Traveling on the Wings of Song

Though I find it deeply disturbing that the left side of our national consciousness is refusing my unshakeable belief that we all belong to each other, nevertheless I persist. Why can an American play in a Balinese gamelan and a Japanese join a bluegrass group? Because we all have that inner gamelan and banjo player inside of us in potential form, alongside the Zen practitioner or Sufi poet or Slovenian basketball player and a thousand more potentials only awaiting the kiss of exposure to a person, place, book, film, recording, culture to awaken it. On that journey, it is worthy work to be aware of historical power imbalances, not as impediments, but as reminders to learn responsibly from our teachers and pay back any unearned privileges. I refuse the ”back to tribe” mentality that insists that you can only explore what your gender/ skin color/ country gave you as a starting point. 

 

And so in the past three days, I’ve been a tour guide with 27 lovely people from 10 different countries and diverse backgrounds traveling through Bavaria, Bolivia, Bali, Bulgaria, the Philippines, Thailand, China, Finland, Ireland, Slovenia, Serbia, Hungary, Ghana, Uganda, flown to each on the sonic vibrations of songs, of xylophones, metallophones, glockenspiels, recorders, voices, drums, bells and more. Each culture a shining beacon showing the extraordinary ingenuity of what human beings can do with the same 5, 6 or 7 notes. No one has complained or asked to see my official papers granting me the authority to lead this trip. 

 

If they did, I would simply share my life story and the names of all who generously shared their culture, music and dance with me and often expressed their delight that I would introduce it to children and other music teachers. When there’s a chance to invite them to teach with me or instead of me or there’s an opportunity to help arrange further work for them or pay them further for their work, I believe I’ve always chosen to do so. I’m always clear with the adult music teachers about what is patently obvious—that I’m not a “culture bearer” of each particular music, but I am the messenger who opens the doors first to kids and then to their music teachers and shows them a larger world then they ever imagined previously. While knowing enough about each style that we feel the power and beauty of the music and feel empowered that we can make such music at an elemental level.

 

Tomorrow it’s the Netherlands, Iceland, Azerbhaijan and Renaissance Western Europe. Wish you could join us!

 

 

 

The News In Here and Out There

Some days ago, when some 100 lovely souls gathered in a “Hidden Valley” to begin their work of healing a broken world, an astounding thing happened. A humble functioning adult let go of his personal wishes on behalf of the common good and genuine hope lit up the sky. It was like the finale of a 4^th of July fireworks celebrating the promise of a functioning democracy that was in danger of dying in the hands of a narcissistic psychopath supported by an alarming number of Stepford wives and husbands. And then someone else rose up who is more than a defense against our demise, but actually represents the greatest victory imaginable— a country finally ready to consider that a mixed-race woman is capable of leading us back to an America than never was and yet, can be. 

 

“Never underestimate the stupidity of the American people” has been the voice whispering in my ear for most of my adult life and with good reason. The very fact that an incoherent mean-spirited hate-mongering self-absorbed convicted felon who has already proven himself a disaster as a leader is even allowed to run for the highest office in the land is reason enough to wonder about our national soul. But the right thing happened in 2008, 20012 and 2020 and if we can awaken those astoundingly on the fence (really?), the numbers are on our side. “Our side” is not “we win” and “they lose,” but we all win because the possibility of further healing the deep wounds of racism, of misogyny, of purposeful ignorance, of unchecked greed, of environmental catastrophe, can make it onto the table as we gather to get to the real work ahead of us. The alternative is dystopia come off of the screen and the book’s pages into the very fabric of our lives. Too horrible to contemplate.

 

On the second day of our Orff course, today’s class plans on my mind, I’m aware I’m not doing justice to this theme. But hey, what happens here is my own contribution to personal and collective healing in the way I know best. 

For now, just nine deep bows to Mr. Joseph Biden, a man I’ve come to deeply admire and am now yet more grateful for. And a shout-out to Kamala Harris offering my full support to help turn the tide in her favor. May it be so!!!

  

The Lobster, Butterfly and Starfish

(My short opening talk at the beginning of our SF International Orff Course gathering.)

How do lobsters grow? The young lobster has a hard, rigid shell to protect it. As its soft body grows, the hard shell stays the same. So the lobster reaches a point of noticeable discomfort and finds a safe place to hide. There it sheds its shell and stays hidden until it grows a new one. After a time, the new one is too small for the growing body and it repeats the process—discomfort, retreating, shedding, growing a new shell.

