Perpetual Halloween

Witches, ghouls, ghosts, goblins, gremlins, demons, devils and zombies are afoot and fear is raining down on us all. I’m not talking about kids on the street, but the sub-humans in the government who every day are trick and treating. Treating the billionaires to free passes while robbing from the poor to stuff the rich people’s coffers. Tricking the voters to choose chaos, mayhem, bedlam, pandemonium, over simple human decency. We’re choked in the stranglehold of a perpetual Halloween that is as far from the fun of the real deal as it could be. Like the way children in Chicago wanting to celebrate their favorite holiday have to stay off the streets for fear of being strafed by rubber bullets from ICE agents. No Hollywood horror movie can come close to our current reality, a seemingly endless night of the living dead walking the Earth. 

 

And yet. Wanting to honor Jack DeJohnette (see yesterday’s post), I slipped into the rabbit hole of Youtube and was catapulted into the stratosphere of human beings at their finest. I started with the Keith Jarrett Trio’s With a Song in My Heart and the way it works on Youtube, all these other suggestions appear on the right. So on I went to Bobby McFerrin and Jacob Collier singing at Davies Symphony Hall, where Bobby later conducts a movement of Mozart Symphony, Victor Borge playing a hilarious and artful duet rendition of Brahm’s Hungarian Rhapsody, a compilation of Yuja Wang playing piano between 8 years old and 36 years old, some Herbie Hancock clips, Oscar Peterson on the Dick Cavett Show. 

Such a welcome relief from being flushed down the toilet watching bits and pieces of mainstream news, with the most despicable human beings I never hoped to imagine dominating the screen and taking me down with them. Here I was lifted up into the extraordinary beauty of hard-working artists devoted to bringing beauty and healing hope to all of us beaten-down by the zombies. That they inhabit the same species as the heartless, mindless and soulless pseudo-humans who are paraded in front of us every hour of every day, as if this is what normal people look and feel like, is a matter of great consternation. To put it mildly.

 

While we have Youtube and Facebook as free venues of sharing, may I suggest choosing wisely what you put before your eyes and ears? When despair wraps its bony fingers around your throat and starts to squeeze, some time spent with any of the above will loosen its grip. And on Facebook these days, I keep reading stories about courageous, brilliant and neglected women in history who were purposefully shunned and neglected. People like Francis Perkins who I never heard of, but wish I had. And now I have. And you should too.

 

My favorite teaching story is the spiritual teacher who said, 

“I have both God and the Devil inside of me.” 

Her student asked, “Which one is stronger?” 

“It depends upon which one I feed.”

 

So make a wise choice every day and offer the food to our children that serves their better selves, with the stories, music, dance, art, poetry that lifts them up and leads them to their own beautiful promise. Happy Halloween! (The October 31st version, that is.)

 

The Humanitarian Musician

…is the title of the new book I hope to have out by January or February. But now wondering if I should add something to it. My Facebook is filled with tribute after tribute to the jazz drummer Jack DeJohnette and the sheer quantity of people telling about their encounters with this remarkable musician and beautiful human being is something I’ve never witnessed before. Many musicians and other artists have left us, but again, I’ve never seen anything approaching the number of posts I’m seeing now. It makes me wonder why.

 

The depth and breadth of his musicianship is certainly part of the story. Everyone he has played with—which included Alice Coltrane, Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Betty Carter, Michael Brecker and others— felt the music uplifted by his drumming. As one of the testimonies described his drumming: 

 

He didn’t just keep the beat — he re-imagined it. His playing bridged jazz, funk, free improvisation and world rhythms. He taught us that the drums are not just timekeepers, but colours, textures, stories.

 

His longest running engagement was with the Keith Jarrett Trio, recording some 23 albums between 1983 and 2018. When I first heard their first recording in the mid-80’s, I was hooked for life. They seemed a re-incarnation of the Bill Evans Trio with Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian, changing the traditional roles of the bass walking the beat and outlining the harmony and the drums keeping the groove to support the piano player, who held the spotlight. Instead, the interplay was more conversational, three players improvising together as three sides of the same person. In the Keith Jarrett Trio, with Gary Peacock on bass, Keith on piano and Jack on drums, the chemistry between them was remarkable, taking the concept yet further while still coming in and out of the traditional grooves. 

