Gloria Loring

Glancing out the window of a Greyhound bus, I saw a familiar-looking woman greeting a blonde teenage girl just getting off another bus. There was a long, joyous hug in the bus station. Suddenly I realized the woman was someone I had known when I lived in this area a decade earlier. At that time, she had had a blonde daughter, about four or five years old. Here they were, a decade later, but they were no longer part of my life and did not even know I was there. I did not go over and say hello because I would not want to intrude, and I couldn’t risk my bus leaving without me, besides. Coincidences are always worth the story, but do they have meaning or offer us instruction? Perhaps, at times, they do seem meaningful, even a compelling intimation that the universe might, after all, possess a purpose and a spiritual dimension.

The best book about coincidence is Arthur Koestler’s “The Roots of Coincidence.” Gloria Loring’s meditative memoir cum spiritual advice book, “Coincidence is God’s Way of Remaining Anonymous,” should not be held to Koestler’s standard, but it will do. Ms. Loring is a singer, actress, yoga teacher, author, songwriter, and charity fund-raiser (specializing in the cause of juvenile diabetes research). Her book presents an experientially-based case for an intelligent, integrative force in the universe, but its virtue is not its exposition of philosophy or science, but rather its brave self-revelation of how the lessons found in coincidental occurrences, and Ms. Loring’s acting on them, helped her to find succor and happiness through the ups and downs of her personal and professional life.

The book is one of those coincidences of which I do not know what to make. Not far into her foreword, Kathryn Peters-Brinkley recalls the first time she saw Gloria Loring sing on television and how the experience moved her. I could have written almost the exact same words. I first saw Ms. Loring in the late 1960s when she appeared on “The Carol Burnett Show.” I turned on the TV, and there was a beautiful blonde vision singing “Try to Remember” from “The Fantasticks.” I was transfixed by her beauty and the ethereal quality of her voice, as well as the instant nostalgia of the song’s melody and lyrics. I was so moved that my legs gave way, and I had to sit down. I did not even know her name yet, but I was smitten.

I only kept track of her career for a couple of years—although I did buy her first, eponymous album—before I went off to college and life happened. Not being much of a soap opera fan, I completely missed the fact that from 1980 to 1986 Gloria Loring was a soap opera star on “Days of Our Lives.” (The subtitle of this memoir cum self-help book is “Reflections on Daytime Dramas and Divine Intervention.”) She was one of nine new characters added to DOOL (as the program was informally called) in 1980, but hers, Liz Chandler, was the only one that became popular. Another achievement on the program came when she sang, “Friends and Lovers,” which generated so much fan mail that the song was recorded as a single and became a hit, albeit, done as a duet with the late Carl Anderson. I also became aware that Ms. Loring co-wrote (with he first husband, Alan Thicke) and sang the title song of the sitcom, “The Facts of Life,” but, otherwise, she was off my radar for some time before I stumbled across this book.

Reacquaintance with an idol from one’s youth is a strangely poignant experience, but finding out that she walked down some of the same spiritual avenues that I once did is nostalgic in a different way, reminding me of roads not taken. As the author recounts her experiences with coincidence, intuition (she says that intuition also is God’s way of remaining anonymous), yoga, meditation, dreams, and past life regression, I am reminded of my own past life (within this one, I mean, but I am a sucker for past life stories and would have welcomed more*). She also talks about recovered memories of early childhood sexual abuse, which, of course, cannot be anything but awful.

The author discusses the strategies she has used to harness coincidences and intuitions more consciously so as to turn them deliberately into opportunities for self-improvement and to achieve other goals. In hindsight, she realizes that she has always done this, as when she knew from childhood that she wanted to be a singer, and availed herself of every opportunity—often coincidental opportunities—to make her dream come true.

Her thoughtfulness in putting together this memoir/meditation/advice book includes the many pithy quotations she has plucked from a vast and varied literature for her chapter headings. She also tells one of my favorite Sufi stories about Nazrudin, the fool, who is found by his neighbor searching under a lamp, but when his neighbor asks where he lost the item he seeks, Nazrudin says that he lost it somewhere else. His neighbor asks why he is searching here, if he lost it elsewhere.

“Because the light is better here,” says Nazrudin.

(I would quibble with Ms. Loring’s interpretation that the “foolishness” of Nazrudin’s strategy is meant to be entirely cautionary. My favorite interpretation of the many Nazrudin stories is that wisdom is usually hidden in his foolishness. I once found a volume in a library by deliberately sticking to Nazrudin’s “foolish” strategy. Although it took me a while, I believe I would still be looking if I had used a less counter-intuitive strategy.)

