Heaven Loves the Stranger ~ "mix" 2

This is one of my favorite songs and it's come up very strongly for me in the last 6 months or so. Fact is, whenever we play it all of us (Janelle Burdell, dr; Mia Huggs, bass; Lilah Asbornson, keys; and girls from various IMA Camps singing) get transported. It's not a thing you look for. Instantly, it happens. ++ The story on this is, in early 1981 I was living in LA, and the Hillside Strangler(s) had been very active. I happened to have the tv on in the late afternoon, and because it was the local news they were covering the trial ... when all of a sudden they showed the courtroom doors burst open, and a woman with a horrified look on her face came running out. It took but a split second to hear what she was fleeing from, and I was horrified too. They were playing a recording of one of the torture tapes, and I cannot tell you how awful it was, I can hear it even now. I wanted to run too! It was of a young woman screaming from the very depths of her soul, I just could not believe it. I understood so much then. How this really happens, it is real. We must all pray for the cessation of suffering, and for that my main intercessor is Guan Yin. (also, Mary Mother of God - I was raised Spanish Catholic in Manila:)) A short story about Guan Yin and our deep connection ... in mid-'81 I found myself suffering deeply, too. I had just done the Kalachakra Initiation with His Holiness the 16th Dalai Lama in Madison, WI ~ and sometime after that did a gig in Eureka Springs, ARK which might sound weird but I had many friends who had moved there, and I played their local club often; there was a slamming gay community that came in and out who, oddly enough, co-existed perfectly well with Jesus Christ of the Ozarks. Go figure! Well, my friends noticed how completely depressed I was. I didn't notice, but they kept insisting I go see a Guan Yin statue at the Nelson Atkins Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, which is about 4 and a half hours south of there. I was so disoriented by my pain that I could barely take it in but had a borrowed car and I could easily make that detour (back to LA? I don't know, but in any event ended up back in the Berkeley Hills). So there I was, at the museum. I was lucky in that nobody, not a soul, seemed to be there that Sunday afternoon. She was in a special room, and as I entered and saw her reclining against the opposite wall (she's huge!) I burst into tears. I bowed my head and wept, and she took it all in. She just smiled and accepted it all, and lemme tell you her equanimity is mind-blowing, and real ... I stood there for I don't know how long, maybe an hour, and my life was changed. For that reason, I trust her completely and she is always the first deity I go to. I bring her up in the Powa. [here is an AI explanation: "Powa (also spelled Phowa) is a profound Vajrayana (Tibetan) Buddhist ritual and meditation practice defined as the "transference of consciousness at the time of death".] Don't think of it as a downer, just because the word death is mentioned. It's a very powerful practice, and can be done with a person who has just died (the best time is in the first 49 days), before even; and within your own spaciousness, both before and at the moment of death. I Have done it with a person who just died, and saw his features relax. Again, it is very powerful. So there you have it. I am doing this mix very slowly, adding gt parts as I go, understanding as fully as I can all the elements -again partly because it is part of IMA's Recording Lab. [Which is an important piece of IMA's "Passing the Torch" in the recording world.] The backing tracks are minimal, but will come up dramatically in the final mix!! May this be of benefit. June Millington Artistic Dir, IMA www.ima.org junemillington @gmail.com