I remember their playing All the Things You Are on their first album Standards: Volume 1 and feeling swept up in their collective energy. As Keith ascended in his developing piano solo, I could feel the energy behind him gain momentum and volume, like an enormous wave gathering energy and finally cresting. I believe it was Jack’s drumming that propelled it all forward. 

 

All of these Facebook testimonies—and I’ve seen at least 30 or 40 since Jack passed away at the age of 83— not only comment on his stellar musicianship, but his memorable warmth, generosity and overall humanity. One of the eulogies was from a drummer named Nate Smith, who tells this story. 

 

When I first heard Jack, I immediately knew I was seeing and hearing something distinguished, his relaxed demeanor, the fluidity with which he navigated the kit, his sensitivity to everything around him on stage. When I met him offstage I was impressed by how kind and warm of soul he exuded. The light he brought to this world is forever forged in my memory.

 

Back in the spring of 2001, just a few months before I moved to New York Ciity, my drums and cymbals were stolen from my car in VA. When I arrived in New York, someone leant me some drums, but when I told him I still needed cymbals, he said, “Call Jack!” I’d met Jack a few years earlier, first at Betty Carter’s memorial and then at a Betty Carter tribute concert. When I called him, we spoke for about an hour and he played me a bunch of different cymbals (over the phone!). A  week or so later, I came home to a box of factory-fresh cymbals, literally worth thousands of dollars, left at my door. The next time I saw Jack, at a festival in Europe, I thanked him for his generosity. “You owe me $15 for shipping!” he quipped — and walked away smiling. God bless him. 

 

There you have it. A stellar musician and a stellar human being. A true humanitarian musician.The best tribute you can pay to him is listen to his music— including an album where he plays piano! Amidst the sorrow of his loss is the extraordinary gift of his legacy. If you do choose to listen, you have so much happiness ahead.

 

R.I.P. to Jack DeJohnette. May others follow your example.

 

Greener Grasses and Redder Leaves

In some kind of archetypal and universal urge to check out your neighbor’s lawn, I’ve spent a lot of time in my life visiting friends or walking through neighborhoods with one eye checking it all out and wondering, “What would it be like to live here?” Making pros and cons lists in my head and trying to imagine myself in this town or that house or close to that other park. You too?

 

I’ve had these thoughts every time I’ve visited Portland, which I believe I first passed through in the late 1970’s. Back then, I was impressed that a city would have so many detached houses with front and back yards, each one unique and so many with large billowing trees. It seemed like a nice blend of urban energy with a small- town feel. 

 

Now that my daughter has lived here for some 12 years, I often have similar thoughts each visit. And everything yet more appealing at the moment dressed in the vibrant reds and yellows of the Autumn trees. Still impressed by the Bike to School families as I walk Malik down Everett Street, the principal at the front door greeting each and every student— by name! The restaurants continue to impress, particularly the Paper Bridge Vietnamese one an old friend treated us to yesterday where I enjoyed morning-glory greens with tofu stuffed mushrooms. (It was recently reviewed favorably by the New York Times and probably doubled its prices because it could—I was happy to be treated!). 

I’ve enjoyed the local parks—Mt. Tabor and Laurelhurst the closest—and the more distant walks along the river. For more rugged nature, Multnomah Falls and Mt. Hood are in driving distance. 

Years back, I had the good fortune to stay at the delightful Kennedy School Hotel— a converted elementary school where each room has a blackboard and a cloakroom, the old auditorium is a movie theater, the lunchroom a restaurant. Powell’s Books remain one of the Human-made Wonders of the World, Salt and Straw Ice Cream has made a name for itself and movie theaters here are still alive and well and affordable. 

 

Then, of course, the people, who first made a name for themselves in the Black Lives Matter Resistance Marches and now has started a new style of Protest Rallies with inflatable frog (and other) costumes. I have some five college friends who have settled here, many folks who have taken the Orff trainings with me down in California and other friends who escaped from the Silicon Valley inflation of the Bay Area to re-locate up here. 

