Dancing with God and Caesar

We most of us live in two worlds—the world as it is and the world as we would like it to be. 

The Orff Schulwerk music teacher colleagues that I know spend a considerable amount of time in the latter world, taking to heart Gandhi’s invitation to “Be the change you want to see in the world.” When the kids come in and close the door behind them, we are the gods of our own created universe where we play, sing and dance together in joy and exultation. We do the things that uplift our spirit and feed our soul.

 

 In my own case, the school building that the founding parents bought in 1969 had been a church and the room where I taught my music classes had been the chapel. That seemed fitting, as I always felt that place where I taught for 45 years as a sacred space and had the stories of all the miracles that I witnessed there to prove it. 

 

At the same time that our primary energy goes into creating, sustaining and evolving that sacred space, still we walk out of the gate each day to that other world awash in turmoil, conflict, flawed and failed human relations, as well as all the little details of this earthly life.  No matter how elevated or spiritually evolved we might feel, we still have to get the car tuned up and pay our mortgages, gas bills and taxes. How do we reconcile the different demands of these two apparently opposing worlds?

 

A couple of thousand years ago, a spiritual revolutionary named Jesus gave us wise advice:  "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's". 

 

Brilliant! In the muddled world of complex human relations, we have something called the Law (Caesar’s domain) that at its best, serves as a safety net when things go awry. When it works, it protects us from hurt and harm and holds people accountable for their actions. That act of service can provide a safe space for us to pursue our spiritual promise (sometimes called God) with the children and adults we teach. The bulk of our energy goes into creating our little piece of heaven on earth in our music classroom but it’s wise to have a good lawyer’s phone number when the hellish intrudes. 

 

In my own experience, I’ve taught in the San Francisco Orff Course for 35 years and we have, like many Orff courses, built a beautiful legacy of teachers who learned to trust their own artistry, connect profoundly with fellow teachers, experience musical and even spiritual breakthroughs and feel a part of a community that knows them, sees them, values them, loves them. Naturally, that included all the little squabbles and disagreements and misunderstandings that always are present where human beings gather. But at the end of the day, it all was swallowed up by the greater sense of joyful belonging. 

 

But in the past ten years, the chaos and confusions of the greater culture began to leak in and we had two or three severe cases of crazy accusations, psychotic breakdowns and a student threatening a lawsuit. So we invited a lawyer married to a dance/drama artist who had done some work with us to join our Board. He understands deeply our mission (my colleagues James, Sofia and I also taught his two children at The San Francisco School and both of them actually joined our Levels training as adults!) and we have appreciated greatly his help and advice. In this day and age, might we all benefit from such liaisons with lawyers? It seems to indeed be important as we negotiate our way through Caesar’s shifting demands.

 

However… While such collaboration may be essential to our work as an organization, the order of the relationship is vital to consider. We lead, they support as needed. The bulk of our energy has been and should be, training ourselves to gracefully, competently and artistically walk the tightrope of an inspired music and dance class with our children. We don’t focus on the net (other than to make sure there are no holes and it is sturdy), we don’t neglect the tightrope skills and tell the aspiring acrobat that it doesn’t matter how they walk, the net will catch them and we certainly don’t push people off the rope! We support each other, help each other, constructively critique each other. If we see one of ours doing something dangerous, we talk directly to the person to help them reconsider. 

 

We recognize that lawyers are great servants as needed but are not qualified to lead the vision forward. They are the net, not the rope or the disciplined art form. If we allow their worldview to overpower ours, we are lost. 

 

To that end, consider the following opposing worlds:

 

Lawyer —What can go wrong? Prepare for it.

 

Music Teacher — What can go right? Nurture it. 

 

Lawyer  — Hide. Don’t reveal information that could be used against you. 

 

Music Teacher— Show yourself fully. Go to the center of the circle and dance.

 

L.—Don’t talk to your opponent.

 

MT—Dance together with your opponent.

 

L.—Never apologize or admit anything.

 

MT— Apologize when you overstep. 

 

L. — Use obscure, technical jargon

 

MT —Use plain talk and poetic speech.

 

L. – Trust no one.

 

MT – Build trust.

 

L — No risk!

 

MT—Risk!

 

L. —Make money.

 

MT—Make joy. 

 

By rendering on to each what is their due and using one (the lawyer) to support (rather than lead) the other (the music teacher), we can have the best each has to offer. 

