Theater of the Imagination

Series 1, Episode 5: Sacred Sunday Morning

January 18, 2021 Peter Link Season 1 Episode 5
Theater of the Imagination
Series 1, Episode 5: Sacred Sunday Morning
Show Notes Transcript

In these most difficult times we are each faced with a constant fear of the future. What can we each do to help solve the world’s problems of both the political confusion and the pandemic that we face every day? What about our failing environment? The list of fears seems to go on and on. Sacred Sunday Morning, through music and commentary, seeks to turn
thought to a higher calling. When you experience this special podcast, pay particular attention to the lyrics of the songs. There is a story told, a light at the end of the dark tunnel.
Sunday morning — a morning like no other.

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Scattershot Symphony #5

Sacred Sunday Morning

For Everyone, A Different Connection

Turn it up!


This week being the fifth episode of this podcast series, I’m supposed to tell you who I am and why I’m doing this.  I prefer to let the music do the talkin’.  However, if you need to know more about me, please visit Wikipedia.com – Peter Link.    


This episode is entitled “Sacred Sunday Morning”

Phlutterphase Hang Music Cue


Sunday morning — a morning like no other — a morning devoted to devotion.  For some it’s church or temple, for some it’s meditation, for others it’s a chance to get those few extra hours of sleep, for even others it’s a chance to play with the kids, for some ... it’s football. But one thing for sure, it’s a morning like no other.  For me, most of all, it’s a chance to go inward, to be at peace, to work out the kinks, to simply have an alone time, and a check in, with Pete.


For you? Well, for everyone it’s a different connection.  I’m not here to sell ya’ mine.  Each of us has our own individual choice.  It’s yours to choose.


For decades I taught Sunday School.  I always thought I learned more than my students.  I taught the kids the basics.  You know, the commandments, the beatitudes, the stories. Doing so, I got to review for myself the basics.  It was always a powerful time.  

Then I let the politics of church drive me away.  Staying, but avoiding the politics was just not in my wheelhouse.  I’m a guy who likes to get things fixed, so, I fought for what I thought was right and ended up ... just fighting.  So I decided to walk away from “religion.”  And in doing so, I found a more quiet place.  A place where I could simply be alone with my God.  A place where I could consider the infinite, and avoid the finite.


Carol Jay, who wrote the music to our first song was a talented, but much-troubled soul.  She died too early in life and thereby (supposedly) avoided her own demons.  But while here, she asked me to write the lyrics to a tune she had written. I always thought it sounded like something I’d heard before, but never could place it.  Maybe it’s just one of those universal melodies that are of the infinite, the eternal.  I donno, but it’s a good one.  I wrote the lyrics, on a Sunday morning.


Julia Wade — This Quiet Place











When I was in my 30s my marriage to my first wife was winding down. We fought.  I needed a break from the fighting.  So, I went to stay with a friend for a week trying to get a respite.  Then, he and his wife were fighting. It was just too much fighting and after two days of that I left them and went to another friend’s apartment while he was on the road.  He lived in an old railroad flat in a crummy neighborhood off Eighth avenue in NYC.  I was alone and depressed late on a hot August Saturday night.  Going a little nuts, I took a walk at 3 in the morning to see what I could see. 


All I saw were the whores and the drug addicts, 

the low life/night life of 3 AM unfortunates haunting the streets ... and haunting me.  I went back home to my 5th floor walk-up home away from home hovel ... about as low as I’d ever been in life. My friend had no 

air conditioning and it was stifling hot. The air (if you could call it that) in his apartment smelled like garbage. 


Just before dawn, far too depressed to sleep, I finally gave up. I grabbed my trusty guitar and a pillow and crawled out on the fire escape to somehow escape.  There, as the dawn of Sunday morning began to dawn, I wrote this next song.

Sweet Purity





On Thinking

“As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” — From the book of Proverbs. 


“I think, therefore I am.” — Rene Descartes. 