 

Am I thinking of joining them? Moving to the same town as my daughter and grandchildren and enjoying all the above full time? Not really. Those greener grasses I might envy? That comes from constant rain! And the beautiful Fall will soon turn to a much colder Winter than I prefer, followed two seasons later by a hotter summer than I currently enjoy. 

For all its up and down issues, I’ve become a loyal San Franciscan and no, we can’t compete with the Autumn splendor or affordable charming housing. But hey, we do have Golden Gate Park, Marin County, Yosemite, SF Jazz Center, Flower Piano, stairway walks, City Lights bookstore, my beloved San Francisco School and our own glorious history of artists and spiritual seekers and wacky eccentrics living out on the edge of the Pacific Rim. I’ll take it.

 

But meanwhile, enjoying the Portland glories to the fullest. Especially Autumn. 

 

O Is for Orff Schulwerk

Just recorded my next Podcast with the above title. Usually, I read from my ABC book and make a few other comments, but decided to re-write the whole thing. So might as well include it here! (The Podcast is titled The ABC’s of Education and is available on Spotify in case you’re interested.)

 

I’m writing this from Portland, Oregon, as I begin a week’s visit with my 10 and 14-year-old grandchildren, Malik and Zadie. I went to Zadie’s volleyball game where her team lost after being ahead most of the game and Zadie played all of one minute. The next day to Malik’s soccer game, the entire first half in the pouring rain while we spectators huddled under umbrellas. He played the whole game and his team won. But in both cases, all the effort and energy to develop teamwork, discipline, kinesthetic skills—all good things—feel to me shadowed by the 50% rule that half the participants—and their cheering parents!— often go home disappointed or unhappy.

 

I couldn’t help but feel the contrast to the recent guest singing I did at a neighborhood school. 100% of the kids participated 100% of the time and 100% of the kids were happy at the beginning, middle and the end. Befitting October, we sang Halloween songs, making a fun holiday yet more fun. The songs we sang went beyond mere singing—kids making faces like the Jack-o-lanterns they would or already carved, select kids coming forward to conduct the scary sounds of ghosts, cats and witches— getting louder, softer, faster, slower, short sounds, low sounds, signals to stop. Knowing some kids might be disappointed they didn’t get chosen to conduct, all then paired off in partners, one conducting and the other following, then switching. No one sitting on the bench wondering if they’re ever get to play. There was a song where they had to figure out when to clap 3 times, another song where they learned how to best surprise the listener at the end with a perfectly timed “Boo!” (and the homework to sing it to their family back home) and then my favorite Halloween song where I tell a story, them singing a haunting “ooo, oo, oo, oo” between each line and then me picking the moment to say my own “Boo!” and scare them. 

 

These just some of the gifts of music, a subject historically marginalized in education and once again, sacrificed for the insanity of making time for stress-inducing, anxiety producing tests with answers to questions that no kid wakes up in the morning asking and leaving out all the questions they should be asking. Sports, with its winners and losers and cutthroat competition and big money pouring in, that the culture understands and values and when it does pay attention to music, it’s often to get the band ready to play at the halftime of the football game or turns it into the toxic competition of American Idol. And note the title.  And burdening musicians with the expectation that they are there to be idolized, pumped up by celebrity magazines and drugs and whisked away after the concerts in their limousines with screaming fans. But not all musical cultures are like that. 

 

The Orff approach is a refreshing antidote to all of that nonsense.  Its aim is to release the musicality and expressive dance in each and every one of us.  Not to monetize or win competitions or prepare for a musical career (though some Orff students may choose to go in those directions) but to enjoy the supreme pleasure of music’s multiple gifts. Not to pit kids against each other, but to connect them with each other. Not to show off what they can do for people to adore them and envy them and idolize them, but to have them perform to bring the audience into the beauty and power of the moment. 

