Posted: Oct 18, 2010

MORE ABOUT THE SPRING RAIN ALBUM

When I wrote Spring Rain in March, 2009, I visualized the cover of a Spring Rain album. I went to my closet, picked out a white outfit, and asked my husband, Barry Kotek, to keep the camera handy. When the next spring rain came, I went out into our garden, got soaking wet, and he took the picture. Barry asked, Why are we making a picture for an album that has no songs? I answered, If I have the picture, I'll write the songs. And I did. Actually, a few of them were already written. TAKE THESE HANDS was the first. I needed music for a documentary based on a book I wrote: Immokalee's Fields of Hope. Too bad I can’t write music, I thought. Then I talked to another author, Maria Stone. She said, Once you open that creative side of your brain, you never know what will come tumbling out. And the music came. Take These Hands is a gentle plea for immigration reform, a desire on my part to show people the human side of farm workers. The farm workers of Immokalee inspired this song and the video that was created by Char Rowe McEwen. To understand this album, you need to know something about Immokalee – it rhymes with broccoli, and it means, My Home in the language of the Seminole Indians here in Southwest Florida. It's an agricultural community with about 25,000 migrant and seasonal farm workers, mostly Mexicans, Haitians and Guatemalans. Somehow the people there have shifted my brain from the logical side the to creative side, and beautiful things have happened ever since. I've been singing with the English choir of Our Lady of Guadalupe Church there for twelve years, now, and I wouldn't trade it for any church, anywhere. That's where I heard about SPRING RAIN. Based on Hosea, some of Spring Rain's lyrics came right out of the scripture. Hosea's metaphors in Chapter 6 are about agriculture: morning clouds, early dew, and harvests. REMEMBER ME is the story of Michael Reese, the late son of a friend from Immokalee. It’s a sad and beautiful story, filled with God’s images. Stuart Shelton, who produced the album, co-wrote this with me and added the piano and male harmonies. Raymond was in Immokalee, too, a homeless man about my age, who was truly FAR FROM MEMPHIS. He used to hang around the church grounds, and one day at choir practice he asked to play my guitar. We were stunned, because he was good – good-good – and even better on the banjo. The details in the story are true, including the fact that we couldn't save him, but I'm sure God did. And Raymond definitely touched us. Focusing on the next life keeps me in touch with those who have gone on ahead. I saw my father, Carl Thissen, one day when I was on a plane. I looked down at one of those clouds so thick you think you can step out and walk around, and there he was, sitting on a wooden bench with Japanese lanterns, playing his old Silver Bell banjo. When he saw me he smiled his beautiful smile, waved, and then went back to making music on the CLOUDS ABOVE THE RAIN. The image stayed with me, and soon another happy song came out – DANCE! The octave jump in the chorus should be fun for people to sing, and the song makes me dance, even though I don't really dance. In the summer of 2010 I played it as part of a service based on my music, held by an old high school friend, Pastor Dave Lemkuehl, at his church, the First United Methodist Church in Somerville, NJ. At the end of the service, Dave (in his flowing robes) and I danced to the back of the church as the choir sang Dance! JUST FOR A MOMENT is a gentle song with my voice and Mike Blasucci's beautiful guitar. It is slow and peaceful because of my friend Sister Judy Dohner (whom I knew from Immokalee). I was thinking about rocking up the song at the time. Judy said no, it's a meditative song. She was right. I placed it right after Dance! so you wouldn't get the impression that I am happily optimistic about my life on a regular basis. There are many moments of doubt and fear, and of little faith. When I'm reminded by something to focus on God, the feeling is so beautiful that I can't believe I ever forget. That brings me back to one of my favorite lines in Spring Rain: Remind me to remember just how hard it's been without You. OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE is the story of St. Juan Diego and the Mexican manifestation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. If you've never experienced the Doce de Deciembre or Twelfth of December in a devout Mexican community, I recommend it highly. On that day in Immokalee, at 3:00 a.m., the church is full, the altar is covered with flowers and the people are singing “mañanitas,” or little morning songs for Our Lady. At dawn, costumed Aztec dancers fill the parking lot with their music. The people drink hot chocolate and eat pastries before heading out to work in the fields. The statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe smiles from her grotto in Immokalee over at the grave of Father Richard Sanders, who served the people there from 1981 to 1985. He died at age 47 of a massive heart attack and subsequent strokes. The people loved him so much that they buried him opposite the grotto. Many think he was a saint. Some saw Jesus. I wrote his biography: Called From Silence: the Father Sanders Novel. It wasn’t easy for Father Sanders to leave the peace of the Trappist abbey he loved, but he did it because he felt called to help the poor. His internal struggle inspired When You Call, from Jeremiah 29: 12-14: For I know well the plans I have in mind for you, says the Lord....when you seek me with all your heart, you will find me with you. LOVE ONE ANOTHER is a ballad about Father Sanders in Immokalee. People still pray at his grave, where his headstone reads: Love One Another, As I Have Loved You. That is my prayer and wish for all of us. GO CHANGE THE WORLD popped out of my head so quickly that I was amazed I really wrote it. It is an inspirational challenge to all of us to go out and do what we can do to help others. You never know how much of an impact you can make, at any age, in any time. Age doesn't matter, it's a brand new day. Peace and blessings always, Carlene