 

So let us learn from the lobster. Feel the discomfort, don’t rush to mask it or ignore it or medicate it or fix it. Instead, find a safe haven to retreat to where you can shed the shell and start to grow the next one that fits your changing self. We hope this will be the place you can do that, in company with caring teachers and trusted friends. This can be the place to slough off the too-small covering, feel safe while the new one develops, away from the jeers and laughter and taunting of the cruel world. 

 

Then the butterfly. A compassionate person comes upon a butterfly struggling to break out of its chrysalis and thinking he’s performed a good Samaritan act, opens the casing to let the butterfly out. In so doing, he robs the butterfly of the struggle needed to gain the proper wing strength to fly and the butterfly cannot fly. We will help each other in all sorts of ways here, but we also have to leave space for each of us to struggle through the hard parts in our own way, with our own grit and determination. And there will be hard parts alongside the great fun and laughter. 

 

Now the starfish. A woman was walking down a beach filled with stranded starfish that had been washed up on the shore. Without water, she knew they would shrivel and die, so she began throwing them one by one back in the water. A man came from the other direction and asked her what she was doing and she explained the situation. “But don’t you know that there’s probably over a thousand stranded starfish on this beach? What you’re doing can’t possibly make any difference.”

 

She reached down, picked up a starfish, threw it in the sea and said, “It made a difference to that one.”

 

The lobster, the butterfly and the starfish.  Good reminders for us all.

12

12 hours on the clock, 12 months in the year, 12 eggs in a dozen, 12 notes in an octave, 12 people on the jury, the 12 Days of Christmas, the 12 Apostles, 12 Knights of the Round Table, 12 Greek Gods and Goddesses of Mt. Olympus, the 12 Tribes of Israel, 12 Gates to the City, 12 signs of the Western Zodiac,  12 animals in the Chinese Zodiac, 12 bars in the blues— apparently 12 is a powerful number. So high expectations for the 12^thyear of the San Francisco International Orff Course at Hidden Valley Seminars, a place we moved to in 2012! 

 

It’s the 41^st year of this course started by Avon Gillespie at Santa Catalina School in Monterey, moved to the University of Santa Cruz, moved to Mills College, moved to The San Francisco School and finally moved to Carmel Valley. It’s my 34^th year teaching in the course, 28^th year directing it. In 12 hours, 100 people from over 12 countries will gather in a circle to investigate who they are, who they've been, who they yet will become and who will we all be together. 

So much for the numbers. And now, let the wild rumpus start!!

The Pain of Graduation

Music teachers who graduated last year from our Orff training course are so sad. All they had to look forward to this summer was going to the beach. 

 

PS In contrast to the last post, some organized activities are both memorable and life-changing!

Out and Nothing.

Yesterday’s Men’s Group theme was summer childhoods and all of them shared two essential themes. The first was that delicious anticipation of freedom stretching out before you for the next two and a half months, that sense of release when that last school bell rang at 3:00. Freedom to do nothing, to follow your own whims and fancy away from the rigid school schedules and over-organized activities. And the second was to do so out in nature, to get out of the house and explore the vacant lots in the neighborhood or the park or the little creek that ran through the town or the fields or forests or beach at some family summer retreat. Freedom and nature— a delightful combination that all eight of us without exception had growing up in the 40’s and 50’s and early 60’s when parenting was not yet a verb and the dangers that awaited outside of the house were small and manageable and part of the excitement rather than a cause for parents to lock their doors. 

 

It's easy to wax rhapsodic, join some nostalgic cult of “Make American childhood free-range again!”, but there is great truth in its value and great sadness that so many kids growing up now might never know this. When they reminisce in their 70’s and 80’s with their peers, it will all be about sharing what video games they played or what summer sports leagues they joined. And all because of the grand failure of our culture to only wish that we be “strong, safe and rich” (the three pathetic dreams of the current RNC Convention) rather than vulnerable, adventurous and wealthy in spirit. Yes, there are things my kids had and that my wife and I and school gave them that were an improvement over my childhood, there are marvelous organized activities like my daughter's Summer Camp in Golden Gate Park (that includes a lot of letting the kids alone to explore), but I believe that my two daughters will speak of their annual trip to Lake Michigan where they spent unsupervised time out on the beach or walking through the woods to the back lake. A gift re-gifted each summer with the grandchildren as well. 

