That is worth some money

3/15

Kimberley and Kristen are waiting when I arrive. Kristen is one of our long standing artist friends. She is a singer-songwriter Union Seminary theological students. She was part of Amanda’s women’s singer-songwriters concert back i the Bridge concert series. And performed in our second Balcony Music Festival. And when I was in Berlin, did her own showcase concert at West-Park with her folk chamber group, Songs in the Key of Redemption.  

Krisren Leigh at West-Park

She looks around the office. Smiles. Laughs. Says I love this place. She’s brought the video of her concert. Wants to do a DVD with interviews of key Center people. We talk about the emergent church. And our mutual dislike of contemporary Christian music in all its saccharine didacticism. The church of transformation deserves music of transformation. I talk about my affection for the theology of Rubem Alves, from Brazil,  the former liberation theologian, now transformation theologian. His concept of Warrior, poet, priest. 

St. Cecilia

Kristen is off to Portland. That damned city again                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              PDX.  I tell her she’s got to talk to Amanda while she’s there. Who helped conceive and birth the center. Who knows its soul center. Kristen is looking for St.Cecilia. She brought her along and then left her at her concert. I found her, thought she was well, a bit disturbing, quasi s&m like. But then I heard her story, how they tried to behead her and she sang for three days and became the patron saint of musicians.

And I think of Paul Simon an the lyrics of his song, The Coast:

A family of musicians took shelter for the night 

In the little harbor church of st. cecilia 

Two guitars, bata, bass drum and tambourine 

Rose of jericho and bougainvillea 

This is a lonely life 

Sorrows everywhere you turn 

And that's worth something 

When you think about it 

That's worth some money 

That's worth something 

When you think about it 

                                                      The Coast

I return St. Cecilia to Kristen. Both seem happy with the reunion.

Anna is rousting el borracho. I notice he’s got a rather fancy looking IPhone. What’s up with that? Anna says, Don’t you know? The drug pushers use him as a drop off point.

Stephen on the other hand, posits that drug dealers wouldn’t leave valuable drugs or large sums of money with a drunk man. I will not pass judgment on what I know not of. 

Friends from the Trilingual School are back. They’re still interested.But I have to tell them that wan’t really talk. But I connect them with Martin. Need a back up plan, just in case. 

Nancy and Bob at the opening

Nancy has come to go for a beer at the B and talk real estate. She and Cara are deep in conversation. We go to the B then return for Berik and Leila’s latest New York Realism exhibit opening: Fantasy of Dream and Allegory. They’re back from a successful show in Montreal. As usual, the artists span the globe. 

Artist David Pullman and Cara

Soon I must leave to see Melisa’s play, Pit, about the 1984 Welsh miners  strike. It’s colder than I expected. 

                                                          Kristen Leigh sings