Posted: Mar 27, 2009

Excerpt from Called From Silence

CHAPTER TWENTY – FINAL DISCERNMENT – 1977 - 1978 That summer, Dick and Yolanda took Masses to the migrants on Johns Island, SC, not far from Blessed Sacrament Church. One of the crew leaders, Adán Hernandez, later called his sister. “Rosa, we got a priest up here who came to the camp.” Rosa had not gone up the road for many years because she had a full-time job as housekeeper for the priests in Immokalee, Florida, but she looked forward to hearing how things were going. There was camaraderie when they met up at different camps and, in many ways, she missed it. But not the actual work. Fieldwork was backbreaking and exhausting and she was grateful she didn’t have to do it anymore. “What do you mean you got a priest?” “He came over to me last week in the parking lot by the store where all the Mexicans stop to pick up lunch. Somebody pointed me out to him, I guess, because he knew I was a Jefe, a crew boss. He came over and talked to me about if I had any crew in the area and if he could come and visit. I told him where my camp was located and then he asked if it was OK for him to come and give a Mass at the camp. I said yes.” “Nobody ever did that before, did they?” asked his sister. “No. At least I never seen nobody do it. So on Sunday I prepared the people who were around my camp and we waited for the Padre.” “Is he Mexican?” “No, gringo, but he speaks Spanish. Not great, but you can understand him. He came with a woman, too, Yolanda. I think she is cubana. She speaks perfect Spanish, but with that accent they have over there. There were two other people, too. They came in a white station wagon, I think it was a Dodge. The woman, she called him ‘Dick.’” “Well, what were they like?” “The first impression of him was that he is very serious, quiet, conscientious, dedicated. She’s real lively and talks a lot. It was Sunday afternoon so nobody was working. You remember the house where we stay, with the two trailers on the side? The one on Benjamin Jinkens Farm?” Rosa remembered. Their family had worked tomatoes on Johns Island for many years. “Well, in the back under that big oak tree where the benches are, where we sit and relax after work, he made an altar. He took a card table from his car, covered it with a white cloth and took out a crucifix and a chalice for communion. He even made a couple of confessions before Mass.” Rosa asked to hear more. “He talks soft and is cautious to speak, but he made the readings make sense to us. The service was dedicated to the people, to each individual, not to the crowd or not to the crew leader or the boss man, it was dedicated to all of us. You should see the attention that he put personally in each one of our people there. He stayed long enough for me to detect his manera de ser, his ‘way.’ He’s got a carisma, a way to reach us, a way to reach the people. He talked to every single one, asking where they came from, about their families, everything. Before he left, he talked to me again and asked me how I liked the service, and I said I enjoyed it.”