 

A good Orff Schulwerk class begins by inviting each and every student into the house of music. Every single one is welcome and all are meant to feel at home.  And the number of doors through which one can enter are far more numerous that “Pick an instrument. Learn to read notes. Practice every day. “ 

 

The very definition of music as the Orff teacher understands it begins by redefining music. As Carl Orff himself said, “Music is never music alone but forms a unity with movement, dance and speech. It is music that one makes oneself, in which one takes part not as a listener, but as a participant…. Elemental music is near the earth, natural, physical, within the range of everyone to learn it and experience it and suitable for the child.”

 

Indeed, the title of my book Play, Sing & Dance echoes the larger definition of music. Our specialized culture leaks into all aspects of life so in our Western model, the aspiring musician or dancer must chose Play, Sing OR Dance. The genius of the Orff approach lies in the AND.  And…there are a lot of “ands.”

The chapters of my various books on music education follow the diverse range of media typical of Orff classes.  Body percussion, vocal percussion, chant and rhyme, song, expressive movement, folk dance, small percussion instruments (shakers, drums, scrapers, etc.), specially designed instruments known as Orff instruments, (xylophones, metallophones, glockenspiels), recorder, drama, integrated arts. Within all of that, there is improvisation, composition, choreography, kids creating something new, both alone and together. 

 

The Orff class, whether it be for kids or teachers learning to be Orff teachers, is wholly participatory. Take off your shoes and jump in! Whoever is in the room— this is for you! And then when you learn a particular song or game or folk dance or a piece of music, don’t stop there. When you master a piece, it’s not the end of a matter and here’s your gold star. It’s the beginning of the next possibility and you move into the exciting unknown with simple questions: “What can we do next? How to we adapt or adopt it to this place, this time, this group of people? How might we spring into new territory, making a dance to go with the music or composing new music to go with the dance? Can we preserve the piece or choreography with some graphic notation? Play it on other instruments? Compose a new section or improvise within a given section? As Charlie Parker said, “There is no boundary line to art.” So it’s a good idea to decorate the box from the inside or think outside of the box or use the box as a percussion instrument or movement prop. Are you getting the idea?

 

 In addition to all this richness, the Orff approach also offers a strong and durable foundation to introduce a vast variety of musical styles. The concerts we give at the San Francisco School include the Blues, Beethoven, Brazilian samba, Balinese gamelan, Bulgarian songs and pieces, Bolivian pieces adapted for recorder, Burkina Faso xylophone pieces— and that’s just one letter in the whole alphabet of musical styles! From Argentina to Zimbabwe, just about all music can be explored from an Orff perspective. 

 

This way of working is called the Orff approach rather than the Orff method for two reasons: 

1)   Rather than a prescribed method that all must dutifully follow, the Orff approach asks each teacher to discover their own methodical way to organize the possibilities. We have to not only choose the repertoire, but how we teach it, how we develop it, how we connect it with its larger possibilities— create music for the dance or dance for the music, use it in a dramatic context, fold it into a school ceremony and more. This is of course, a challenge. The Orff teacher is constantly researching and inventing and reinventing and this keeps things fresh and vibrant. Some teachers teach for 45 years by teaching the same curriculum with the same textbooks 45 times, but each year is unique for the dedicated Orff teacher. Indeed, in my time at the school, I created Orff arrangements on the instruments for almost a thousand pieces. When I retired in 2020 ago, it wasn’t because I was tired of teaching children or burnt out— far from it. In these last five years, I continue to give workshops nationwide and worldwide and teach kids in schools, from a single guest singing class to a three-week residency. 

 

2)   By treating it as an approach, we never rest content on our laurels, always searching and seeking. Like Duke Ellington, when asked about our favorite composition (or class), we say, “The next one.” This means we can never claim ourselves as an expert for at least two other reasons:

 

• The diverse media mentioned earlier guarantee that no one can be equally proficient in body percussion, singing, playing, expressive movement, dancing and that the wide variety of instruments to be mastered and musical styles to master is far beyond any of us. 

 

• Even if we were proficient in all of the above and experts in curriculum planning and inspired class process, we’re still dealing with the unpredictable world of actual children. They don’t care about your music teacher grammy or honorary doctorate. They delight in throwing down the gauntlet and saying with their behavior, “So you’re the expert, eh? How you’re going to deal with me!” No teacher in any subject can be an expert teacher any more than any of us can claim we’re an expert parent!

