MOIRAJO
  • Barry Manilow & Mother T
    • Post 1 "I Write the Songs"
    • Post 2 "I Am Your Child"
    • Post 3 "Life Will Go On"
    • Post 4 "Sweet Life"
    • Post 5 "Can't Take My Eyes off of You"
    • Post 6 "As Sure As I'm Standing Here"
    • Post 7 "All the Time"
    • Post 8 "Mandy"
    • Post 9 "Here Comes the Night"
    • Post 10 "Lay Me Down"
    • Post 11 "It's A Miracle"
    • Post 12 "Sunrise"
    • Post 13 "Looks Like We Made It"
    • Post 14 "Daybreak"
    • Post 15 "Where Do I Go From Here?"
    • Post 16 "Somewhere Down the Road"
    • Post 17 "It's a Long Way Up"
    • Post 18 "Ay Amor"
    • Post 19 "Copacabana (At the Copa) Remix"
    • Post 20 "New York City Rhythm"
    • Post 21 "If I Can Dream"
    • Post 22 "Memory"
    • Post 23 "You Begin Again"
    • Post 24 "If We Only Have Love"
    • Post 25: "Put Your Dreams Away"
    • Post 26 "Good-bye My Love"
    • Post 27 "Please Don't Be Scared"
    • Post 28 "Keep Each Other Warm"
    • Post 29 "Ready To Take a Chance Again"
    • Post 30 "The Stars in the Night"
    • Post 31 "We Can Be Kind"
    • Post 32 "Look to the Rainbow"
    • Post 33 "Life Will Go On"
    • Post 34 "God Bless the Other 99"
    • Post 35 "Not What You See"
    • Post 36 "Welcome Home"
    • Post 37 "Everything's Gonna Be All Right"
    • Post 38 "Do Like I Do"
    • Post 39 "Brooklyn Blues"
    • Post 40 "Old Songs"
    • Post 41 "Could It Be Magic?"
    • Post 42 "I Made It Through The Rain"
    • Post 43 "Paradise Cafe"
    • Post 44 "Beautiful Music"
    • Post 45: "Harmony"
    • Post 46 "One Voice"
    • Post 47 "Appendices" Let Freedom Ring" >
      • Postlude "Even Now" : Seeing Barry at Barclays After 37 Years"
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Post 12: Sunrise

PictureMother Teresa
“The problem with the world is that we draw the circle of our family too small.” Mother Teresa

 

 The Fan Club and Barry’s music took me through three difficult and turbulent years of high school. However, as high school drew to a close, I was clueless in terms of what to do or what vocation to follow. I timidly expressed my interest in writing, so the good sisters at my high school sent me to do a luncheon interview at Notre Dame College where a visiting nun from India was giving a speech. The project was doomed from the start. I got lost driving to East Euclid, Ohio. I discovered, too late, I had brought a non-working tape recorder. I remember snippets from the mass and lunch. Then the nun spoke of her work with the poor and dying in India. When she spoke she radiated peace.

Then bam! – it was like being right back in the sanctuary of St. Colman’s, mysterium tremendum, that song was calling me all over again, whispering, “Follow me, follow me.” The professional journalists were launching questions like: “do you believe in abortion?” and “What do you think about the woman’s role in the church?” Something overcame me and I raised my hand and some untapped part of me asked, “How do you become holy?” Another huge silence like I just asked what brand of deodorant she uses. I had pissed off the Politburo to no end.

“Damn it! Can’t we take you out in public for once?” The red alert sounded, curtains were called, but before oblivion hit, I remembered the beginning of her answer:

 “You begin with prayer.” The rest is lost. So that about sums up my journalism career. You can guess now that the visiting Indian nun was known worldwide as Mother Teresa of Calcutta, founder of the Missionaries of Charity, and would go on in 1979 to win a Nobel Peace Prize.

So there you have it, these are my high school guides who would plot the course for my future. Barry, meet Mother T.; Mother T. meet Barry. They bookmark my adolescence. Like a Moses and Miriam of sorts, leading me out of Egypt and enslavement to a Promised Land overflowing with zinfandel and chocolate. I know, this image is way too sacrilegious. Which is why I like it.

Creativity, meet your passion. Isn’t that what it is about? It just took me so freaking long to figure all this out.


 

 

Notes:
http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/838305.Mother_Teresa?page=8

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The Manilow Music Project
8295 South La Cienega Boulevard
Inglewood, CA 90301

info@manilowmusicproject.org
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Picture
Mother Teresa, Nobel Peace Price, 1979
Picture
Barry Manilow
© Moira Ahearne 2017. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.