the life from our creative minds. We become confused with all the expectations swirling through our networks of friends, family, and colleagues.

When our resolution fails, we need those doctors, need to soak up the beauty of creativity in any possible way. Especially in these days when the world is fraught with anger and uncertainty, when ugliness in word and deed is strewn before us everywhere, we desperately need to embrace the beautiful intersection of life and art in every possible way.

Going forward into 2017, that’s where my resolution lies. How about you?

About the Author: Becca Rowan

December 4, 2016

Sunday Salon: The Magic’s in the Music

My neighborhood is all decked out for Christmas, and my own halls are quite proverbially decked as well. I love bringing light and color into the dark days of December. It’s an important way I get into the holiday spirit.

Holiday parties and gatherings are starting to pile up on my calendar. I love catching up with old friends, connecting with family, sharing good food and happy conversation. This is also an important way I get into the holiday spirit.

My checkbook is getting a workout these days. I love making donations during the holidays, sponsoring good causes both large and small. Doing small generous acts is an important way I connect with the holiday spirit.

But the real holiday magic? For me, that comes from only one thing.

Music.

“There’s a profound sense in which music opens a secret door in time and reaches into the eternal,” writes John O’Donohue in his book Beauty, The Invisible Embrace. When I first read that sentence, it felt as if O’Donohue himself had opened a secret door into my soul and discovered the secret magic music brings to my life.

When you really listen to music, when you allow yourself to enter into it’s particular rhythm and nuance, you can be lifted out of time and place and into another realm, one where beauty and elegance and story and feeling all meld into one. Where precision and tone and harmony and breath come together to create something new and completely organic. When you really listen in this way, with your whole heart, you will be surprised by how it touches your heart, how it finds emotions and memories you had thought long forgotten.

Sometimes it’s painful. Sometimes music finds things in your soul you wish would stay hidden. But at the same time, it heals the pain with it’s own sweet, melodious balm. And there are certain times of life when music touches you more deeply than others, evoking more memories, transporting you to different places in time, connecting you with a long line of listeners through the ages. Certainly the holidays are one of those times.

O’Donohue writes: “Perhaps music renews the heart precisely for this reason: it plumbs the gravity of sorrow until it finds the point of submerged light and lightness. Unconsciously, it schools us in a different way to hold the sorrow.” Sometimes, especially during these bleak winter days when the world seems to weigh heavily on my shoulder, I come to music as a way to heal.

It never fails me.

I have played music in some form or other for nearly all of my life. I started playing piano when I was 6 and never stopped. I’ve played in orchestras, sung in choirs. Now I play with a group of wonderful musicians in a handbell ensemble, and you can imagine how busy we are during the Christmas season. (Bells and Christmas are a natural combination, apparently.) We start working on holiday music at our first rehearsal in September, and don’t stop until the last program is over in mid-December.

I have piano books of Christmas arrangements that I started playing over 45 years ago, and I dig them out of the music closet every year without fail. Playing those pieces connects me with Christmas past as surely as Ebenezer’s ghost does- but in a much more pleasant fashion. I remember playing them in the living room of my childhood home while my mother and grandmother were cleaning up the dinner dishes. I remember playing them in my own living room while my son built a fort for his stuffed animals underneath the grand piano. I remember playing them in the house all alone, with no one but my two little dogs to listen. Each time I sit down at the piano and start to play, a lifetime’s worth of memories flow from my heart into my fingertips.

And when I finally push back the piano bench, or step away from the bell tables, or even turn off the speaker on my iPad, I feel a surge of both strength and peace. It’s a feeling of deep soul-satisfaction that like no other.

“The soul is the force of remembrance in us,” O’Donohue says. “It reminds us that we are children of the eternal and that our time on earth is meant to be a pilgrimage of growth and creativity. This is what music does. It evokes a world where that ancient beauty can resonate within us again.”

That is magical indeed.