 

That’s the thumbnail answer to the question I often get asked. Hope this sheds some light on it! 

A Welcome Humility

Today ended with shopping at Fred Meyers for some wire for Zadie’s costume, a lovely Thai meal and a quick stop at Powell’s Bookstore. All in between the downpours of rain and one ground-shaking thunderclap. I then took my daughter Kerala to the airport—she has a conference in Florida and hence, our 5-day “babysitting” the grandkids. When I came back, my wife Karen was helping Zadie sew some dragon-wings on the wire. Sweet bonding beyond my expertise. 

 

Now we’re side-by-side on computers, but instead of her 14-year-old-self scrolling Instagram or checking out Eminem You-tubes, she’s working on a complex math problem involving graphing far beyond my understanding. Earlier, I played my first Boggle game with 10-year-old Malik and dang if he almost didn’t beat me! Getting high-scoring words like “loosen.” Playing HORSE, I tried a 3-point shot that air-balled short of the rim, then he took one that air-balled over the backboard! Both Zadie and Malik, have long been able to beat me in a race, any distance. 

 

Do I feel disheartened by my diminishing physical and mental skills and their steadily increasing ones? Not in the least. It's a welcoming humility. The way of the world and the proper math of aging at both ends. Of course, I’m happy that I can do some things better— play piano, beat them in cornhole, name all the states and some of the capitals. I’m not ready for the ice floe yet! But I love to watch them grow into their intelligences and talents and am inspired by these signs of their developing maturity. 

In two short years, Zadie will be driving me to the store. A few more and Malik will probably look down on me from his 6-foot-or-more self. While time’s relentless unfolding will bring a sure sadness as it falls on myself and my peers riding into the 80's and beyond, it will help to watch it water my grandchildren’s blossoming. Grateful for it all. 

 

But still I intend to beat Malik in Boggle tomorrow and teach Zadie the next part of Scott Joplin’s Entertainer. 

Into the Wild Rumpus!

And we’re off! On the first day with the grandkids, I played indoor soccer with Malik, H-O-R-S-E- basketball (until it started raining—we’re tied at H-O), 6 games of the King’s Corner card game (3-3). I went to Zadie’s Volleyball game (not so happy as the team lost the two games after being well-ahead in the first and Zadie hardly played), went shopping with her for groceries, bought her a Strawberry Acai drink and some socks and talked a bit of Spanish with her in the car. Soon off to more shopping for Zadie’s Halloween costume (bless her-heart— still in the trick-or-treat game at almost 14-years-old), a trip to Powell’s Bookstore and a taco dinner out. 

 

Here’s the happy truth. In both Zadie and Malik’s presence, in different ways, I find myself smiling for no reason. I just love being in their presence. Having just come from the Men’s Group retreat, hanging out with these people who have been in the group for 35 years— and many who I knew for an additional 15 years! — I appreciate the longevity of our shared life and shared stories. But truth be told, the chemical connection with the group as a whole is less than effortless. No one’s fault, but I seem to almost always feel that I operate on a different vibrational level. Not superior nor inferior, just different. Like notes in a chord that make a decent harmony, but not one the sings out in great beauty. It’s just the way it is between human beings and nothing to do about it—except make sure to hang out with others who instantly sing together in accord with your way of being. Luckily, I have enough people who share that music with me. And that includes Zadie and Malik. 

 

 

So from the “war zone” into the wild rumpus of 10-year-old and 14-year-old energy and happy to be here. For six more days! I know the tumult and hullabaloo will sometimes feel too much for my old-guy’s nervous system and luckily, I have a room to retreat to. But mostly, it touches my forever child and I’m ready to play! Here we go!

Entering the War Zone

I’ve often wondered if I had to enter a dangerous war zone to give a workshop or visit a friend or sing with kids in a school, would I do it? Journalists have a long history of doing just that, but music teachers? Would I have the courage? Would I be so dedicated to my mission as to put myself in harm’s way? Once there, would I be in a state of constant fear?