 

May I recommend that everyone read a book by Robert Paul Smith whose title says it all? “Where Did You Go? Out. What Did You Do? Nothing.” 

Accept All Invitations

A fellow musician texted me yesterday about a jam session at a café in San Francisco last night and invited me to come and sit in. I was all set for a relaxed, cozy night at home and it would have been easy to decline. But why not check it out? It was a short drive from my house and it would be good for me to throw myself into the jazz jam ring, especially after having had three really inspiring days playing my piano alone in my house. 

 

So I went. And there were two students from Brazil who are about to be in my Level III Orff training class in company with a Level III graduate from last year. A delightful surprise! I joined them at the table, listened to some high quality music in this most pleasant café, got up onto stage when my friend invited me and made it through Bye Bye Blackbird without too much embarrassment (nor too much inspiration, that I blamed on the electronic keyboard that wasn’t giving me the sound back that I like). But nobody got hurt and it was fun to get to know my soon-to-be students a bit more. 

 

Had I stayed home, none of that would have happened and that also would have been fine. But I’m glad I did it and was proud that at an age when I could be sheltering down and doing what’s comfortable and easy, I still have the energy and gumption to get out and try new things. It’s the same attitude I have about invitations to teach Orff courses and workshops— accept them all while they come. Well, some discrimination is in order, following the Golden Rule of “the work, the people/place, the money”— you need two out of three to make it worth your while. But so far I’ve never wished I had stayed home. 

 

What’s going on tonight?

  

Beyond Tribe

I’ve spent so much of my life of investigating other cultures—their religion, their literature, their myths and folk tales, their music and dance and art and celebrations, their food and more. Much has been through books, films, recordings, much through first-hand travel to some 60 different countries, much through direct study of music and much through the friendships I’ve formed traveling the world giving Orff workshops. The walls of my home are filled with artwork collected from travels, the CD shelves overflowing with music from just about everywhere, the refrigerator and kitchen shelves rich with diverse foods that I’ve somewhat learned how to cook, the bookshelves brimming with poetry, fiction, travel books and more from here, there and everywhere. All of it has become an indelible part of my identity that I claim through my interest, efforts and experiences. 

 

In light of all that, I’ve been disturbed by the trends of well-meaning people to dismiss all such cultural investigation and celebrations under the label of “cultural appropriation.” The young people in particular who have drunk the Kool-Aid that my generation has offered them (before the full development of their frontal lobes and the rich experience that puts it into perspective) feel particularly vulnerable to the idea that if you’re not Indian, you shouldn’t teach (or even practice) yoga, if you’re not born in Bali, you shouldn’t play their gamelan, etc. Not that cultural appropriation isn’t a real thing that can be damaging— it certainly is. But that this surface definition sends everyone “back to tribe” and ignores the reality of “the collective unconscious” we all share. It discourages people from moving out of their self-proclaimed identity and affinity group to partake in the universal feast of diverse people brought together. 

 

In my long career as a music teacher, I’ve developed, created, arranged and composed a wide variety of music for kids that I consider worthy of their musical promise. Equally, I’ve developed a pedagogical approach based on Orff Schulwerk and stamped it with my own particular way of making music classes more musical. The ten books I’ve written all have been a look back at these ideas and material and gathering them into that most marvelous technology, a book with a spine. Some of my books have to do with my classic Orff arrangements of nursery rhymes and poetry, some with jazz, some with pedagogy, all attempts to capture a bit of a much larger repertoire developed over 45 years. The one missing element has been something that summarizes my World Music curriculum. It has been on the back burner for some ten to fifteen years. 

 

Truth be told, I felt disinclined to pursue it in the face of this new atmosphere where a white guy sharing pieces he collected all over the world, mostly from people he either formally studied with or was friends with, was going to be seen as another case of cultural appropriation. But by refusing to share what I’ve discovered, I’m giving that definition more power than I believe it deserves. 

 

So yesterday I dove back into the work I had already done on this project years back and decided to go forward with it and not from a defensive place. I still believe in its power to enlarge both our own soul and connect us to each other in ways we desperately need. Below is the beginning of a possible introduction. People don’t have to agree with it and I’m happy to discuss it with anyone. But I believe it’s worth considering. Wish me luck!

