Fierce Protectors

 

I’m back in my home of homes. Teaching, for sure and renewing the marriage vows of my two loves, Orff and Jazz and the extra bonus of being in my old music room, that Sacred Space where I both witnessed and helped shepherd in miracle after miracle for 45 years. It is a joy beyond joys to tell the stories of some of those memorable miraculous moments and point to the place I stood where it happened. 

 

Yesterday was my second day in a row of trying to speak while the tears came forward, a skill I’ve had considerable experience in. The occasions when the waters start flowing are never predictable or planned, but a sure sign that the Ancestors are by my side and this particular moment is not business as usual, but the grace of stumbling onto something worthy of attention. The quality of listening in the room further testifies that we’ve dug down below the surface of mere fun and effective teaching strategies to the deeper layers of what it’s really about. 

 

I listened to a podcast from that wise elder Michael Meade yesterday when he talked about the need to activate two ancient and forever human faculties— toughness and tenderness. And as wisdom always suggests, we are not to choose between them, but feel which the occasion calls for and in what proportion. If we lean too heavily toward toughness, we run the risk of being hard-hearted and frozen and trapped in our own dogma. If too heavily to the latter, we can be run over by the very real forces of evil afoot in the world and unable to protect ourselves or our loved ones. We need both.

It reminded me of an exhibit I saw in the Newark Museum about the Tibetan deities called Fierce Protectors. Every day, the publicly sanctioned bullies try to beat down both the child within us and our actual children. We need a mother bear’s ferocity when protecting her cubs to hold our own not only against the obvious transgressions of civility, but our passive acceptance of robots caring for the elderly, driverless cars clogging our streets, chatgpt’s writing our break-up letters. 

 

So every day in my Jazz Class, I have my soap box moment of focused ranting and raving, preaching to the choir, but a choir that needs to hear how I talk about it and be reminded how to find their own way to speak up and refuse the nonsense all schools are foisting on both the children and the teachers. As the tears testify, such toughness is balanced by the tenderness that is equally essential to model unapologetically. When both are present, that’s when I know I’m teaching well.

 

And of course, laughter and fun as well. Yesterday’s highlight, among dozens, was teaching 1^stto 3^rdgrade kids from the school’s summer camp. Some remembered me from three years ago, the last group of 5-year-olds I taught, but many were new. No matter— we were best friends within the first two minutes of class and it only got better with each passing minute. I later told my Jazz Course students that I could apologize for expressing my feelings so strongly, but I won’t, because they are not opinions, but developed points of view crafted over the decades of trying to figure out what is really important in working with children. All my complaints about what is wrong in the world at large and schools in particular are balanced by my demonstration of what could be right as I lead the children from joy to joy, praise every little notable expression they offer, have unshakeable confidence in their musicality, their humanity, their capacity for resilience and let them know in no uncertain terms that I will be both their playful companion and their fierce protector.

 

Today we go to the other end of life’s arc and we will play, sing and dance with all my beloved friends at the Jewish Home for the Aged. Stay tuned for that report— though I can predict the adjectives that will pour forth—all synonyms of “WONDERFUL!”