Grace Notes

By Alexandra Stoddard

Throughout her life, Alexandra Stoddard has sought inspiration from writers, poets, and people she has met. In Grace Notes, she shares this wisdom and her own learnings, beautifully captured in brief, motivating observations, in 365 daily meditations of warmth, affirmation, encouragement, and optimism. Season by season, day by day, you'll explore different themes: joy, love, loss, risk, courage, wholeness, growth, play, and success. In addition to offering inspirational quotes from many cultures and two "grace notes," each page provides space to write down your own sacred inspirations. With courage and confidence, Grace Notes takes you on a spiritual journey every day of your life—and whenever you feel the need to be transported to serenity and grace.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Apr 9, 2013
• ISBN: 9780062250087

Alexandra Stoddard

Author of twenty-four books, Alexandra Stoddard is a sought-after speaker on the art of living. Through her lectures, articles, and books such as Living a Beautiful Life, Things I Want My Daughters to Know, Time Alive, Grace Notes, Open Your Eyes, and Feeling at Home, she has inspired millions to pursue more fulfilling lives. She lives with her husband in New York City and Stonington Village, Connecticut.

Book preview

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DEDICATION

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To my godmother, Mitzi Christian, who gave me a bluebird of happiness pin when I was a little girl and who actively nurtured my quest, always with grace and love

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EPIGRAPH

"Write it in your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has learned anything rightly, until he knows that every day is Doomsday…. We owe to genius always the same debt, of lifting the curtain from the common, and showing us that divinities are sitting disguised…. In daily life, what distinguishes the master is the using those materials he has, instead of looking about for what are more renowned, or what others have used well…. In stripping time of its illusions, in seeking to find what is the heart of the day, we come to the quality of the moment…. It is the depth at which we live, and not at all the surface extension, that imports.

Then it flows from character, that sublime health which values one moment as another, and makes us great in all conditions, and is the only definition we have of freedom and power.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

