The Courage To Teach

Thinkin' and movin' around

"There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self."—Aldous Huxley

So I'm heavily into the throes of interviewing for a new job, trying to figure out some life-path "right fit" issues, pondering loss of the old job, and missing a dear community that is changing faster that I can predict......

The main theme of yesterday for me was the people we meet, and how we consider them, and how we in turn consider ourselves. . In a particularly busy day of getting hit in the face with lots of unavoidable decisions, I was lucky to have spent a morning chatting with a fFriend who happens to be be a "birthright Quaker". After all my extensive Quaker readings and musings, I was eager to find out how that experience was different from my intense, but brief (VERY brief) involvement with Quakerism. Very eager. Jumpy-puppy-dog-at-the-kibble-bowl eager, in fact.

Astounding conclusion? What of that life-lived-as-a-Quaker experience, seeing the world through that lens of inner light? Apparently not quite as astoundingly life-changing as I thought. In fact, in his particular case, the chronological length of his Quaker path doesn't really seem to be important at all.

The DEPTH however of that "Quakerish" nature is apparent in his every moment, every action, every word he utters. Because despite an alarmingly long list of academic achievements and accolades, he's still just a guy treating everybody the way they deserve to be treated, with kindness and fairness and equality. And maybe being a Quaker for a long time helps to form those actions. Maybe it's in his nature first to be that way, and that's why he stayed a Quaker. And maybe none of that background really matters, especially if you're the one he's speaking with!

The latter part of my day was spent discussing my own list of past experiences, in an interview process that I had suspected would be me "competing" with others for the job. It didn't turn out that way at all - I met a wonderful principal and shared some great time swapping stories of my happier moments of teaching, watching kids grow and blossom into musicians, but more importantly as the people of value that they're destined to be. Since we just finished our busy concert week, those kiddos were foremost in my mind, along with the wonderful staff at my school who I will miss dearly if I go. Those thoughts certainly colored my discussions in the interview process. I am not quite sure if that was "acceptable" but boy did it feel great. I left not really concerned about "getting the job", but so pleased I'd had a great afternoon sharing some wonderful moments of teaching.

I have been doing a lot of musing, on Sundays and I guess all the other days too, of about how meeting for worship goes so much better when I arrive already emotionally/mentally/spiritually prepared for it. I have been very aware as of late that my best days in general are always the ones that start with my 5:30 a.m. walk on the beach. I missed that walk yesterday, as it was raining, but I still got the centering I needed from that early conversation over coffee. The focus on people and not just the "stuff" of my own life helped me greatly. Apparently I was doing quite well later on in the day, still in that mindset when in that interview.

So as I look to all the open "windows" on my laptop - a c.v. that needs a little tweaking, emails from parents to my administration pleading with them to keep me on staff, an imposing deadline for an all-but-the-check-and-hit-send doctoral program application (stall stall stall), a new school song to be arranged and which may be my legacy as I leave...

It would help me to stay in this mindset, and just focus on the to-do lists not as items, but taking them each as one person at a time. And isn't it nice that yesterday I got a gentle nudge in that direction when I most needed it?

One of the most vivid experiences [of individual worship] on my part was sitting quietly for at least an hour before a picture by the Dutch painter Vermeer, and absorbing its sheer beauty... The room was crowded with people, but I was oblivious of them, as I was equally oblivious of the passage of time. As a result of this act of concentration the vision of this particular masterpiece is indelibly stamped on my mind which has forever been enriched by it. I know that my ordinary acts of seeing and observation have been sharpened by that experience. There was drawn from me an acknowledgement of the greatness of the artist and his painting and I caught, with awe, the light of his inspiration and creativeness. Further, something was given to me that I can only describe as, literally, a transcending of the normal everyday world. This quite simple secular act was for me a truly worshipful experience.
George Gorman, 1973

Sesame Street Changing The World

I can't get enough of Sesame Street. It's smart, funny, educational in a real way that kids need to see, and it addresses serious issues by example, not by preaching. From Newsweek:

But the show was never just about improving test scores. Perhaps the most radical part of the Sesame DNA has always been its social activism. From the start, Sesame targeted lower-income, urban kids—the ones who lived on streets with garbage cans sitting in front of their rowhouse apartments. The show arrived on the heels of riots in Washington, Baltimore, Cleveland and Chicago, and the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Chester Pierce, a Harvard professor who founded the Black Psychiatrists of America, was one of the show's original advisers, and he was acutely aware of the racism his 3-year-old daughter would face in that hostile time. "It was intentional from the beginning to show different races living together," says David Kleeman, executive director of the American Center for Children and Media. "They were very conscious of the modeling that kids and parents would take away from that."

In 1969, that was still a radical notion in some corners of the country. Here was a TV show putting African-Americans on a level playing field with white characters, showing them not as servants or entertainers, but as equals. (Though it should be noted that when the show premiered, some African-Americans took offense to Oscar the Grouch, who accepts his poverty rather than fighting against it, as a demeaning stand-in for inner-city blacks.) An integrated program aimed at impressionable children was too much for the good people of Mississippi. The state's commission for educational television banned the show in May 1970. Cooney called it "a tragedy for both the white and black children of Mississippi," and news reports saw her outrage and raised it. The state finally reversed itself, 22 days later. When you think about what the world might have looked like without Sesame, you can't dismiss the impact of putting Gordon and Susan into America's living rooms. Is it too much of a stretch to claim that the man in the White House might not be there without Sesame Street? "I like to think," Cooney says, "that we had something to do with Obama's election."

Sometimes simplicity is the way to go. Not just with kids, with all of us. Sesame Street was successful in defining a new "normal" in its shows. Not just in this country, but all over the world.

The Tragic Gap - Parker Palmer

Profound statements for the difficult time that we find ourselves in.

Even When God is Silent.

I believe in the sun even when it is not shining.

I believe in love even when feeling it not.

I believe in God even when God is silent.

About Michael Horvit's composition:

On the evening of November 9- 10, 1938, a notorious Nazi spasm of violence against Jews occurred in cities throughout Germany in which storm troopers and civilians vandalized property and committed other outrages of physical intimidation. The broken windows from these destroyed homes and shops became the historic metaphor for the memory of that night as Kristallnacht, “The Night of Broken Glass.” In 1988, to observe the fiftieth anniversary of Kristallnacht, Michael Horvit wrote “Even When God Is Silent,” as a commission from Congregation Emanu-El, in Houston (where Dr. Horvit served for twenty-five years as music director). In his preface to the anthem, Dr. Horvit describes the specific inspiration for the work: “Allied troops found [a] poem written on the walls of a basement in Cologne, Germany. It had been written there by someone hiding from the Gestapo. It is one of the most poignant poems I know: an extraordinary testimony of faith under horrible circumstances.”

The Silence Before Bach

Great film. Kinda hard to digest at first, a series of Bach-inspired (??) vignettes. But I liked it quite a bit, especially after singing the b minor Mass last weekend.

"Those who sing pray twice" - Bach