Gift from a Dead Guy and Other Things: a summation of my birthday….. which was yesterday

This summer I have been listening to music by the 17th century court composer Henry Purcell. He wrote in the middle baroque era. His music includes odes, ballads, opera, chamber, theater (he wrote an opera for Shakespeare’s, Midsummer Nights Dream called the Fairy Queen). I love music from this epoch. Very few people reading this blog will relate to this type of music but I was raised in the arts and although I love all music, classical music is the vernacular of heaven in my opinion.

With that said, I was on my way to the gym and I began to sing along with Purcell's old lyrics written for a coronation somewhere in the1600’s.....

"To celebrate, to celebrate, this triumphant day"........

As I made my turn onto the 95 singing along half heartedly, God washed over me......and the tears began to flow. He brought to my heart that it was my birthday and he was celebrating with heaven, this triumphant day. He was a vision of the silly clapping parent at their child's first birthday helping her to blow out the candle. He was happy that I was alive.....truly alive.

It is a triumphant day for me. I have lived 43 years and God celebrates it. This is good because there were many voices in the formative times of those years which made it clear in word and action that they did not celebrate my birth or my life. And for many years, dark inner voices told me that it was a bad day when I was born and there was no reason to celebrate or be around for the next one.
But here I am, triumphant and joyful because the Holy One stands at my side clapping his hands foolishly singing words that he gave to Henry Purcell over 400 years ago. God is full of folly, song and wonder.
I wonder if Henry Purcell knows that God used his music as the best” Happy Birthday” ever sung to a soul……it kind of proves the point that:

” Art is how we locate ourselves in the human condition.” Calvin Miller

So on July 23, 1960, I entered the world on the Dark Continent and God thought it was good. I spent the day just holding on to that. I did not do anything out of the ordinary or festive…..I don’t usually like to. I was supposed to go to dinner but rehearsals went too late. Instead, I watched a bunch of funny, silly bohemians parody “All that Jazz.” This surpasses any culinary pleasures in my book.

There are also some other special things I received for my birthday:I got some books I really like from Gregg and the girls; my Father (whom I never knew growing up) sent me a neat book of historical fiction that took place at the time of my birth and called me; my dear precious friend began a blog; I am married to a very funny, good man; my children love to play dolls and Barbie’s with me and still think I am cool and pretty and celebrate me with unconditional love. So, I am thankful I am alive………To celebrate, to celebrate this Triumphant Day.

Bird by Bird

A quote from a book, titled " Bird by Bird," written by Anne Lamott ( Traveling Mercies) inspired me and sums up my present state at trying to blog after a bout with depression, busyness and allowing too much time to pass since my last entry. I read the quote, laughed out loud and thought about how true it is for me.....for so many of us. Tommorrow is my Birthday and I think I will go buy her book.

"Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he'd had three months to write. [It] was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table in tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, Bird by bird buddy. Just take it bird by bird."


So with Jesus at my side I will take it bird by Bird