A Simple Christmas…M4B*

Because of the persecution at the hands of my birth family, which included being systematically poisoned in their attempts to control this great gift of shalom that is die zauberflote and try to use it against God’s will, Christmas has a special meaning for me. I learned it the hard way. At the time, I could not understand why it seemed that God had abandoned me to people who insisted on turning themselves into monsters. Yet nonetheless I willingly stood in ankle-deep icy mud, at times with tears running down my face, and sang Christmas carols with the neighborhood children in my hometown of Fairfield, Connecticut. Although I came to realize that the persecution would intensify during the holidays, I never lost my love of every piece of music connected to Yeshua, the Messiah.

But much of the hooplah came to make me quite miserable. The tree, the tinsel, the cotton batting on the mantle with a cardboard sleigh and reindeer, and of course, “Santa Claus” — whoever that was — came to represent to me an abyss of hopelessness.

“Let’s have our Christmas!” my Mother would chuckle, as she got out her notepad to record which gift was from whom, so we could immediately send thank-you notes for everything under the tree.

Well, that was it. The Bible sat dusty and untouched on a bookshelf, and everything swirled around who got what. And of course, I seemed to end up with items I had never wished for nor could ever use. That seemed to be part of the orchestration.

At the time, being quite young, it was all very confusing. Now, looking back, I can see how God has used everything for good, for I literally cannot tolerate anything having to do with Christmas that does not directly lift up the Lord Jesus Christ. I no longer ‘celebrate’ what I call ‘Xmas’. No tree. No lights. No wrappings. Just the music. And The Presence.

And I am richly blessed…I invite you to do the same…:-)

*M4B=Mozart For Believers

“Nominal” Christians…M4B*

When I was a child growing up in Fairfield, Connecticut, we lived in a nice three-bedroom house.  My father was a metallurgical engineer.  He had done well for himself.  He started out as a poor cowboy on a farm in Yankton, South Dakota.  He put himself through the South Dakota School of Mines and graduated with a degree in metallurgy.  He was quickly hired on by a steel company in Chicago, where I was born.  He then changed jobs and was soon transferred to the East Coast.

My father was an avid reader.  We had only one bookcase in our house, surprisingly, as he read everything from the ancient Greeks to contemporary history.  He borrowed nearly all his books from the library, so didn’t need a lot of space for them.  But there was one Book that sat on the shelves throughout those years — the Bible.  I cannot recall my parents taking it out, even dusting it off.  It just sat there, among all the other books.  There didn’t seem to be much need for the Wrd in our household.  That is because we were what I would now call ‘nominal’ Christians.

We were Methodists.  And yes, I know now that there are thriving churches of every denomination where Believers can be fed, so I am not pouncing upon the poor maligned Methodists.  It just happened to be our fate.  There are also at least two Methodist ministers in our family — both cousins on my father’s side.

Our Methodist Church, http://www.goldenhill.org/, is one of the loveliest neo-Gothic churches I have seen anywhere, with a full pipe organ, a choir with paid soloists, ushers who back then wore morning coats with carnations in their lapels, and a delightful area called the “Pullman Chapel” where the children had service.

What we learned from that church was how to excel at being nominal Christians.  We put issues of substance first, and complained when Gd didn’t give us everything we wanted instantly.  We learned fellowship, with cookouts, and weekend getaways.  I am sure it was mere coincidence that many of the wealthy people who lived on “the Hill” attended that church. We were, of course, in awe of them.  Gd had obviously favored them and not us.

We did say grace maybe once or twice a year — certainly at Easter and Xmas. And we were always present at church.  The only time we missed that I am aware of was when President Kennedy was assassinated.  That Sunday we sat in front of the black+white tv eating tv dinners (yes, really) and watched Lee Oswald being murdered by Jack Ruby.

It’s really hard to get through to people when they become nominal Christians.  They think they are doing everything right!  If you try to disciple them by nudging them toward the Wrd or — heaven forbid — repentance — we are usually met with defiance and outrage…

So that too, I now believe, was the crisis our Lrd Jesus Christ faced when he dealt with the Pharisees and Sadducees.  They already ‘knew’ they were going to heaven.  They had nothing to learn.  They needed nothing.  They did not realize that they were already mostly dead inside and only yelling at them could hopefully wake them up…:-0

*M4B=Mozart For Believers

 

 

 

 

 

Die Zauberflote…the gift…M4B*

I can tell you in all honesty that I feel i was born with a target on my back.  When I was quite little I saw a vision of a dreadful being — a dark angel that I came to call “Lermontov”, because its appearance resembled the character Lamar Waldron played in the movie “The Red Shoes”.  This being seemed to have control of my birth family, taunting them, leading them into darkness.  It was a frightening thing for me as a child to carry this burden of sensing that there seemed to be something supernatural and terribly evil coming at my loved ones and threatening our house.  As you might imagine, nobody would listen to me.  I was unable to articulate in a convincing manner the challenges we were facing.  It seemed that my existence was what Lermontov objected to.  I could not imagine why.  It all seemed very sinister and strange.  I never ‘saw’ Lermontov again, but could hear the energy connected with ‘him’.  It was and is a dark energy, dense and threatening.  As I would try to go to sleep at night there were times when it felt as though Lermontov was trying to literally shake our house apart.  This dark angel used everyone in my birth family to try to cause me pain and do me harm.  I do not blame them.  They were just vulnerable and used for its dark ends.