CONTENTS

DEDICATION

EPIGRAPH

FOREWORD

WINTER

JANUARY 1

JANUARY 2

JANUARY 3

JANUARY 4

JANUARY 5

JANUARY 6

JANUARY 7

JANUARY 8

JANUARY 9

JANUARY 10

JANUARY 11

JANUARY 12

JANUARY 13

JANUARY 14

JANUARY 15

JANUARY 16

JANUARY 17

JANUARY 18

JANUARY 19

JANUARY 20

JANUARY 21

JANUARY 22

JANUARY 23

JANUARY 24

JANUARY 25

JANUARY 26

JANUARY 27

JANUARY 28

JANUARY 29

JANUARY 30

JANUARY 31

FEBRUARY 1

FEBRUARY 2

FEBRUARY 3

FEBRUARY 4

FEBRUARY 5

FEBRUARY 6

FEBRUARY 7

FEBRUARY 8

FEBRUARY 9

FEBRUARY 10

FEBRUARY 11

FEBRUARY 12

FEBRUARY 13

FEBRUARY 14

FEBRUARY 15

FEBRUARY 16

FEBRUARY 17

FEBRUARY 18

FEBRUARY 19

FEBRUARY 20

FEBRUARY 21

FEBRUARY 22

FEBRUARY 23

FEBRUARY 24

FEBRUARY 25

FEBRUARY 26

FEBRUARY 27

FEBRUARY 28

MARCH 1

MARCH 2

MARCH 3

MARCH 4

MARCH 5

MARCH 6

MARCH 7

MARCH 8

MARCH 9

MARCH 10

MARCH 11

MARCH 12

MARCH 13

MARCH 14

MARCH 15

MARCH 16

MARCH 17

MARCH 18

MARCH 19

MARCH 20

MARCH 21

MARCH 22

MARCH 23

MARCH 24

MARCH 25

MARCH 26

MARCH 27

MARCH 28

MARCH 29

MARCH 30

MARCH 31

SPRING

APRIL 1

APRIL 2

APRIL 3

APRIL 4

APRIL 5

APRIL 6

APRIL 7

APRIL 8

APRIL 9

APRIL 10

APRIL 11

APRIL 12

APRIL 13

APRIL 14

APRIL 15

APRIL 16

APRIL 17

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APRIL 19

APRIL 20

APRIL 21

APRIL 22

APRIL 23

APRIL 24

APRIL 25

APRIL 26

APRIL 27

APRIL 28

APRIL 29

APRIL 30

MAY 1

MAY 2

MAY 3

MAY 4

MAY 5

MAY 6

MAY 7

MAY 8

MAY 9

MAY 10

MAY 11

MAY 12

MAY 13

MAY 14

MAY 15

MAY 16

MAY 17

MAY 18

MAY 19

MAY 20

MAY 21

MAY 22

MAY 23

MAY 24

MAY 25

MAY 26

MAY 27

MAY 28

MAY 29

MAY 30

MAY 31

JUNE 1

JUNE 2

JUNE 3

JUNE 4

JUNE 5

JUNE 6

JUNE 7

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JUNE 10

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JUNE 15

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JUNE 20

JUNE 21

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JUNE 25

JUNE 26

JUNE 27

JUNE 28

JUNE 29

JUNE 30

SUMMER

JULY 1

JULY 2

JULY 3

JULY 4

JULY 5

JULY 6

JULY 7

JULY 8

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JULY 11

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JULY 15

JULY 16

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JULY 20

JULY 21

JULY 22

JULY 23

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JULY 25

JULY 26

JULY 27

JULY 28

JULY 29

JULY 30

JULY 31

AUGUST 1

AUGUST 2

AUGUST 3

AUGUST 4

AUGUST 5

AUGUST 6

AUGUST 7

AUGUST 8

AUGUST 9

AUGUST 10

AUGUST 11

AUGUST 12

AUGUST 13

AUGUST 14

AUGUST 15

AUGUST 16

AUGUST 17

AUGUST 18

AUGUST 19

AUGUST 20

AUGUST 21

AUGUST 22

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AUGUST 28

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AUGUST 30

AUGUST 31

SEPTEMBER 1

SEPTEMBER 2

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FALL

OCTOBER 1

OCTOBER 2

OCTOBER 3

OCTOBER 4

OCTOBER 5

OCTOBER 6

OCTOBER 7

OCTOBER 8

OCTOBER 9

OCTOBER 10

OCTOBER 11

OCTOBER 12

OCTOBER 13

OCTOBER 14

OCTOBER 15

OCTOBER 16

OCTOBER 17

OCTOBER 18

OCTOBER 19

OCTOBER 20

OCTOBER 21

OCTOBER 22

OCTOBER 23

OCTOBER 24

OCTOBER 25

OCTOBER 26

OCTOBER 27

OCTOBER 28

OCTOBER 29

OCTOBER 30

OCTOBER 31

NOVEMBER 1

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NOVEMBER 3

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DECEMBER 1

DECEMBER 2

DECEMBER 3

DECEMBER 4

DECEMBER 5

DECEMBER 6

DECEMBER 7

DECEMBER 8

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ACKNOWLEDGMENT WITH APPRECIATION

SEARCHABLE TERMS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

OTHER BOOKS BY ALEXANDRA STODDARD

COPYRIGHT

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

FOREWORD

Since I can remember, I’ve enjoyed writing down thoughts, ideas, inspirations and practical tips I wanted to remember and put to use in my daily life. These became my grace notes. Whenever I read something, heard something, saw something, felt something or figured out something that rang a bell inside me, I wrote it down. I used little spiral notebooks or pads, anything handy.

But it wasn’t until I found myself in a wonderful paper-supply store in Paris in the sixties—you may not know it, but the French take their paper stores seriously—that I discovered the ideal vehicle for recording and preserving my grace notes. I inherited a love for beautiful paper from my mother but over the last few decades I’ve let this enthusiasm become something approaching an obsession (recorded in detail in Gift of a Letter). That mild spring day in Paris I went from the Right Bank to the Left Bank in search of four-by-six index cards. The smooth one-hundred-pound paper invited a fountain pen to glide across its surface. I could color-code my notes in pale pink, green, yellow and blue. Even the white cards had a grid of half-centimeter squares in pale lilac or blue. I became addicted to this geometric design that spares me from facing a blank surface.