“The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.” ― Albert Einstein


We are what we think.  All that we are arises with our thoughts.  With our thoughts, we make the world.” – Buddha


The more man meditates upon good thoughts; the better will be his world and the world at large.” – Confucius


Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force — that thoughts rule the world.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson


“We are formed and molded by our thoughts.” — Buddha


If there ever was a time for thinking, it is Sunday morning.  No matter what your surroundings. “The time for thinkers has come.” — MBE


Jenny Burton — I Think On These Things



Mindy Jostyn was as talented a woman as I ever met.  I produced and orchestrated her final album during her last days on Planet Earth.  She passed away before we had finished the album and I had to finish it for her. I’ll never know why she left so early in life.  She must have been needed upstairs.


I always thought Mindy had life pretty well figured out. 

She mastered 4 or 5 instruments including guitar, fiddle, piano, and harmonica and sang like an angel.  She also was a superb songwriter. She worked as a singer and instrumentalist with the Billy Joel band and was Carley Simons’s musical director, and made five albums of Mindy music to remember her by. She certainly had her musical life figured out.  


Figure out who you are and you’ve taken some real steps in understanding the world in which you live. 

In this next song Mindy lets us know who she is ... possibly who we all are! She also shows off her brilliant harmonica chops as well.  She’s joined by two super talented New Your Studio vocalists, John James and Catherine Russell.


Mindy Jostyn — Child Of God




There’s always been a part of me that wished I could travel to the East and study with a Guru, discover my inner soul and meditate on a mountain top somewhere for a year or two. I never did it because it’s just been too much fun, and too rewarding to write and produce the music.  So, I probably will never get to that, this time around.  


But I can write about it.  I can dream.  I have my imagination.  I have my voices like Julia and Jenny to speak for me of the dream.  


With this next song, I wanted to somehow evoke that dream, that wish.  I wanted to find that special atmosphere.  I read in the NY Times that there was a Chinese world class Erhu, musician in town about to give a concert at Carnegie Hall.  Somehow, I was able to get to him through his manager and hire him to do a session.  I wrote a basic theme for him to play that would begin the song I was working on.


For those of you who don’t know what an Erhu is (spelled Erhu) it’s a single stringed instrument attached to a stick and a hollowed-out gourd and played with a bow like a cello.  It’s various tones or pitches are created by bending the stick and thereby stretching the string and altering the pitches.  It is extremely expressive when well played — as you will hear.


Our musician, Rongchun Zhao, needed no music. I sang him the melody once or twice and he listened to the song a couple of times as we discussed as best we could the meaning of the lyrics.  His English was almost non- existent and my Mandarin was completely non-existent, but we totally connected on the music, the feelings, the mood, the atmosphere. Aaaahh, Music, the universal language.


He did it in just 3 takes, played superbly and left me thrilled with what he had brought to the session.  I expanded the intro by editing the 3 takes together to produce what you hear. Then Julia brought on her own special understanding and magic. And we had our title song for the entire album.


So, come with us now to the mountain top.  Let us explore the infinite.


Rongchun Zhao and Julia Wade — Upon The Mountain









Most people don’t think of a spiritual search as being technical.  One wouldn’t call the Bible a technical book.  And yet, late in the 19th century, a woman named Mary Baker Eddy wrote a book called Science and Health with a Key to the Scriptures (the Bible) that pretty much expanded the Christian movement in its time.  I grew up a Christian Scientist and studied this book all my life trying to understand and apply its teachings to my life. I’ve also studied many of the world’s great religions drawing from all of them many truths that have also sustained me through 7 decades.  


Christian Science, as the name suggests, is what you might call technical.  It is a science, the science that Jesus taught.  It is also many other things and it’s important to know here that its heart and soul is love.  


The science works.  I’ve led a medicine free life and never gone to a doctor for healing.  It’s not always easy to demonstrate, but then going to a doctor or a hospital isn’t either.  I prefer prayer.  It certainly is less expensive and it comes with no side effects.  Suffice it to say that I’ve managed to heal all my ills in life. And I’m nothing special. Just a guy trying to figure it all out.





I’ve also been fascinated with Quantum physics, and lately been reading Robert Lanza’s revolutionary book, Biocentrism... and found the truths of this book and the truths of Christian Science to be fascinatingly similar, though each approach, definitely has its own particular language.