 

“Children who sing the songs of their far-away brothers and sisters are thinking and feeling and acting out the inner lives of supposedly ‘foreign’ ethnic groups. And when they find that their notes and patterns coincide, they automatically discover, unconsciously and perhaps the best way, that their spirits and mind-patterns do likewise. If that can happen to children, there is no reason why it cannot continue to happen, more and more meaningfully, as they move into adulthood. There is a promise here of ultimate planetary oneness, of a true universality, and of the peace for which we are all desperately searching.”        - Leonard Bernstein: Introduction  Sing, Children Sing: Songs, Dances and Singing Games of Many Lands and Peoples). 

 

Written over 50 years ago in 1972, Bernstein’s hope for the promise of peace and true universality echoes down to us today. Though it may seem further away than ever in our times of deep division, it may also be closer than we think, as many have awoken to the both the need and the pleasure to reach across all geographical, cultural, ethnic and chosen identity divides.  Aided by the increased ease of travel, decades of recordings, Youtube and Zoom, the presence of diverse neighbors in previously homogenous populations and the courageous work of refusing ongoing prejudice and bias, we are beginning to know the grand pleasure of feeling all of humanity’s expressive promise beating in our own breasts. We are tasting the possibility of music as the messenger of hope, connection and mutual understanding.

 

Consider our modern musical landscape. Americans studying taiko drums while Japanese play bluegrass, playing in gamelans while Indonesians play in jazz bands, performing in bands that include djembes and digeridoos. Such crossing of music and dance boundaries is almost common practice. For anyone with a sincere interest in enlarging our definition of music, the world is at our fingertips. The possibility of becoming larger, both musically and humanistically, can be realized, is being realized, through the way that diverse timbres, patterns, styles, movements open up new parts of ourselves. 

 

One starting place for this journey in and through music and dance can be in school music programs. This book comes at the far end of some 50 years of experimentation as to how that might be done. What began as an airy vision now is rooted deeply in the ground of work done with kids from 3-years-old through 8^th grade, a grand tree branching into some 60 countries with the fruit of hundreds of pieces, songs, dances, poems, games, activities hanging from its limbs. The book is the gathering of some of the harvest in hopes that others may find it both nutritious and delicious. 

See Something, Say Something

We are here to see and be seen. To be known and to know others. Whether we attend a concert our friends give or are guests at their dinner table or teach kids in a classroom, it is good etiquette to comment on it afterwards, with an intention towards praise and thanks for them sharing something of themselves. It’s good form to let them know we not only appreciate giving of themselves, but to zero in on some beauty in their character that we noticed and left us both grateful and inspired that we know them. To give some details of a particular moment in the concert or the taste of a particular dish or how they helped their neighbor in the class or played a great glockenspiel solo. The airlines are training us to protect ourselves by ratting out suspicious characters—“if you see something, say something” and that’s fine for what it is. But let’s take it further as a guiding motto for appreciating each other and encouraging each other to keep cultivating our goodness. 

 

That’s what I try to do as a teacher, as a friend, as a father and grandfather and occasionally, others do the same for me— like the most lovely letter my colleague James Harding wrote to me after participating in my Jazz Course in New Orleans. 

It means a lot and goes a long way. 

 

So imagine my astonishment when my daughter shared a letter my grandson Malik’s friend Rangan wrote to him. I haven’t met Rangan yet, but a 9-year-old kid of this caliber is certainly someone I want to meet! As my daughter commented below when she shared it with me via WhatsAp, the boy wrote it entirely from his own initiative. (Unfortunately, when copying the photo over, my daughter’s comments obscure the last sentence, which was: “You’re a very funny guy that is very strong and full of courage.”)

 

And so I share it below as a vote of hope for the human beings of the future.

 

 

 

Pops at the Piano

It was the last day of my Jazz Course and we were joyfully romping through a New Orleans-style piece when Louis Armstrong showed up and joined us. His trumpet soared over the melee and lifted us all a few miles higher into the air.

 

At the end, he did something surprising and sat down at the piano to play a lovely ballad. No one had ever before heard Pops play piano and I fumbled for my phone to capture the moment. He finished before I got it out and off we went to play a free-wheeling joyous version of Won’t You Come Home Bill Bailey. Me back at the piano, Satchmo back on his trumpet trading 8’s with our inspired tenor sax player. I brought it all home singing the lyrics and the cadence was like the finale of the 4^th of July fireworks, lighting up the sky like Buddha’s crown chakra at the moment of his enlightenment. 