I went on a binge. I bought up the French file cards in every store I could find. Paper is heavy. Every so often I had to stop at a café, sip café au lait, relax, dream up a few grace notes and then continue on my hunt. Nothing but a closed door stopped me from walking in. I was compulsive.

A few years ago I read somewhere that the author of Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov, though flexible about his writing schedule, was insistent on using lined bristol cards. While spiral notebooks are what I use to write my books, these cards are ideal for random thoughts.

During that Paris trip, the seeds of another idea began germinating. Since my days as an art student I’ve enjoyed going to museums and buying postcards of paintings and sculpture that I have been struck by. This habit has resulted in an accidental collection. This casual, spontaneous act evolved into the idea for a book, The Postcard cu Art, in which I reproduced many of the postcards I’d enjoyed selecting over the years. Ever since childhood I’ve loved sending cards to friends with a little scribbled grace note—a word of encouragement, a quote, a thought, an insight, a question.

Postcards and my French file cards are of the same size and I have been storing both in shoe boxes, which I have found both comforting and practical. Eventually I had a carpenter build cubbies in my home to store these labeled boxes, floor to ceiling, catalogued by artist, author, and idea. These treasured shoe boxes hold great sources of inspiration for me, and, of course, they are a rich mine of useful references for books and lectures.

Readers often ask me which one of my books I like best and which one was the most fun to write. Invariably it is the one I’m writing. I love the intensity of this mysterious creative process—I look forward to the challenges, the stimulation and the illumination. In Dr. Samuel Johnson’s apt words: The process is the reality. I too am process-oriented. I love the doing, the work. I enjoy abandoning myself to the project, not knowing how it will all turn out.

I have come to understand that there are no beginnings, that everything is interconnected, and I don’t like endings. While I enjoy seeking meaning in the unknown, I am particularly exhilarated by the ever-deepening journey of discovery and exploration.

The search for truth and beauty has been going on since the beginning of civilization. As we approach the twenty-first century, we reflect on what has already been expressed that may bring light, truth and life to our own experiences. Whatever has been said before can acquire new meaning through the unique filter of our own character, beliefs, values and consciousness. Wisdom is ageless and timeless—a reminder that human nature hasn’t changed much since the Stone Age. We have always needed to eat, sleep and bathe, but how we perform these daily functions defines us uniquely. How we think and feel, what attitudes we develop, reveal our values and character.

In the early eighties, over a lunch meeting with my literary agent

Reviews for Grace Notes

[sigmundfraud · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Grace Notes: A Novel by Bernard MacLaverty is a marvelous read. McLaverty is one of Ireland's great novelist. It is the story of Catherine Anne McKenna from a small town outside of Belfast. She is a Catholic amidst the Protestants of Northern Ireland. As the story opens she now lives in Glasgow where she went to school and is not a budding composer. Her father died and she went back to Ireland for the funeral. The first half of the book takes place in Northern Ireland and it is the half of the book that most fascinated me. The second half takes place in Glasgow where she becomes a single mother and continues on her composing career. It ends with a new work of hers presented to the public by the symphony orchestra which is well received and redeems her. I enjoyed the book and recommend it especially those sensitive to Irish Catholicism.

[flydodofly · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Disturbing book about a girl's difficult relationship to her parents and herself. She questions her talent, her thinking and her heritage, her love of everything her parents and the place she comes from. She wants to be free of those influences and at the same time cannot escape them because of the love that binds her to them.Quote: A girl who doesn't tell her parents of her success is more estranged than one who conceals her mistakes.

