Music, trust, and faith: Amy Grant: Mosaic

Mosaic works as a descriptive title for Amy Grant's book: there are essays, reflections, stories, poetry, and song lyrics new and old.

It’s not necessary to know anything about Grant’s music, or to like it if you do, to enjoy her often funny vignettes of things she has learned from bringing up her children, or her poignant reflection on connecting with her stepdaughter, or stories of how she learned a lesson from a deer or met an unexpected source of support at the state fair.

Grant’s faith is front and center, but it’s no stained glass or holier than thou belief: it’s the story of hard won lessons, and recognition that she -- and we-- do not know all the answers, and sometimes the only answer is trust. Grant has a gentle, humorous, reflective style that suits this sort of storytelling well. Some sections work better than others, of course.


It would be easy for someone of Grant’s public life and fame to be self indulgent or just skim the surface: she doesn’t. One gets the impression that Grant has too much of a sense of humor for that to happen, for one thing, and she also has along with that a humility born of her faith. At one point she says

“This is trust: doing what you believe you are called to do and trusting that God will provide. But here’s where it gets personal: God provides through people. Am I willing to be connected to the people in my world, the people at work, the people in my house, the people I encounter in the everyday patterns of living? Am I open to the possibility of my gifts touching another life? My life touching another: the domino effect of God’s goodness rippling through so many lives is a far reaching concept.”

All sorts of stuff like that in the book. Well worth the read.

Music to go along with this:
Legacy: Hymns and Faith
and
Behind the Eyes
are the Grant recordings I like best. In many ways they are very different: Behind the Eyes includes a number of songs she wrote while dealing with her divorce; Legacy: Hymns and Faith comprises songs of faith that will be familiar to anyone who grew up in the American south, along with well chosen originals. They both show a woman who
thinks about her faith, and knows that it encompasses both struggle and celebration.



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music and trust
music, silence, and spiritual journey

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Mother: music celebrating mothers and motherhood: McKeown, Ryan, Spielberg

This music is traditional, from Ireland, and original, out of the lives of the three artists who created this record, Susan McKeown, Robin Spielberg, and Cathie Ryan. It is music you probably have not heard before. It’s a powerful and loving celebration of the connections and disconnections and understandings that motherhood and making all life’s transitions invites. It’s also music that allows much as much space for the listener as it does for the artists who created it.

Mother comprises fourteen songs. It works well to let the whole process of the album unfold, from McKeown’s opening remembrance of her mother, who died when the singer was fifteen, to a close with Ryan singing a song for Spielberg, one the pianist wrote wrote to welcome her own daughter into the world. In between there are lively tunes and gracious ones, simple ones and complex, ones presented with sparse accompaniment and those with intricate acoustic support. Spielberg’s exploration without words of a walk with her mother is especially fine, McKeown’s evocation of older times comes through strongly in Ancient Mother, Ryan’s Grandma's Song is a lively dance evoking the joy of both child and grandparent as the younger Cathie Ryan recalls and pays tribute to the fiddle playing grandmother for whom she was named and who gave her her love of music.

In the liner notes, each artist offers a short insight into why she chose or composed each song. These are all well worth reading, and thinking about. Each woman was a at different point in her own experience of motherhood as they worked on this project. Together and separately they’ve each added gifts of understanding to it.

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behind the scenes at the making of the Mother album

Music Road: Cathie Ryan: Irish and American

If you're coming over from the link at Poetry Ireland, you might be especially interested in this Music Road: intersections: words, music, and Robert Burns. It's part of series about the connections between writing songs and writing poetry, as is this. Thank you for stopping by -- stay while and explore.