POST 28:  "Keep Each Other Warm"

TWO OF MY ANGELS - WENDY ON THE RIGHT, LORETTA ON THE LEFT.

 

“There’s nothing more calming in difficult moments that knowing there’s someone fighting with you.”   Mother Teresa

 
Among the many people God used to drag my butt through the Dark Night of the Soul of my marriage break-up and my father’s death were three remarkable women. These “amazing angels” took center stage. I met them at Broadway Church, all were going through or had gone through a break-up. “Keep Each Other Warm” (Barry Manilow 1989) might be a romantic song for a couple, but it speaks to me of the kind of friendships you need when your soul is at the bottom of the pit and you are running low on sanity, Kleenex and pinot grigio. 


Loretta was a great comfort because she was “on the other side” in a new, great relationship. She hauled her ass out of a very bad situation out of love for her son. Loretta would remind me, “Everything is in motion, and everything changes. You’ll see. “It won’t stay like this.” Two of them also had children and understood the single parent syndrome issues well. They were veterans of the nightmares of dealing with the New York City public school system which I also faced.. Friends, please, that is a spin-off horror story in itself.

My dear sweet Wendy-angel gave me a tape of recordings of her playing light classical musical pieces interspersed with the poetry of the 14th-century Persian mystic, Hafiz to feed my shattered soul. Poems like this:

 What Happens?


What happens when your soul
Begins to awaken
Your eyes
And your heart
And the cells of your body
To the great Journey of Love? 

First there is wonderful laughter
And probably precious tears 

And a hundred sweet promises
And those heroic vows
No one can ever keep. 

But still God is delighted and amused
You once tried to be a saint. 

What happens when your soul
Begins to awake in this world 
To our deep need to love
And serve the Friend? 

O the Beloved
Will send you
One of His wonderful, wild companions ~
Like Hafiz.

 Who could not get better with medicine like this? Because when you are turning 40, you need wonderful, wild companions, like these.

 

 

Notes:
http://cclay1.tumblr.com/post/96746804112/peerintothepast-theres-nothing-more-calming
http://allspirit.co.uk/what-happens/
 

Give the gift of music to the next generation through donations to:
The Manilow Music Project
8295 South La Cienega Boulevard
Inglewood, CA 90301
info@manilowmusicproject.org
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