Baptism and Preaching

In a letter lamenting the loss of understanding the value of the arts back in the early 1900's, the poet W.B. Yeats suggested, “We must baptize as well as preach.”

 

This came to mind an interview I had with someone asking what advice I would give a teacher about developing “intercultural teaching competency.” My initial response was simple: “Keep an open heart and mind and a lifelong curiosity.” There simply is no curriculum, stepped-program, sure-fire method to be gathered, packaged, marketed, sold, bought and implemented. If there was, it would be sure to fail, for without direct experience of the supreme pleasure of investigating the other until you finally realize it has been part of you all along, you’re just skimming the surface. And if I presumed to give “advice” or a series of steps, it would feel like a “should-do/ must-do/ pedagogically-politically-socially-correct way” that you will be evaluated on and judged by. 

 

Instead, I suggested that a music teacher reflect on a different style of music or dance that somehow attracts them and follow that thread. Listen to it, go to concerts, read about it and then see if there’s someone in your area who teaches it (you’d be amazed how often there is someone, especially in the urban areas). Or perhaps you’ve noticed an intriguing instrument far different from your area of expertise. It might be a didjeridoo or shakuhachi flute or steel drum or Irish bagpipe or Bolivian panpipe— hundreds of choices out there! Get studying! And then see where all of that leads you in your own teaching. 

For me, every such study— all of them far short of mastery and virtuosity— influenced the pieces I adapted for the Orff Ensemble. My various studies in Philippine Kulintang, Indian maddalam drum, Balinese gamelan, Trinidad steel drum, Irish tinwhistle, Bulgarian bagpipe, Brazilian percussion, Ghanaian xylophone, American banjo and yet more not only brought fabulous music (and sometimes dance) to the kids that expanded their ears far beyond the Western norm but brought me such great pleasure keeping my own musicality challenged and enlarged. Not to mention getting to know many marvelous teachers from diverse traditions who also connected me to the wonderful cultures that birthed the music. 

 

All of this also found its way directly into my Level III Orff program and I believe that all the students felt the rewards of such a diverse immersion in familiar Orff scales and textures and instruments and ways of learning. Thinking of the Yeats quote, it indeed felt like a baptism in the refreshing waters of “the other” that was wholly necessary before any “preaching” made sense. And little preaching is needed—at least not the kind meant to convert, cajole, connive to accept the missionary dogma—when one has experienced first-hand the blessing of immersion in the sacred waters. 

 

Here on Lake Michigan, a different kind of baptism is at work. As I have every summer for some 50 years, I jumped into the lake’s cool and refreshing waters and felt the Spirit re-awakened. I listened to the preaching of the sea gulls and the breeze through the grasses and that is the only sermon I need. No testimony of the faithful proclaiming salvation, just the patient presence of Petoskey stones speaking silently of the holy Spirit that lives and breathes inside of all things. It’s enough. It’s more than enough.