Taking another breath

and beginning a new journey with my “Breath” books

For almost a year, I have been “beginning” a project aimed at bringing my Focused Moments¹, written for use in the Sunday Gatherings at West Hill in Toronto during my years in leadership there, to Substack. It would have been easy to simply share the pieces here with a few paragraphs of commentary, but I really wanted them to be accompanied by music as they had been originally shared.

My wee poetry collections, the “Breath” books. Photo: gretta vosper

When these pieces were offered on a Sunday morning, my partner, Scott Kearns, who continues in music leadership there, would accompany me, playing underneath to support the reading. It was always the creation of something extraordinary, made inexplicably so because Scott would not have read the Focused Moment prior to the gathering, would not have a copy of it at the piano, and usually had no idea what topic I would be speaking to that morning. But every Sunday, the music brought the piece to life, clarifying both its depths and its dreams with an intuitive clarity took the piece to a place of resonance with the community that the mere reading of it could never have achieved.

It has proved difficult, and as yet, impossible, for the musical support of the poetry to be realized in the way we wanted it to be. Still, I needed to begin sharing them with you now, patient as you have been with your constancy and engagement. So, until Scott is comfortable with the recording details and has them worked out smoothly enough to really fly with the creation of the merged pieces, this first piece, and the following pieces, will be supported with open source music from online creators.

Learning-curving the process

Once I decided about going ahead with open source music, I randomly pulled one of the Focused Moments I had already recorded and pasted it into my MacBook’s GarageBand app. Then I went looking for open source music, background tracks that are free to use, some requiring attribution and others not. The one I found, Nebula from LofiDreams, had a dreamy sort of soundscape that that I thought would work for any one of my pieces and downloaded it. GarageBand is such a cool program. All I had to do once I’d downloaded Nebula was paste it into the the app and I was ready to go. Turned out, it was perfect.

putting the focus on cadence and timing

Of course, “Ready to go” often means the start of a long learning curve. I’d not really used GarageBand in all the time I’ve had my reliable MacBook Air, purchased with an excess of “points” several years ago. But the beauty of learning anything computer-ish nowadays is that you’re never left alone with whatever the tech department wrote in the “Help” section. There are Geek Gods out there making and posting videos that can show you how to do anything. Those gods, the only ones I’ll ever come close to worshipping, hosted a more-or-less pleasant but very passive (on their part) meet-and-greet for me and my Garageband app.

Yeah. It took time. Screenshot, GarageBand.

A first success, and then …

Within a few hours, I had the audio of the first poem of the project ready to post. And Nebula, the music I’d downloaded, turned out to be more than perfect, its music serendipitously meeting the cadence and timing of the poem perfectly. If we’re able to record Scott’s music in the future, we’ll be able to provide something much truer to the original offering made to the West Hill community each week. I look forward to sharing that experience with you.

So, yes, the first experience of conquering the audio tech was exhilarating! But, if you have that “don’t know when to stop” gene variant I am certain I inherited from both parents, you’ll know how these things go. As soon as you’re finished, there’s another great idea emerges!

Here’s what that idea sounded like in the less-than-a-second it took to send me off on another quest. “What if the audio was the soundtrack for a video!?! How cool would that be?!!”

And…. that took more time, another learning curve, more frustration, and more finessing. But don’t think I didn’t love every second of it. I did.

Random

What was finally created for the first Focused Moment is a simple slide show with a single photo that remains on screen through the whole piece. Yeah. The video curve was a little longer than I wanted to give it, but I’ll get there. Eventually, the time I spent learning the process will unfold with more interesting videos, photos chosen from my stash that are more pertinent to the text, and a lot less time putting it together. (And, perhaps, I’ll even learn an easier way to do it!)

The plan for the project has always included the addition of an accompanying text. I’ll have to write those fresh, not associated with the readings or materials of the services for which they were written and during which they were read and accompanied. Most clergy keep records of their services - the readings used, the texts in which the service was grounded, the hymns chosen and the prayers offered. But I failed to maintain much of a record of my services. Always struggling to follow a complete text when preaching, I learned fairly early to create an outline and simply go from there, allowing my thoughts to emerge in the order in which they arrived on Sunday morning, not Thursday afternoon.²

Nova Scotia sky, July 2025. Photo: Gretta Vosper

When I gave my Perspective(s) in a Sunday service, they came, extemporare, from a simple list of the things about which I wished to speak in relation to the theme and the readings. They were linked to the realities unfolding around and within us at that particular moment in global and personal reality. A week later, those few bullet points would have meant little to me. Though there may be a few stored Word documents that have more detail than others, for the most part, I’d not be able to tie a single Focused Moment to any one particular Sunday’s theme. I’ve no titles for my Perspective(s), and no notes on what I said, not that they’d mean anything to me these many years, and many global shifts in topics of concern, later. My ADD over-wrote all that as soon as I began prepping for the next Sunday’s Gathering. I know that because of my inability to respond to anyone who, the following week, commented on that particular Perspective(s); by then, I had no recollection of what I’d said the week before.

potential background, a placemat made of discarded saris. Photo: gretta vosper

All of which is to say: Monday. I’ll post the poem accompanied by a reflection, on Monday. The choice of Focused Moment was entirely random. As I type, I couldn’t even tell you what in year I wrote it. This post, my friends, is simply an expression of my deep, deep gratitude to you for your patience. Thank you for the space you’ve allowed and the courage and support it provided me.

You rock. Thank you for being with me on the journey.

1. I have a collection of books I call my “Breath” books from which poems will be selected and recorded: Holy Breath; Another Breath; We All Breathe; and Take a Deep Breath.

2. This failure to be able to maintain records or keep to a written text is, I believe, the reality of an ADD mind. I know that now, but I didn’t know it then. I simply knew that a text made me anxious, certain I’d lose my place, or worse, riff on some thought and not find my way back to where I’d been. My ADD is, in fact, what made me comfortable as a public speaker because it prevent me from following a script. It made me brave enough to speak from my knowledge and my heart.