Petitioning Together

And so we finished the first week of our Orff Course with our traditional “Thank God It’s Friday” canon. Dinner out in town and back to the campus to see the opening of the Olympics. Here we were, gathered in this magical spot in Carmel Valley in a course that over the years has hosted people from 44 countries, so it seemed fitting to peek in on this other larger gathering. 

 

But the price was high—10 minutes of cheering for the boats gliding down the Seine in alphabetical order or watching some Hollywood-glitzy choreographed dance/ music followed by 10 minutes of boring ads repeated each time. The 10/10 ratio was grueling, anti-musical, unsatisfying and ultimately boring. So to pick up the pace, I spontaneously invented a game in which I tried to predict which country would come next in the alphabet (no cheating on the phone!) and if I got it right, my new friend Mark had to take a sip of wine. Fellow teachers Sofia and Eloi got into the game and it was a good brain work-out to mentally scan the world’s countries and try to come up with the right answer. Which we did surprisingly well. 

 

Another game we could have played was to sing a song from each country represented. In just these five days of two 45-minute classes daily, my Level III alone has done music from the U.S., England, Germany, the Philippines, Bolivia, Finland, Ireland, Thailand, Bali, China, Ghana, Uganda, Slovenia, Hungary, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Azerbaijan, Zimbabwe, Netherlands. (That unusual order represents the melodic/harmonic sequence we are following). Pretty impressive list for the music educators I hope we can be!

 

I finally gave up at the letter P—it was getting late and I just couldn’t stand to see the roofers commercial again. So much happier being in this small human-sized community of some 100 beautiful souls that in the big spectacle of thousands with the cameras rolling 24/7. But hoping that the unity of these extraordinary athletes who recognize their shared lives of intense training to go beyond any physical norm does its part to heal division. I hope they and the world remember that the root of the word “competition” is to “petition with,” to understand that in appearing to compete against each other, they’re spurring each other on to greater heights in service of the same gods that they are petitioning for blessing and success. 

 

Of course, all the public cares about is “Who won the most medals?!”, which is why I also prefer this community of teacher/artists. We also are petitioning the same gods of artistic expression married to love for teaching children, but nobody wins here by “beating another.” The only winning is emerging yet more fully from our chrysalis from our own efforts, of using the safe space to build the shell that can house our larger self, of throwing each other into the waters that gives us life and is our true home. (See the Lobster, Butterfly, Starfish Blog post).

 

And at the end of the first week, I’m happy to report that is exactly what we are doing.