[jackdeighton · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

MacLaverty is from Belfast but moved to Scotland in his thirties. Grace Notes is partly set on Islay, with some scenes in Glasgow. However, Part One occurs entirely in Northern Ireland to where Catherine Anne McKenna is returning to her childhood home for the funeral of her father. She has been estranged from her Catholic parents for years, effectively since leaving home to go to University. They were very strict when she was young, with an embedded sense of right and wrong, and she drifted away from them, her failure to come home one Christmas causing her father to say she would no longer be welcome. In the meantime she has, unknown to them, had a child, Anna, out of wedlock; a child whose father, Dave, “is no longer on the scene.” She still suffers from the effects of post-natal depression but has begun to ascend out of it. While back “home” she takes the opportunity to visit her first piano teacher, Miss Bingham, showing us the roots of her vocation as a composer. Before she leaves again, her mother seems to be coming round to her situation but is still aggrieved at the thought of a grandchild her husband never knew.Part Two deals with Catherine’s early composing career while a teacher on Islay, her relationship with Dave, Anna’s birth, the descent into depression, Dave’s increasing distance as his alcohol consumption gets out of control, and Catherine beginning to come out of her despond on a beach as she hears in her head a set of notes which will become the new symphony whose first performance ends the book. The portrait of Catherine’s feelings as she gives birth and the ensuing onset of her depression is finely done and Dave is a familiar enough character if a little undercooked. In the end though the novel is about music (grace notes being non-essential “notes between notes” but which add colour to a piece - the literary equivalent being detail in description of scene and action.) MacLaverty conveys music’s power and atmosphere very well and at one point deploys that tremendous Scottish phrase “black affronted”.Throughout we get the sense of Catherine as a real person. So too are her parents and Miss Bingham but Dave seemed less of an individual and more of a type. It has to be acknowledged though that there are many versions of him about.MacLaverty’s skill as an author means the book is very readable. One of Scotland’s 100 best? Better than quite a few which feature on the list.

[oldblack-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I found this to be an excellent book. That opinion, however, comes from the perspective of someone who is not: a woman; a mother; a musician. So when MacLaverty writes from the voice of a mother, and I find it completely believable, I'm prepared to concede that others may know better than me. Nonetheless, the issues raised, the depth in which they are considered and the emotions of the participants seemed very convincing to me. These are very much three-dimensional characters, in so far as we are shown all sides of them. The protagonist's partner and father of her child, is believable, but I am at a loss to explain or understand his alcohol dependence. I guess he's depressed, but is not able to adequately understand himself to be able to come to that conclusion. The protagonist's father is also presented as a rather shallow person with fixed ideas and poor relationship skills (so that's definitely a male characteristic in this book - could that possibly be true of men in general?!), and I suppose it's a deliberate point that MacLaverty is making by having the father as a publican. I'm interested in "classical" music, so the music connections in the book were of particular interest to me, especially the aspects of creativity and composition. The ending of the book seemed to me, however, to be a little to 'technical' in musical terms for this reader and I was somewhat disappointed that it finished that way. But that's probably my lack of imagination that's at fault. Normal readers would be most likely quite comfortable with the content. This was my first MacLaverty book and I'd like to read more . . . but I'm not sure that I want to read about The Troubles of Northern Ireland, and all his other works seem to have that focus.

[julie10reads · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In Grace Notes, Bernard MacLaverty has composed a wonderful piece about a talented young woman from every human angle: as daughter, single mother, victim (her alcoholic partner's physically abuses her),friend,student, colleague and finally composer! It's a book about death,parents and parenting, the Troubles, Communism,religion,mentoring, depression, passion and music.The beginning of the novel introduces us to Catherine McKenna, a struggling young composer who comes home to Belfast from Scotland for her father's funeral. The relationship between her and her parents has been strained for some years; Catherine no longer practices her Catholic religion and unbeknownst to her parents, has given birth to a daughter while in Scotland. As Grace Notes unfolds, we witness Catherine trying to find a place for herself in the male-dominated profession of composing, caring for her baby while suffering from post-partum depression, living on welfare and and carving out time to create her music.This is my first MacLaverty read: not easy, his pacing and depth need close attention. I found myself wondering how a man could write a woman's mind and emotions so authentically. Read the scene where Catherine gives birth: physically and emotionally, it's pitch perfect! Grace notes are "notes between notes" that ornament a phrase but don't count in the rhythm...I still haven't figured that one out...8 out of 10 Highly recommended

[soylentgreen23 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

'Grace Notes' is a story composed of two movements, though the second movement occurs, temporally, before the first. This seems like a strange choice, and makes the second half of the book seem somehow too expository, as if it only exists to make up for the gaps in the reader's knowledge from the first.However, it all works, just about, thanks mostly to MacLaverty's impeccable research and insights into the mind of a troubled creative woman. The story is old and not hugely fascinating, but the writing is strong and carries the reader to the conclusion in a state of grace, so to speak.