In this podcast we will be listening to a Campfire Chronicle from One of Those Times in a Life. Many of the Campfire Chronicles were created around songs I’ve written – this one –the 10th of 49 - used the song “I Believe” – and was first shared 8 years ago.

Overall in the course of nearly 60 years of performing, the people I have made music with have been and are more than musical partners they have been and they remain most importantly my friends – often dear and lifelong friends.

Welcome to another Podcast of Songs and Stories from home

My friend of nearly 55 years, Mike McCoy, and I recorded the song Thankful ten years ago for an album called Between Old Friends. The last few years I have shared the video and audio recordings of that song around Thanksgiving.

While I grew up in Spokane, Washington I’d been enthralled by popular folk music of the late 50’s and early 60’s, like a lot of Baby Boomers I realized my early musical education - appreciation – and sometime obsession - was bracketed by two Sunday nights sitting in front of a black and white television watching the Ed Sullivan show.

In the Fall of 2010 I’d reached a moment in my life and career where I felt the clothes finally “fit.” I also believed I had untied enough of the knots and untangled enough of the tangles of that life to be able to spin its various threads into yarns and weave those threads into what I hoped would be an interesting tapestry.

The first song on this final Podcast of the Gratitude, Grit, and Grace Concert is called “I’m Home.” “Home” has been described in many different ways. It is “where the heart is.” It is that place where people have to take you in. It was something to step off the stage at Benaroya Hall after this concert and have faith that I was finally home.

Life consists of a number of circles and spirals. Each morning we welcome and new day. The earth finishes going around the sun and a new year begins. TS Eliot proclaimed, “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”

There may be nothing more cleansing – more healing – than simply speaking and sharing truth.

Some of the most familiar words in the English language are from the New Testament. “And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.”

I have come to trust the idea that we can live a meaningful life if we live that life with an attitude of gratitude – if we are willing to offer grace and accept it from others as well as ourselves – and if we have the grit to keep going even in and through our darkest times.