 

Food for thought. 

My Worst Class

 

I was delighted when my colleague Sofia asked me to sub for her and teach a first-grade music class. I had my game all picked out and was ready to go. The kids came in and I got them into a circle and sat down.  But then some kids got up and switched to another place. Some moved forward or back so the circle shape was lost. One just sat in the middle of the circle. 

 

I re-positioned some kids and told them clearly that no one could move to another place. And had the kid in the middle sit in a chair on the side for a little time out. Then a couple of kids grabbed chairs and brought them back to the circle. So I had to re-direct them. It wasn’t a good start.

 

Finally, off I went with a little pat and clap, but only a few joined in. I spoke the first line of the game’s text for them to echo and only a few echoed. I reminded them that everyone needed to join in. Some looked at me as if I was speaking some ancient Icelandic dialect and when we started again, they still didn’t. 

 

Needless to say, I was feeling frustrated and felt like I was herding cats. I cajoled them. “Hey, if we learn this game, we can go swimming at the beach afterwards!” I shamed them. “Kids, I have been teaching for 50 years and I’ve never had a group as bad as you!” I threatened them. “When Sofia gets back, I’m going to report all of you and you will be in big trouble!” But nothing, and I mean nothing, had any effect. Nothing was helping me get out of this nightmare of a class. Until……

 

I woke up. 

 

Walking the Labyrinth

Here’s something no one ever tells you about retired life. You spend 50% of your time living it and 50% of your time trying to figure how to schedule what you’re going to live.

Back when you were working, many of your colleagues, some of them friends, were in the same community space. You didn’t have to schedule a lunch—just turn up in the staff lunch room. Meetings every Tuesday guaranteed some time to sit together and talk, even though much of it was about business. The only time you had to think about planning or responding to a social event was mostly the weekend. 

 

And in yet earlier times, especially in towns or rural settings, you just saw the people you knew all the time. Passing them on the street or sitting with them in church or running into them at the market. There were the occasional big scheduled events like weddings and funerals, a town meeting or a concert in the local hall. But mostly you had the luxury of just casually hanging out, sometimes passing a neighbor’s house and just knocking on the door to see what they were up for and could you have a cup of tea together?

 

In today’s busy, complex world, everything feels like it needs to be scheduled. Remember when you got a phone call or called someone and didn’t say, “Do you have a minute to talk?” You just talked! Imagine that!

 

This is on my mind, because my to-do list lately is filled with trying to find times and dates when people I need to meet with are all available. Which sometimes feels like herding cats. Throw out five dates and times and you finally find one that works for almost everyone—and then the last one says, "Unavailable." Back to the drawing board. In the past week alone, I've had to organize: 

 

• A Zoom meeting about a family trust with my wife, two brothers, sister-in-law, nephew and daughter in three different time zones. 

 

• A Zoom meeting about my Pentatonic Press business with a woman in Michigan and another in Hong Kong (with a 15-hour time difference).

 

• A Zoom meeting with 10 Orff colleagues in three time zones to discuss some disturbing conflicts with the national Board of Trustees (who it is now hard to trust!).

 

• A Zoom Orff Course Board meeting with our 7 Board Member to discuss next summer's Orff training. 

 

• A date that the 9 men in the Men’s Group are available for a December Holiday dinner. 

 

• In our upcoming trip to Portland caring for our grandchildren Zadie and Malik, a summary of their volleyball schedule, soccer schedule, a time for me to come and sing with Malik’s class, a time for me to sing in a college friend’s grandkids’ school, a time to visit nearby nephew Ian.

 

•Then possible lunches and dinners with some 10 people we know in Washington in our post-Portland travels.

 

• A dinner and jam session with my non-working Pentatonics Jazz Band that hasn’t been in the same room together for well over a year! The five of us finally found a time— a miracle!

• Classes with the 8^th graders at a local school—particularly maddening because it’s on a 6-day rotation!! Every Tuesday morning? Fine. But going down that labyrinth of when it’s a red day and a purple day is harder than finding the Minotaur in the ancient Greek maze. 

 

Get the idea? The hours spent looking at my phone calendar trying to piece it all together is just extraordinary. So the punch line for all you working folks? Retirement is exhausting!

 

And I love it. 