 

Then I woke up. 

Jazz It Up!

I know a lot about jazz, but I can’t believe I missed this tidbit my brother-in-law passed on about the origin of the word. It’s actually in a book I read a while back, On Highway 61: Music, Race and the Evolution of Cultural Freedom by Dennis McNally, so there’s no excuse. But check out this passage:

 

Among music’s little mysteries is the origin of the word “jazz.” My personal favorite comes from musician Garvin Bushell, who noted that the French had brought perfume making to New Orleans, and that ‘they used jasmine—oil of jasmine—in all different odors to pep it up. It gave more force to the scent. So they would say ‘let’s jass it up a bit,’ when something was a little dead. When you started improvising, they, they said, ‘jazz it up,’ meaning give your own concept of the melody…”. (p. 133)

 

I love it! I often talk about the alchemical golden transformation black musicians made of everything they touched musically. From the technique of the instrument to the style to the timbre to the rhythm to the connection to dance to the overall soul and spirit, all the things they had by necessity to deal with from the father’s European side were changed by the mother’s African sensibility and became part of this new language called jazz. It became the soundtrack of the 20^th century, described by Darius Milhaud as “the thunderclap that cleared the art sky.” 

 

Not that the European classical tradition was dead, but it certainly lost much contact with even a sophisticated audience as rhythm, melody and harmony spiraled away from the earth into higher and higher more abstract compositions. As jazz evolved, it caught the attention of classical composers, helping bring them back down to earth a bit. Debussy and Stravinsky wrote pieces inspired by ragtime. Horowitz and Rachmaninoff used to go hear Art Tatum play piano on 52^nd Street. Gershwin walked both sides of the tracks as he studied with Ravel and borrowed ideas from Duke Ellington. Charlie Parker openly admired Stravinsky and his favorite recording was with strings backing him. Leonard Bernstein also crossed the tracks in many ways, including summarizing music thus: “It’s all jazz.”

 

Never would I suggest that “swinging the classics” improves them—each genre has its own integrity and stylistic beauty. But the overall effect of jazz in America is well-described by its possible word origin— giving a perky sweet scent to the otherwise somewhat mundane and odorless. Be it music or life, let’s jazz it up!

  

The Snake in the Garden

My wife is about to go out of town, so the other day she called me into the garden to train me as to how to properly water the plants. I noticed an extension to the hose I hadn’t seen before and we had a brief conversation about it. 

 

Then today I noticed this on Facebook:

Am I being paranoid here or worse yet, hopelessly naïve that such a thing might happen? But it seems to me that with my phone in my pocket, Siri was eavesdropping and alerted the “always-looking-to-make-a-buck” capitalists that here was a potential customer. Is that indeed what happened? If so, that hose clearly represents the snake in the Garden of Eden that is banishing us from the possibility of Paradise. 

 

And stranger yet, we just finished the series Monk last night and suddenly there’s a short clip of comedian Jim Gaffigan doing a bit about how “it’s strange when you finish an entire series. You don’t know what to do…”  Could it be they knew somehow?

 

These are strange times, my friend. This cartoon says it all:

 

  

Kissing the Joy

 

He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy
He who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sunrise. 

-       William Blake

 

Let’s be honest. When the dust of the good fairy lands on our head and the world is sparkling brighter than usual, don’t we all wish we could put Tinkerbell in a cage and demand a repeat performance whenever we need it? Yet Grace almost always comes to us a surprise, an unexpected blessing, a call from the other world that is not on our Google calendar nor can it ever be. All we can do is the necessary work to invite her in, keep the house of our particular craft in good order, cleaning, dusting, repairing, setting the table and cooking the food with the tantalizing aromas that might do the trick. But no guarantee that any of it will work. 

 

For 67 years now I have been playing the piano and have no illusions about making a mark in that field. The competition is too fierce, my talent too small, the number of hours put in somewhat impressive but well below the numbers of someone like Charlie Parker, John Coltrane or Yuja Wang. But some days— like today— the fingers fly freely over the 88-key playground and seem to always land in the right place without effort. Those locked-on-the-page notes of Bach, Chopin, Debussy suddenly are released into the air, each one in its proper place. Likewise the invitations of tunes by Irving Berlin, Bill Evans, Rodgers and Hart and countless more are easily answered and the freedom to interpret, extend, dig out their essence finding its mark. 