 

Luckily, I’ve never been put to the test. Every one of the 50 plus countries I’ve taught in and another 10 or 15 I’ve visited has been mostly peaceful at the time of my visit. Occasionally, soldiers with big guns in front of banks or at airports, but never the sense that my life could be endangered. 

 

Until now. 

 

The call has come and I’m about to enter a place filled with maniacal terrorist- anarchists wreaking havoc in a war-ravaged city. Yes, I’m talking about…

 

Portland.

 

At the airport in San Francisco, I’m steeling myself in preparation for possible encounters with grandmother ukelele players, dancing frogs and terrorizing banjo players. I’ve brought my recorder with me to either chase them away—or jam with them. We’ll see which way it goes. 

 

But this much is clear—I’m ready to risk my life so I can play Rummy 500 with my grandchildren, sing Halloween songs at two schools, have lunch with a mime I once met in India and get a taste of Fall leaves.  Go to Powell’s Books and get a Salt ‘n’ Straw ice cream cone. 

 

Wish me luck!

 

Building and Repairing

 

        “It is easier to build strong children than repair broken men.” 

-       Frederick Douglass

-        

I’ve always felt an interest in and loyalty to the people with whom I have walked along the path together, no matter how long ago or how far we walked. If I’m in physical shouting distance of them, I often make a point to meet up, be it for a lunch or home visit or walk in the park. Lately, I’ve found myself re-connecting with many from all the different corners of my life. A SF School alum who I taught 50 years ago, an impressive musician I met once at a workshop in St. Louis, an old Orff colleague I hadn’t seen or heard from in the last 45 years, an old friend from Vancouver I’ve stayed in touch with since we met camping in Big Sur in 1971. I’m about to visit a school in Portland to sing at a school where two old college friends’ grandkids attend, have lunch with someone I met in a village in Kerala, India in 1979, drop in on an old alum teacher in Washington and yet more. 

 

All of this a prelude to a short visit I had with James Fox, an old SF neighbor I hadn’t seen in the last 25 or 30 years. Our wives had met at a birth class, our daughters were born a month apart and were friends as little kids until we both moved away. Back then, James was a marketer for Augsburger beer, but his life took a sharp left turn and he founded the Prison Yoga Project, first in San Quentin and now spread to scores of prisons in 12 different countries. Impressive work!

 

It became immediately clear that we were both in the same healing profession, but at opposite sides of the field. My work with children is to get it right the first time around, to build their strength and resilience and curiosity and sense of belonging and feeling welcomed. His work is to try to repair the damage done to children who didn’t get any of that from their family, their school, their church, their neighbors, their culture and grew to adults vulnerable to belonging to gangs and becoming known by the damage they could do. For the most intolerable things are to be invisible and alone. If you can’t be known from the good and beauty you create, the second choice is the hurt and harm you can inflict on others. And I’m not just talking about the folks robbing the local corner store, but the people in the top echelons of our government. And if you can’t belong to a nurturing community, then you are likely to join a gang, be it in the local hood or on Wall Street. 

 

Through yoga, the prison inmates learn to re-connect with their body and breath and a more spiritual version of self. They learn to pause before impulsively reacting and take control of their choices. They learn the power of sitting in meditation with a group of people who become allies in the hard work of nurturing a better self. It works. 

 

But, as James said with a sigh, mostly about 50% of the time. As the book The Body Keeps the Score testifies, these childhood traumas are lodged deep into the cells/ muscles/ bones of the psyche and it is an enormous amount of work needed to rearrange the circuits of the brain and the pathways of the heart. Always with the danger of slipping back into the default setting that the trauma carved into the body and mind. Which some of the people he met and worked with and grew to care about deeply later did when they were released and are now back in prison.

Without the benefit of neuroscience and the testimonies from the healing professions, Frederick Douglass saw this clearly. A thousand times better to get it right the first time than try to repair what breaks when you don’t. Not only better for the collective health of our population, but also better economically. Over 180 billion dollars was spent on prisons in the U.S. last year, money that could be funneled into creating more humanistic and nurturing schools. It could be used for training teachers into their most compassionate selves rather than paying prison guards and wardens. 