A Parable for Our Times

The other day, my wife and I had a big, knock-down, drag-out fight. She yelled at me (yet again!) for not loading the dishwasher back to front, I countered that she’s still leaving used tissues on the kitchen counter even when I told her to stop that. And that I almost always do put the dishes in the back, but just overlooked it this one time. But she didn’t buy it.

 

Now the reader should know that I have a long history of my father always criticizing me, telling me that no matter what I was doing, I was doing it wrong. Because I grew up with the sense that I could never satisfy his demands and thus, could never earn his love, this fight was triggering my trauma and grew to giant proportions. So I did the only thing that assured me that it could be solved, once and for all.

 

I filed an Incident Report. 

 

Some days later, the woman in charge of the IR Committee wrote back and said that my wife was guilty of no wrong-doing. Suspecting some woman-to-woman bonding here and discovering that the IR head had a predisposition to loading the dishwasher back to front. I now filed an Incident Report against her.

 

She took it to another female colleague, who then accused me of being the kind of man who thinks women can’t separate their subjective feelings from their objective duties and proceeded to file an Incident Report against me.

 

Meanwhile, upon my appeal, the IR Committee agreed that they would have two new people on their staff, one a man and one a woman, to give a more impartial ruling. However, in the course of reviewing the case, the man and woman had disagreed with each other’s point of view and now a Mediator had to be called in. 

 

Back at home, my wife and I hadn’t spoken to each other for the four weeks it took to work to process all these reports and were in fact, strongly advised by our lawyers NOT to say a word to each other for fear it could be used against us in any future rulings. But one day at breakfast, while my wife was reading a newspaper, I broke the silence and said, “Can you please pass the salt?”

 

She did and then said, “Hey, the new Downton Abbey movie is playing at our favorite movie theater!”

 

I replied, “I heard great things about it. And it's been forever since we've been to a movie."

 

Then at the same time, we both looked at each other smiling and said, “Let’s go!!”

 

On the way to the movie, I said, "I don't even remember what we were fighting about!"

"Neither do I!" rejoined my wife and took my hand as we walked into the theater and  settled into our seat with a shared bucket of popcorn. Peace was restored.

 

CODA: As the movie began, Carson was complaining to Mrs. Hughes that Thomas had served a dinner guest from the right instead of the left. He was aghast.

"Such breach of proper conduct cannot go unpunished!" said Carson firmly. “But I know what I have to do.” 

 

“No, dear, not that??!! Surely not that??!! ” replied a shocked Mrs. Hughes. 

 

“I simply don’t see any other way.”

 

And so he filed an…  Incident Report.

 

And they all lived miserably ever after. 

Family Matters

As mentioned in a recent post, my daughter Kerala wrote a stunning piece on Substack about microdosing on national news and turning our energy toward local events building community and uplifting local culture. As she did organizing a recent block party for the neighbors. It was a piece that I could have written, but she did it better. She also treated herself to a solitary hike in a beautiful wilderness area to celebrate her birthday. 

 

Yesterday, my wife Karen led another in a series of trash pick-up that brought some 30 folks in the neighborhood. Changing the world one properly-disposed cigarette butt at a time. This weekend she will write postcards as she has the last 9 years to try to awaken voters to make more informed choices. A few days earlier, she went on a long hike in Marin County with a guided group.

 

My daughter Talia came to the clean-up and led some simple, fun and immediately-bonding opening activities. The kind of things I always do in my workshops that she did as well, if not better. We walked side-by-side with our fun grabbers competing for the next piece of garbage we found. The day before, she walked 7 miles starting at 5:00 am with her entire 5^th grade class to school, a monthly ritual inspired by the once-a-year walk our family took on Earth Day back when she was a kid at the school. When we returned to my house to drop off the poles, she went to the piano and played a Schumann piano piece from her childhood piano lessons that she still remembers. Next weekend, she will be camping in Yosemite.

 

My sister Ginny wrote me a thank-you card for treating her to a birthday lunch at the restaurant where we used to take my parents. She talked about her deep pleasure in being in the Autumn of her life and feeling more happy and more whole than ever before—the identical things I had just written about a few Blogposts back (that she never read). 

 

Her son Ian is in Portland doing good work with urban planning, her son Kyle is writing poetry in Austin, Texas (we have memorized some of the same classic poems), her son Damion is local in Sebastopol and doing some fine work as a drama therapist. Their Dad Jim has also written poems and other pieces his whole life and kept up with some high-quality amateur musicianship, from fiddle to tinwhistle to djigeridoo.