My parents told me that I began singing at about eight weeks of age.  When I was near a radio I would sing along with the songs or jingles that were being played and then sing them on my own.  I was playing the piano and performing as a singer and tap dancer at age 3.  I was en pointe at age 7.  I did not begin to play the flute until I was 9.  At that point, everything in our lives seemed to go into upheaval — my Mother became ill and had to have an operation, my Father’s closest sibling, his brother Everett, died by his own hand.  It felt like we were sliding into an abyss, but in reality we had entered a kind of vortex where there was both good and evil.  We just could not see that.

As Lermontov tried to use my family members against me I began to realize that there seemed to be something in the energy of the flute itself that was protecting me.  I would fall ill dramatically and without warning (later determined most likely to have been poisoning) and then would recover just as quickly. I would find myself in dangerous situations, such as skiing and sliding down an Alp off-piste, not realizing that could have caused an avalanche, only to find that everything was fine. With all the persecution that I dealt with in my birth family (and a lot of it not very well) I managed to persevere and grow.  I was able by some miracle to leave that house alive. My father was almost not as lucky, as he nearly died by his own hand a few months after I left.

I was so devastated at my Father’s situation that, although I had been a superficial Christian — my family was Methodist — that I decided to turn my back on Gd as I understood Him.  How could He allow this to happen to my Father?  Especially when it was my Mother who was cruel and vicious?  I decided to put the flute away, and until I became saved did not perform with it or even practice regularly.  My life turned upside down and became quite convoluted.  I married a man who had great energy and abilities, but also suffered from the demons connected with alcohol, so the challenges were significant. But Gd spoke to me in the birth of our first child, who was the most miraculous individual I had ever known.  All the pain and suffering I felt I had endured from my birth family melted away.  Somehow, it had all been related — it was certainly all worth it.  I came to know the Lrd Jesus Christ personally, and was delighted to discover that I was pregnant again.  Our boys were only 14 months apart.  One born in San Francisco, and one in Boston.  We moved to Minnesota and our daughter was born there.  The flute guided us all, even through the tumult of treatment, and, ultimately divorce and distance.

Next came our bout with the clique I call “Monostatos” and their Orchestra.  Every avenue of success and substance was blocked off for us.  They took food out of the mouths of my children.  My birth family declined to help us.  How was I to raise three children alone and provide for them while what I considered my main avenues of supply, flute performing and the book I was writing about us, were being blocked, ridiculed, and slandered at every turn?  They had locked out Mozart.  They treated me as though I was already dead and just waited for something terrible to happen to me.

Nonetheless, the energy of the flute kept the vortex churning. Locked out of performing as a musician, I found I had a talent for making computers break down.  I tried to turn that into a living.  I met a man there who was also saved, and who helped me become grounded in the Word.  He became and is my longest best friend. He had also been caused to stumble and had been slandered.  Gd supported him and used everything for good.  I met my wonderful husband, who too came out of the vortex having been blocked and caused to stumble at every turn, perhaps due to the same mechinations of this dark angel Lermontov.

Then came an astounding series of events that may or may not have had anything to do with us and die zauberflote.  9/11 devasted my husband’s home town of New York City, where I had also lived for four years after growing up in nearby Fairfield, Connecticut. My Mother at that time lived not far from there, in Flemington, New Jersey.  My sister and her husband lived in DC. Then, my Mother moved to a retirement community in DC. The day all of us flew to DC to celebrate her birthday and perform and her party the I-35 Bridge came down. We used that bridge regularly as my children and their families live on the east side of the metro, and we live on the west.  My Mother then passed away, and all our family dynamics went into upheaval again.  My sister left to teach in Africa.  One child stepped away from the rest of the family.  At the stroke of midnight of the day following anniversary of the first performance of the opera Die Zauberflote in Vienna in 1791 the Minnesota Orchestra players were locked out.  October 22 of 2012 my hometown, as well as the entire NYC metro was devastated by Hurricane Sandy.  A few weeks later, Newtown, which I had visited recently for high school reunions, endured the terrible shooting at Sandy Hook.  Sensing that there might be a connection to the upheaval at the Minnesota Orchestra connected to their, in effect, through “Monostatos”, locking me out first, long ago, I wrote to Mr. Henson, then Mr. Sprenger, and Mr. Vanska.  I asked for their help and asked for die zauberflote to be heard on the darkened stage where I had once been encouraged to practice.  I was not even granted the courtesy of a reply.