 

What inspired all this? Partly just listening to select Chick Corea recordings—his duets with Hiromi, with Gary Burton, with Herbie Hancock. Somehow those notes in the air find their way to my fingers like Tinkerbell’s fairy dust. I happily accept it, but know that I can’t repeat it tomorrow or depend on it. But isn’t it extraordinary the way a good piece of music or poem or a painting can release the best of us? Instead of our trauma being triggered, our true nature and tremendous possibility flies out of its secret chamber where it hides. 

 

I actually have a few piano trio performances lined up in September, so this is good news. But again, nothing I can count on. It just helps to remember that it’s possible. For now, I’m content to kiss the joy as it flies.

 

Mwah, mwah. 

 

The Mathematics of Mortality

Remember when birthdays were exciting? You advance one step closer to worlds previously closed— from learning to tie your own shoe to riding a bike to entering the exciting and confusing world of sexuality to getting your driver’s license to getting to vote to getting to drink in a bar to getting to rent a car. All these milestones of both human and contemporary life that further empower you and grant you more independence. 

 

Then comes the climb over the walls of each decade—turning 30, 40, 50— that take on a different feeling, especially as you look at where you are compared to where you think you ought to be, either by society’s or your own standards. Still single at 30? No kids at 40? Haven’t recorded a hit album or written a best-seller book or been promoted to CEO by 50? 

 

By 60, you begin to feel the brush of the lion’s paw of mortality, yet firmer at 70 and then at 80 or 90, you see the claws unsheathe. Suddenly birthdays aren’t quite as fun! They seem to come around more quickly then ever and each one a reminder of that which we would rather not be reminded of.

 

For me, the sensation of my approaching demise is as unpleasant as I imagine it is for most people, but the more immediate question on my mind is: “How much longer can I keep doing this work I love so much?” Most of my colleagues giving Orff  workshops retired from their schools younger than I did and there are very few my age continuing to give Orff workshops around the country and the world. Even if they’re healthy enough and still interested in it, the invitations perhaps are not coming like they used to. 

 

Soon to turn 73, I’m happy to report that my health, energy while teaching, enthusiasm for teaching is as strong as ever—indeed, I feel like I’m at the top of my game. And for now anyway, the invitations keep coming and I happily accept them all. But the thought of it all diminishing, as certainly it will, is not a happy one.

 

And then I saw this on Facebook. It gives me hope that maybe I’ll have 20 more years of it rather than 5 or so! We shall see. If not, see you at the Elder’s Cornhole Tournament. 

Choose Knowledge

"In much wisdom is much grief. He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow."

-       Ecclesiastes; The Bible

-        

I’m reading Clint Smith’s How the Word Is Passed, his accounts of visiting plantations, cemeteries honoring Confederate soldiers, slave castles in West Africa and it’s not a happy story. Not only the horrors millions suffered in the past from the heavy blows of White Supremacy doctrines, but the determination of those in the present to keep that doctrine alive and pass it on (see the chapter on Blandford Cemetery). Indeed, this necessary knowledge of what went down and what continues to go down comes with the price of great sorrow and needed grief. Ecclesiastes got it right.

 

But it left out two important follow-ups:

 

1)   If we are to heal those sorrows brought on by human ignorance, greed, power and privilege, we have to pass through those sorrows and know the stories. That’s the social/political mandate.

 

2)   If we are to open our heart to joy, we equally have to open it to grief. That’s the spiritual/psychological mandate. 

 

We are in a time where those who purposeful promote mass ignorance and those who choose to follow that path are leading us over the cliff like obedient lemmings. Laws forbidding books in schools that tell the truth, conspiracy theories that care not for backing anything up with something as annoying as a fact, people who proudly profess “My ignorance is as good as your education” without a twitch of shame. Why do we even bother with the charade of schools and education beyond offering free baby-sitting for working parents?

 

Some of this comes from those terrified that they’ll lose their unearned powers and privileges, including their fantasy that even if they’re poor and marginalized, they might someday be in the “good ole boys club.” But I wonder if some comes from our mass illiteracy in the realm of social/emotional intelligence, our refusal to face grief because it hurts. Why read Clint Smith when one can be trolling social media and looking at cute cats? Doesn’t everybody tell us to. “have a nice day?”