 

But meanwhile, here we are. So people like me do what they can from one end of the matter to cultivate caring school communities and build strong children and people like James work from the other end to make prisons places of authentic rehabilitation and healing and do what they can to repair broken men and women. 

 

And then all sit down together and drink a refreshing glass of Ausburger beer. 

 

 

Where I Live

 

“Grant me the serenity to accept that which I cannot change.” —St. Francis

 

“Grant me the courage to change that which I cannot accept.” —Angela Davis

 

There you have it. The two goalposts on the field where I have played my whole life—and for both teams. It appears in my little Mission Statement to this Confessions of a Traveling Music Teacher Blog, in this E.B. White quote: 

"I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan my day."

 

And once again, Niall Williams steps in at just the right moment with his “more-eloquent-than-I- can-say-it” version of the same thought. 

 

As far as I was concerned there are two ways of living, and because we’re on a ball in space these were more or less exactly poles apart. The first, accept the world as it is. The world is concrete and considerable, with beauties and flaws both, and both immense, profound and perplexing, and if you can take it as it is and for what it is you’ll all but guarantee an easier path, because it’s a given that acceptance is one of the keys to any kind of contentment. 

 

The second, that acceptance is surrender, that there’s a place for it but that place is somewhere just before your last breath where you say All right them, I have tried and accept that you have lived and loved as best you could, have pushed against every wall, stood up after ever disappointment, and, until that last moment, you shouldn’t accept anything, you should make things better. …We lost the garden (of Eden) and our whole lives we have to remake it.

    (p. 269—This Is Happiness)

In one half of the field is music and poetry and meditation, the innocence of babes and the wisdom of elders, and don’t forget actual fields themselves, abuzz with bees and bugs and crawling with critters and splashed with colorful flowers and looked over by majestic trees and looked down upon by a night sky full of stars. The world of wonder and amazement just to behold as it is by the living, breathing miracle of your own self just as you are. 

And yes, to wholly savor it, there is effort to realizing both your own true nature and the truth of nature. Breaths to follow, notes to compose, words to cobble together into a stunning eloquence, legs to carry you over the fields of grass into the woods and the waiting arms of your Mother. None of it comes easily, but at the end is a surprising grace that, if we’re lucky, simply appears and we wonder why we’ve been struggling so long. 

The road to discovering our own immutable perfection invariably passes through the thorny doubts and wandering wrong turns of a human incarnation. It may end with a peace that passeth all understanding, but it begins with a fierce desire to change who we are—or rather, change our notion of who we think we are. To ultimately accept everything we’ve been, everything we are and everything we are on the verge of becoming. An acceptance which is never casual and requires continual renewal. As Suzuki-Roshi puts it, “You are perfect as your are, but we all can stand a little improvement.”

 

The other side of the field often begins with an equally fierce desire to change the world as created by us flawed human beings. To refuse all the toxic notions and ways of living and fictions we create to justify and hide our failings. To try to change those who choose to harm and hurt and harass, who refuse to feel and splash in the mud of their ignorance and greed like squealing pigs dirtying everything they touch. 

We eventually come to admit that we cannot change a single other human being other than ourselves (often arriving at this hard-won truth through our futile efforts to change our spouse or life partner!). But we can build the structures that house our better selves, create communities that diminish the sense of otherness and help dance together as a “we,” assist  others by guiding them to hear all the notes in the music, to see all the colors in the rainbow, to savor all the tastes. To feel feelings more deeply, understand things more profoundly, care about and care for things more vigilantly. To take seriously the old table grace of “making us ever-mindful of the needs of others” and work toward the restoration and healing needed in a broken world. To come out of our exile from the Garden of Eden and remake it through our directed effort to help and be of use. 

 

These are two parts of the same field in which I both labor and frolic and both are necessary to each other. Both are equally difficult and both are equally rewarding and you are always perpetually on your way with both, but never wholly arriving, except in gifted moments of grace. 

 

In company with St. Francis of Assisi and Angela Davis, this is where I live.

 

PS Friends, if any of you are reading this and happen to be present at my Memorial Service, please read this out loud as the summary of what I lived for and died still trying to do.