But the energy of the flute has kept churning.  We are in the center of the vortex, and we are safe from this dark angel.  We are getting ready to begin our Locked-Out series of concerts.  We are preparing our conception video for Piper to the Alternative called “Out of Night and Fog”.  The main character of the video is, in fact the vortex.  I have been granted my childhood dream — a wonderful dark horse i nicknamed “Miles”.  His sassy silliness and warmth have helped me endure the suffering and trauma resulting from the realization that even my precious children had been used as a “hook of Lermontov” to cause me to lose heart and either die or take my own life. Exhausted beyond comprehension, I have let my horse be my strength, and let the horse be my speed.  The Holy Spirit in this gift of die zauberflote refreshes me and keeps me moving forward, even with a target on my back that Lermontov keeps trying to hit.

And so I say to you with all authority of my experience, that Jesus Christ and the kingdom of Gd are real, that He triumphed over all evil on the cross, and that He goes to the uttermost to save us, and to make intercession for us (Hebrews 4:25).  I can say this with the knowledge of having tried and failed so many times that His presence in this gift of die zauberflote has lifted me up, righted me, and set me where I need to be.  This is a gift of shalom.  I hope you will treasure it as I do.  It will do the same for you.

*M4B=Mozart for Believers…

On the possibility of my having been poisoned as a child…

Update, January 9, 2023

My parents were never brought to justice…but their accomplices may be…

Original post..

When I was four I had a vision, of sorts, that probably helped to keep me alive.  The significance of it to me at that time was that I became convinced I had to protect a Gift I had been given from my mother whom, it seemed, had made some sort of a pact with a dark angel I came to call “Lermontov”,  as it resembled a movie character by that name. I had no doubt my mother was my adversary, but I did not at the time comprehend the extent of her antagonism.

Although a robustly healthy child, I regularly found myself becoming violently sick to my stomach and throwing up.  Ironically, at those time, my mother was conciliatory and sympathetic, bringing me ginger ale with shaved ice and saltines to calm my stomach.  This continued until shortly before I left home for college.  Once I had settled into dorm life, my first thought was how nice it was to be somewhat on my own. My second thought was relief that I was no longer throwing up.  It immediately occurred to me that my mother had probably been behind this, but my relief at having survived was my primary emotion.

Within a few months of this realization my father nearly died by his own hand.  All my attention switched to him.  I did not make the connection until recently, as, subsequent to that event, the rest of my birth family seemed to circle the wagons and lock me out, so to speak, that there could have been a connection. Other questions that I had about my birth family also began to fall into place when I looked at them from the perspective of my birth family trying to shield themselves from the consequences (not of their own actions, mind you) of my having survived this ordeal.  :-0

Update 4.17.21

Since this post was written a lot has taken place.  I spoke to my dear husband about this possibility and his response was, “You remember that?” Of course, I was puzzled, to say the least.  I then told my two younger children of this possibility. I received blank looks.  There were no questions.  There was no concern. Just a chill emptiness.  I did not know what to think. 

It became evident that for whatever reason, protecting my one living birth family member from being held accountable for their part in this terrible situation was more important than showing any concern for me. 

At that point I began to step back.  The Corona pandemic provided an extension of what I had already decided to do.  

Now I see the situation from a different perspective.  I have had the courage to ask, “What if it didn’t stop?” I don’t like the answers that come to me, but accepting the truth is always better in the end.  

Update June 9, 2021

There has been a veritable flood of information coming at me for the last few weeks. Most stunning is the realization that these odd coincidences possibly connecting Bob Dylan’s family and mine are not that at all.  Instead, this may consist of ‘inside information’ from a member of my family that made its way to Dylan’s people.  Even more astonishing is the possibility that this may have been going on for a long time…perhaps even back to when Dylan appeared on the scene in New York.  What could possibly be the reason for this, I wondered?  It has been, at the very least, a betrayal, but to what end?  I puzzled over this until the lyrics of one of Dylan’s songs came to mind…Jokerman…whose features could have been carved out by Michaelangelo…dancing to the nightingale tune…

Jokerman

Whoa Nelly, I said to myself…could Dylan be hinting at my father’s ignoring my mother’s terrible behavior toward me?  Is he giving his insiders information about what happened in that house? Where would that possibly come from?  My family members have all been in lockstep to shut me down whenever I mention what happened in that house, and here is a complete stranger telling the world — or at least his ‘insiders’ — about this?  

And then, another possibility occurred to me — that Dylan’s people had somehow obtained a pilfered copy of my manuscript Titan, from Piper to the Alternative.  The heroine’s middle name is Philomela — which means nightingale.  Her father, Dorian, is as handsome as Dorian Gray, and as ignorant and selfish…

This opened up an entirely new kettle of fish, so to speak…

Jokerman appeared on the scene in 1983. The only adversary I am aware of who had access to my early drafts of Titan in the late 70’s, was my ex-husband, a bass player in the Minnesota Orchestra, whom I call “Monostatos”…

Was that what had happened, if that is the case? 

Stay tuned, as this is becoming curiouser and curiouser…