 

And yet. Our refusal to look climate change in the face, to own our history of genocide and enslavement and make the long-overdue apologies, our excusing a convicted felon who openly vows to take down the freedoms so many have fought for, is about as dangerous a choice as we can make. We are literally making, as Carl Sagan suggest below, our own “Hell on Earth.” With heaven right at our fingertips, if we only choose to know. 

 

Let’s go, people. A mind is a terrible thing to waste. Choose knowledge. 

Choose Wisely

Think about this. Human beings are the only creatures in all of Creation that can refuse to be themselves. No giraffe wishes they could fly, no fish wake up complaining about the water, no alligators make New Year’s resolutions to be kinder and more compassionate. But throughout all of time and in all places, we flawed humans constantly refuse the gifts of our incarnation.What sets apart from other animals is not just bi-pedalism, opposable thumbs and language. It is our capacity to feel and think, embedded in the very structure of our brain. And yet do we feel and think at our highest level?

 

Neurology 101 tells us that our brain stem shares the same qualities as reptiles (indeed, all creatures), a survival instinct that requires no thought or feeling, just action reduced to flight, fight or freeze. That’s about the range of a cold-blooded reptile’s or bird’s or bug’s capacity, but rather than replace it in the mammal’s brain, evolution then adds another layer capable of feeling and necessary to those who nurse and nurture their young. The former lay eggs and move on with their life, but the warm-blooded mammal learns to care for another, even if only for a short time. That second layer of the brain, the cortex, sits over the first so the necessary survival instinct remains intact, but the capacity to care, to feel affection and ultimately love becomes possible. We share this with all mammals and indeed, some will testify that their dog’s love and affection is superior to their married partner’s.

 

Then come humans, those physically inferior creatures with less ability to hear and see and smell and run and fight that many of their fellow animals. For us to survive and prosper, we needed another layer of the brain capable of both concrete and abstract thought. And so the neo-cortex covers the cortex and the brain stem. Aided by language to communicate, bi-pedal posture that leaves our hands free to make things and opposable thumbs that allow for further nuances when constructing technologies, we become the Earth’s thinking creatures not only capable of great intellectual achievement, but also imaginative capacities. We are perhaps the only creatures cognizant of time and mortality who can consciously project ourselves into the future and reach back into the past, who can read a book and feel like we’re in a different time and place even though we physically are not. We are the only creatures who can choose whether to accept the full measure of our human promise. 

 

And that’s where the catastrophe begins. The Mafia hit man choosing to live in the brain stem is a lower life form and more dangerous than the rattlesnake, who at least will generally only bite you when threatened. The parents who abuse and abandon their young, the killers in school mass shootings and the gun manufacturers who arm them and the NRA members who support them, are a lower life form than any mammal on God’s earth. The scientists who use their capacity for complex thought to build nuclear weapons or invent theories of racial superiority or create elaborate Ponzi schemes to rob their fellow humans are the lowest of the low, using the inherited gift of human birth to wreak havoc, cause harm and threaten the very continuity of life. 

 

At the other end of the spectrum is the long line of those who have chosen wisely to use the full measure of our human potential, to bring, share and reveal beauty and truth and love to all of humanity. Who have wholly accepted and nurtured and cultivated our capacity for nuanced feeling, critical thought, unleashed imagination, deep compassion and kindness. They abound in our history of genuine spiritual teachers, poets, philosophers, novelists, artists, musicians, humanistic scientists whose names we know and millions who we don’t, including our next-door-neighbors who brought over a fruitcake to us at Christmas and volunteered to water our garden when we’re off on a trip. 

 

In John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, the character Lee is discussing a Biblical passage (Genesis, 4^th chapter) translated in some versions as “Do thou triumph over sin” and in others “Thou shalt triumph over sin.” The first feels like a command, the second like a prophecy. But another translation of the Hebrew word “timshel” is “Thou mayest” which gives a choice. As Lee explains: 

 

“There are millions in their sects and churches who feel the order “Do thou” and throw their weight into obedience. And there are millions more who feel predestination in “Thou shalt.” Nothing they may do can interfere with what will be. But “Thou mayest!” Why, that that makes a man great, that gives him stature with the gods, for…he has still the great choice…A cat has no choice, a bee must make honey. …But think of the glory of the choice! That makes a man a man“ (p. 301)

 

There you have it. Timshel. Choose. And choose wisely. Especially in this election year.