Both teachers seem to concur on one fascinating issue, and that is the question of the reality of matter.  They each suggest that matter is an illusion of the mind – no more than just a perception in our consciousness.


Is matter real? Both Christian Science and Robert Lanza say “perhaps not.”  What do you think?


Julia Wade — Nothing


2020. Wow, that was some year. A year none of us will ever forget.  Unfortunately, mostly for all the wrong reasons.  A scattershot of troubles ... a chaos of fear and heartbreak.  The world changed and it changed us all.  But to those of you who are listening now, we got through it.  All of us affected, but hopefully not infected.


Thinking back, it was those Sunday morning moments that got me through — replacing fear with hope, replacing lies with the truth, staying positive in the face of it all.  But I reckon we all had our moments of negative introspection.  I know I did.  Sometimes it was a battle that I knew I must win ... or else be lost. So I won.  I’m still here ... but it was a battle ...           


Jenny Burton — Cathedral Of The Heart



What is the point of Sunday morning? Hopefully, for most of us, it’s a time to listen.  Listen for what?  Listen for answers?  Listen to the voices inside our head? Listen to our consciousness? Investigate the things that fill our consciousness?  Listening. Hmm, An interesting concept ...

Julia Wade — A Still Small Voice



And then there’s church ... though the politics of church have often pushed me away, I still honor the experience of being in My Father’s House and deeply value the many times before, during, or after church, sitting in the quiet of God’s presence, applying what I’ve learned, struggling with life, seeking a solution … and then, there it is, written on the wall before me.  


Words Upon The Wall


I guess the best thing about Sunday morning is that ya’ don’t have to wait till Sunday morning to have your Sunday morning.  You can always do Sunday morning on Tuesday night.  The opportunity is right before us, moment to moment.  


And so now it comes down to God — whatever that immense, immeasurable word means to you — even if it means nothing.  Whenever I meet an atheist, if I get the chance, I’ll ask them to define “God.” A hundred percent of the time, when they do, I find myself responding, “Then I must be an atheist as well.” – cuz I don’t believe in that either. When asked to define God, for everyone, it’s a different definition — even if you’re from the same religion.  


The English language just isn’t capable of nailing down the perfect definition of something that is so many things.  It tries, but I’ve never found the perfect one yet, and even find that my own personal one changes from year to year … sometimes from week to week!


Suffice it to say that there has to be some creating and controlling force behind all this that we each experience every hour, every minute, every day in this lifetime, in this body, on this planet, in the air, in our consciousness.


Whatever it is, I can’t define it, but I know it is. Something out there, in there, keeps this heart beating, keeps these thoughts coming, keeps this old world turning.  Even in the absolute worst of situations ...


Something … some force, some governing Principle has to be in control.  And each of us has to believe in that something, that someone … whatever we choose to call it. Otherwise, what enables us to take the next breath … what enables the next heartbeat?  In this time of great trial, we each need to be able to rely on some certainty …


Julia Wade – On Eagles Wings


Well, there ya’ have it.  Scattershot Symphony.  Episode 5


Next, Episode 6 

Songs Of Love And Heartbreak – Volume 1


Volume One deals with the Romantic side of Love and takes us again on the journey that so many of us have lived.  It is an exploration of many of the various characteristics of love, in songs that deal with both the wonders and the heartbreaks.  Bring your box of Kleenex.


Also, please rate and subscribe ...


A lot of the songs you just heard were solo songs that required very few background voices, so this episode’s thankyous are short today.

Here are some tremendous talents that I had the great privilege to work with on song after song for many years 

...

A special thank you to both Julia Wade and Jenny Burton who have so profoundly given voice to my music for four decades.

On Cathedral Of The Heart

Vocalists

Margaret Dorn, 

who also created the background vocal arrangement

John James

Latanya Hall

and Kevin Osborne


And on Upon The Mountain

With the opening lyrics drawn from

Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki


Vocalists

Margaret Dorn, 

who again created the background vocal arrangement

Latanya Hall

and Darryl Tookes

You each brought so much to my music over the years.

And also a shout out to the entire cast of Is Anybody Listening – Concert and Webcast for their Choir work on A Still Small Voice.

Thank you!



And thanks to WFM ... (the rest is there ...)