 

I believe all of us will be out marching in our local places at the October 18^th No Kings Rally. Also my nephew Eren and niece Zoe on my wife’s side of the family, one working in sustainable fishing and the other in the healing profession—a doctor.

 

In short, all the things that can go wrong in families, all the divisions and disappointments and failed relationships, seem to have gone right in ours. We are all moving forward interconnected in the things we do, the things we think about, the things we care about. Exercise, good cooking, time spent in the natural world, lovingly caring for children (both our own and others), eloquent writing, commitment to social justice. Ironically, not so much the music and art that have been such a big part of my life and my wife’s, but so it is. 

 

Of course, we all have our own disappointments and relationship conflicts, but they are all in a small, human-size proportion and framed inside all these greater connections. No intention to proudly proclaim us as some model family, but simply to say out loud what I so deeply appreciate. With all the energy I spend on professional “success,” I turn the camera towards these family matters and publicly declare, “Family matters.” 

The Domino Theory

Has anybody gone to the doctor’s recently for leeching? Attended a cremation ceremony where the wife of the deceased was forcibly walked into the furnace to join her husband? Took place in a stoning to death of a child who talked back to his parents? Got an e-vite to attend a lynching and bring potato salad?

 

If the answer is no, you can thank the people who at some moment in history, both personally and collectively, finally drew a line and said, “This will stop here.” And when enough people drew those lines, those heinous culturally approved and perpetuated practices finally did stop. 

 

And so. There’s a long list of toxic ideas and practices that rode in with our birth, hitchhiking on our DNA and working on our psyche, mostly invisibly, to stay alive like parasites feeding off the host. If through a radical experience called education, we can begin to name them and recognize them and question them, then we also have the possibility of refusing them. Of evicting them from our house and closing the door behind them. And then alerting our neighbors to watch out and evict their own unwanted guests, not answer the door when those wandering ghosts go from house to house seeking a new host. 

 

This kind of line-drawing is what feeds evolution, what can bring healing. It begins in the family when a child suffers from the parent’s alcoholism, physical/mental/sexual abuse, toxic ongoing criticism or apathetic neglect and then grows up and becomes a parent. Do they continue the harm and pass it down or choose the opposite path? In the image offered below—by a child!— do they keep in line so the dominos keep falling forward into a dysfunctional or dystopian future? Or do they step out of line? 

 

Here's the brilliant image and reminder that I found in a Facebook post.

Indeed, there is. But only if we step out of line. The world is waiting. 

 

 

October Song

 

Nostalgia: a sentimental longing or affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations.

     Ex.   "I was overcome with acute nostalgia for my days in college"

 

The calendar page has turned yet again to October, mine with a lovely photo of Fall in the North Carolina mountains. I put on the recording of one of my favorite groups in those college years, The Incredible String Band and listen to their poignant October Song. It brings me straight to the heart of that long-ago time and the sample sentence above from the online Oxford Dictionary is ringing true. 

 

Following the theme of these last few posts, it’s not a longing for the “good old days” that suggests my unhappiness with this present day. On the contrary, it’s simply a re-awakening of the timeless feelings that that song and time evoke. A time of innocence, of unbridled hope, of a sweet aching for life and love and happiness amidst the “falling leaves that jewel the ground and know the art of dying, and leave with joy their glad-gold hearts in the scarlet shadows lying.” (From the above song— does anyone write such poetic lyrics anymore?) 

 

The music builds a bridge to that young man with his unrequited love for Mary Giordano, that wanderer through the woods of Glen Helen choosing catching leaves over going to class, that young musician playing the middle movement of Beethoven’s Pathetique Piano Sonata to express the aching beauty I felt. What was long ago is also now, that certainty amidst so much uncertainty that this world is a place of quiet magnificence and exuberant splendor. That we belong to it and we are meant to be here. And all we need to remember it is a few notes from a young friend I would never meet. A brother seeker of mystery and wonder and delight. 

 

And here we still are, our bodies thick with years, our faces lined with the thousand and one stories we’ve lived, our hearts still beating and still open to receive it all. The leaves are falling from our limbs, but ablaze in color and rich with smell and dancing through the air in their descent. Welcome, October!