The Day After

Well, all the birthday hoopla has come and gone and it’s kind of fun to be in the middle of the dancing circle for a while, but just as nice to rejoin it and join in the singing, dancing and praising of the next person to go in. But what a circle! Really moving to read the little Facebook greetings and remember each person and how I knew them and what we gave to each other. Family, friends, neighbors, colleagues, folks I knew in high school, folks I knew in college, kids I’ve taught at the SF School these past 42 years (now adults!) and all the folks in this ever-growing international Orff community that I’ve been so fortunate to be a part of. So much satisfaction that the work that I enjoyed so much, that I simply had to do because it was the only path that made sense for the way I’m put together, that all the small sacrifices and persistent attention and constant desire to do it better paid off by not only making me a inch-by-inch better teacher, but by proving useful and inspiring to other teachers as well. In my advancing years, I’m less and less interested in admiration and adoration and fawning affirmation, but also grateful to hear that I managed to be of help to someone and help nudge them one inch further down their particular path. As others were for me.

About to dive head-first into the next community of healing, the annual Levels Training now in the Carmel Valley, the same unbroken course that I first attended 34 years ago and has grown to an extraordinary international gathering (in your face, America First!) with 6 other extraordinary and fun teachers to share it all with. One day to close out the Jazz Course, do my laundry, get to the bank, pack for the next two weeks, pick up my partners-in-crime at the airport and head south to warmer weather and less enticing food.

Found a Mary Oliver poem that seems right for the occasion of launching my 66^th year. ( An excerpt from a poem titled Good Morning from her collection Blues Horses)). Here we go:

“Bless the notebook that I always carry in my pocket.

  and the pen.

Bless the words with which I try to say

            What I see, think or feel.

With gratitude for the grace of the earth.

The expected and the exception both.

For all the hours I have been given to

be in this world.”