The Forgiveness of Sin

George Orwell and Reagan’s re-election notwithstanding, 1984 was a remarkable year for me. In my various contemporary workshops, I keep referencing various things that happened that year that felt of great importance at the moment and prophetic of things to come. Amongst them:

 

• My first National Music Conference presentation—NAJE (then National Association of Jazz Educators) in Columbus, Ohio and the sharing of the first black American children’s game I arranged for Orff instruments, Green Sally Up.

 

• First time working with Keith Terry and his Body Music, including performing in a show titled Crowd Control that he put together for 30 dancers, musicians and circus people. 

 

• Created Step Back Baby, a multi-media jazz performance piece combining body percussion, partner clapping play, dance, drama and Orff instrument arrangement. (Later published in my Now’s the Time book and recorded on my Boom Chick-a Boom CD). 

 

• The first multi-media event based on Intery Mintery that later became an all-school annual ritual and title of one of my books. 

 

• Completed Level II Orff Certification Level Training with Avon Gillespie and joined the local Orff chapter (NCAOSA) Board. 

• Presented at my first AOSA National Orff Conference in Las Vegas. 

 

• Learned some Ugandan Amadinda xylophone music, studied Philippine Kulintang and went to my first Balinese gamelan rehearsal with Sekar Jaya. 

 

• Produced and recorded my second San Francisco School cassette tapes of the children’s music arranged for Orff instruments titled Play, Sing & Dance, which later became the title of one of my books. 

 

In short, in that one remarkable year, all the wheels were fully set in motion for my later contributions to Orff Schulwerk through Body music, Jazz, World music, Nursery Rhymes, Ritual and Ceremony, book publishing and Conference/ Orff Chapter presentations. 

 

Does the reader care? I suspect not, inasmuch as no one asked to see my resume. But perhaps a little interesting the way that creative energies sometimes gather together in a particular time and place and things happen that feel they are moved along by unseen hands and simply have to be if one’s destiny is to be fulfilled. 1984 was clearly such a year and later, 1990 certainly was (my first teaching at the Orff Institute in an international gathering) and a few more after that.

 

But why this title? Because 1984 was also the time my second daughter Talia was born. An event that I imagined I felt as the most notable and important of all. And yet this morning, as I took out my old journals to confirm some of the happenings above, I was dismayed to see that there was no entry on November 26th when she was born. There is an entry for November 9^th at the Las Vegas Conference and the next entry is January 1^st, 1985. No mention of Talia until the last line of that entry: “At 11:30 at night, Talia fussing in the crib, Karen asleep under the covers, I offer blessings to all beings and may the forces of good ride into the New Year with us.”

 

In the next entry (Feb. 9^th), I briefly mention “taking a long walk in the Park with Talia.”And finally, later in that entry I write: “A word about Talia, 2 months old plus and coming into her own. Not enough time to absorb the full sense of having two children, but truly enjoying her now as she steps up her responses.…”

 

I was shocked to discover how little I had written about what I considered a hugely important event in my life and for the first time in a long time, felt a genuine sense of shame. I always thought of myself as someone who longed to have children and loved them beyond measure from day one on and here I was just blabbering on about this workshop or that, my doubts as to my musicianship, enjoying a walk in the Park, etc. For some brief moments, I was not the person I thought I was, the one who has been obsessed his whole life with writing my life as I lived it and in so doing, highlighting what I cared for, what I aspired to, what I loved. Where were my children?

 

And then it hit me. My wife and started journals for both kids, not only to document all the little milestones—holding the head up, rolling over, sitting up, first food, etc.— but also to speak and re-speak how much we loved them, what hopes we had for them, what future joys we looked forward to. That’s where is all was. Which somewhat excused me from writing about it in my personal journal. 

 

And so my apparent sin was wholly forgiven. Both daughters have their journals at their houses, but next time I visit, I will get them out and read what I had expected to find and hadn’t. And don’t worry—I won’t share it here! Bad enough that you had to sit through my resume and old journal entries.

 

But always looking for some universals that all can relate to. So the Cliff Note’s summary:

 

• Creative energies often gather in short bursts at special times and in special places. 

• Still doing Step Back Baby, Intery Mintery, Amanda/Kulintang/Gamelan, Body Music at my workshops 40 years later! And they hold up. 

• Writing one’s life as it unspools is not only to document and remember, but to speak more and more clearly what it is one lives for.

• Speaking directly to my kids in their journals felt like a better choice than just writing about the joys and privilege of fatherhood in my own. 

• The forgiveness of sin is perpetual.