Sparks from the Fire

Julia Wade

Last night it was business as usual at the WFM Listening Room.  Both La Tanya Hall and Julia Wade and their Inspirational music ended our week on the perfect notes – notes that soared, notes that calmed and notes that enlivened the soul.

These Fridays are crazy busy for me.  I wake up in the morning on show day and immediately know I’m in for it.  It’s a day of go, go, go until I flop down in my chair at the end of the day.  I won’t bore you with the details, but rather assure you that that’s just what it is – a day of endless detail.  It never stops.

When I get home at night, it’s all I can do to just crawl off to bed.

I’ve been doing this all my life, but it doesn’t get any easier.  Thank God for a great staff and a most professional venue.

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Watchfire Music, a leader in Inspirational music, is proud to announce the recent acquisition of Solo Thoughts, a powerful resource for soloists, musicians and music committees in Christian Science churches.

Originally created by Louise Maynard and developed over the years by both Ms Maynard and editor, Susan Lindquist, Solo Thoughts provides solo suggestions to match Christian Science Lesson Sermons each week, with songs ranging in style from Classical and Traditional to Pop and Contemporary music — for all singers from new soloists to seasoned pros.

For the last few years Watchfire Music has been the sole distributer of this product and has taken a large part in the further development of this resource tool through the creative efforts of Julia Wade, Director of Digital Sheet Music for WFM. (more…)

It will come as no surprise to anyone that Inspirational music comes to us as a result of thinking.  Before it is expressed through the fingers or gets jotted down at the end of a pencil, it first originates in mind.  I’ve learned, as a composer, that when I’m stuck and the music is not pouring forth, to take my hands off the keyboard and let mind imagine it first.

This always works.  It works because I’m going back to the root of creativity – mind.  I’ve always said that my best work comes through me figuring that the best ideas come from God or a higher power or source, but the portal that the ideas come through is mind.  Perhaps they don’t originate in mind or brain, but they exist somewhere out there or ‘in there’ already and we’re just here to provide the portal.

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Here at Watchfire Music we like to say that a love song is an Inspirational song.  The category of Inspirational music is just that wide an umbrella.  What’s not inspirational about love?  It’s probably the most inspirational concept in the minds of mankind.

So it would be only natural for me to post the lyric of one of many love songs written over a lifetime.  But instead, I’ll post a new song, a song I’ve been working on for some time now and just finished over the weekend.

As a result of a very powerful healing I’ve just had, I decided in my life work that I needed to focus on loving people a lot more.  In purifying my thought, as I’ve had to do, it became quite evident to me that I simply needed to love more.  Now it’s easy to love The Missus more, but where I needed to focus was on the average Joe or Jane – let’s call it the people of the world – those known and unknown by me.

So I’ve been reading and studying this word “love’ and all its ramifications.

I came across an article written by a Christian Science lecturer, one Grace Bemis Curtis, C.S.B. of Pittsburgh, PA.  In it, she talks in depth about the power of love.  The article became the flyleaf of a workbook that I’ve been carrying around the house from room to room lately as I snatched a few moments to read and study between otherwise activities.

The article definitely inspired the following song that I finished yesterday and presented to The Missus today as a Valentine present.  This wasn’t one of those songs that made her swoon or tingle, but it did touch her heart and she will be singing it in good time.  It’s about the stirring of the human mind to a change of base, to a higher state of thinking.  For me it’s about getting a firmer grasp on my own spiritual sense.

Here’s the lyric:

Love Is The Reason For Living

Music and Lyrics by Peter Link

We dwell in the arena
Of immense conflicting forces
Our lives are swayed by counsel
From a million diff’rent sources
As we near each troubled crossroad
With a rising tide of fear
And wonder what becomes of us
When the tidal waves appear

We cannot help but turn to God
To summon His defense
To stir instead the floodtides of love
His sustenance
His deliverance

And so we strip away the falsehood
From the truth of who we are
And commit our lives
To innocence once again

Love is the answer
Love is every answer
Love is God forgiving
Love is the reason for living
Yes love is the reason
For living

We long to stand the summit
In the pinnacles of spirit
Where death no longer finds us
No and we no longer fear it
And the light of life surrounds us
With its infinite embrace
And love pervades our consciousness
And evokes its change of base

Love is the answer
Love is every answer
Love is God life-giving
Love is the reason for living
Yes love is the reason
For living

Yesterday, while doing my duties as Creative Director of Watchfire Music and reviewing new album submissions, I’ll have to admit I got a bit off course and unconnected with the pure idea of Inspirational music for a moment when I was reading the liner notes of a new submission.

The artist wrote, “May our God El Shaddai, who through divine providence gives them a compassionate heart…” and I got stopped on that and asked the Missus, “Is ‘El Shaddai’ from the Bible?”  Her answer was, of course, “Yes” and I’m now somewhat embarrassed to say that inwardly I breathed a small sigh of relief and went on reading because now this guy was “OK”.  He wasn’t some sort of a nut.

Inner bells went off, gongs gonged, sirens wailed and I stopped my reading again and thought about the trap I had just fallen into.  “Who cares what he calls God?” I thought.  The guy was from Nigeria.  In the Yoruban language of Nigeria God, the Supreme Being is called Olodumare.  In French He’s called Dieu.  In German, Gott.  In Russian, ???.  And, of course, in Mandarin Chineese, ? (Shén).

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What is a Cantata?

Noun 1. A musical composition for voices and orchestra based on a religious text – syn: oratorio

What is Gospel?

Noun 1. An unquestionable truth — syn: gospel truth

2. Folk music originating with African-American slaves in the United States and featuring call and response; influential on the development of other genres of popular music (especially soul) – syn: gospel singing

3. A doctrine that is believed to be of great importance

Origin: Old English godspel “good news” from god “good” + spel “story, message”

Who was Elijah?

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Just what is it?  It’s a new category being born right before our eyes.  Now look a little closer.  Inspirational Music.  I think you’ll be surprised at just how wide the umbrella is.

For decades we’ve understood the Inspirational Book category.  Look on the NY Times Bestseller list on any given week – non-fiction – and you’ll find all sorts of Inspirational books.  Self-help.  How-to.  Stories that inspire the mind and enlighten the soul.

Christian Music was about the best-defined inspirational category for music lovers until Inspirational Music evolved and emerged.  But Christian Music is somewhat limiting for some people – possibly 2/3s of our world, in fact.  Taking nothing from this growing category – it is in fact encompassed in Inspirational Music, being one of its genres.

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If you missed the first part of this series,
go to The Spirit of Christmas – Part 1

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree
Long ago and far away, even before the days of Watchfire Music, I was a child growing up on a little street in a little Mid-western town, born in the USA.  Like many of you, life was sweet and simple, filled with promise and, especially at this time of year, touched with the expectancies of Christmas.

Each year the build-up to that day of days was filled with many different elements: the buying of presents, the making of a list for Santa of childish dreams, the preparation of our house for the Holiday season, and, of course, the buying and decoration of the Christmas tree.

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