Having practiced meditation in the past, I find the author’s discussion of its part in her spiritual journey more interesting than some might. Meditation is really a lot like prayer (which she does, too), though some might demur. Both practices open one to a feeling of being connected to a greater power. As Ms. Loring is clearly aware, the prayer of the ancient Christian desert fathers (and many other Christian mystics) is virtually indistinguishable from meditation.

The book is organized as a self help book to the extent that there are questions in the back for the reader (or study group?) to ask herself. And I do say “her” in light of the sixth of these questions, which is worded so as to presuppose that all readers who have made it thus far are women. I suppose I may have read a book aimed exclusively at “chicks.” (I hereby reclaim my genitalia as I exit the goddess’s temple.)

Ms. Loring’s career seems to suggest that the success that the power of coincidence leads us to cannot be limitless. The discovery that her first son suffered from diabetes focused her life and led her to great success as a fundraiser for diabetes research but left her less time and energy for maximally exploiting the coincidences that might have yielded greater success for her as an entertainer. While she did become a beloved soap opera star and enjoyed one hit single, her attempts to get other record deals tended to fall through, or when she did record songs they never matched the success of “Friends and Lovers.”

In her private life, on the other hand, Ms. Loring has acquired many good friends and evidently enjoys her family. A sore point for many years was her lack of success in her first two marriages, but she deems her current husband to be a keeper. When she encountered him in 1993, he reminded her that they had met before, in 1970. Her younger self, she realized, would not have looked at him twice (“too gentle, too steady, and too reliable”). But he remembered her, and later confessed that when they first met he had thought, “This is the woman I should be with.” Now, I am as romantic as the next honorary woman (or whatever reading this book makes me), but any heterosexual man who met the alluring ingénue that Gloria Loring was circa 1970 would have said the same thing.

It seems to me that Ms. Loring’s decision to become a traditional chanteuse—perhaps imitating her mother’s own interrupted career—probably limited her options from the start. While her contemporaries gravitated toward harder rock ‘n’ roll with varying degrees of success, she didn’t go that way, a decision that could have made superstardom more elusive than it might otherwise have been. Nevertheless, she continues to work as a singer and actress, still appearing on film and stage, including a live, one-woman musical called “TV Tunez,” which, based on taped excerpts, I can attest is enjoyable.

Ms. Loring’s choice of applying her talents and exploiting her opportunities to promote the goal of finding a cure for diabetes seems to be what she really needed to do with her life. (Aside from this book, she has published six others, most of them either fund-raising vehicles or self-help books for parents of children with diabetes.) At the same time, she clearly feels that her exploration of coincidence and intuition, while full of challenges and disappointments, also has led to greater self-knowledge and more satisfying relationships. And the opportunity for the reader to consider imitating this sort of self-realization is what she offers in this book.

* The author’s past life memory is of a male soldier who died in battle, slain with a mace in the year 1027 (presumably A.D.). Fighting occurs in lots of different places at any given time in history, but in 1027 there were largish battles going on in Japan and southeastern Europe as well as possibly France (but perhaps to a lesser extent). I don’t think the Japanese favored maces whereas Eastern Europeans did, so I suspect that the war between Byzantium and Georgia makes the most plausible arena for her past life and death.… (lisätietoja)

I became a fan of Gloria Loring the moment I saw and heard her on the "Carol Burnett Show" in the late 1960s. (For the second time today, I realize how old I am.) This is very similar to what the woman who wrote the introduction to this book says, except that she saw Ms. Loring on a different show at a different time. Still, the similarity struck me as uncanny.

Ms. Loring is no household name, though she is arguably an under-recognized pop culture figure: She was a soap opera star in the 1980s (Liz Chandler on "Days of Our Lives"), co-wrote and sang the theme song of the TV series "The Facts of Life," was married to the late Alan Thicke, and is the mother of pop music figure Robin Thicke.

This bio/memoir explores her life and its lessons. She had three marriages and a long-term relationship that taught her that what she thought she wanted was not always what she really needed. She also has followed a New Age spiritual path and has spoken out about being an abused child.

After one of her sons almost died from undiagnosed diabetes in 1979, she became a spokeswoman and fundraiser for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

I read the kindle version. Those who read the audio books version may be in for a treat as I gather (though I don't know for sure) that she sings on the audio version. She has a very beautiful voice. I did not know about her other troubles and labors before reading this book, and I see from it that there are many reasons that she should be admired.… (lisätietoja)