One Small Voice

In preparation for our upcoming Sesame Place trip, we've been listening to lots of music from the show. This is my favorite, for it speaks to me every day....

Every song the

World sings, each

Was once unknown

Somebody felt a song

Inside and wasn't

Afraid to sing alone

If you feel the music

And you sing it clear

And true

Then the world can

Sing with you

One small voice can

Teach the world a song

Start with one small

Voice till another

Sings along

And then you'll feel the

Music growing full and

Sure and strong

One small voice can

Teach the world a song

No tune is too simple

No voice can

Be wrong

Music can come from

Any heart and anyone's

Voice can lead

The song

If you feel the music

And if you believe

The words

Sing and you'll

Be heard

One small voice can

Teach the world a song

Start with one small

Voice till another

Sings along

And then you'll feel the

Music growing full and

Sure and strong

One small voice can

Teach the world a song

Change. Just change.

“For as long as you can remember, you have been a pleaser, depending on others to give you an identity. You need not look at that only in a negative way. You wanted to give your heart to others, and you did so quickly and easily. But now you are being asked to let go of all these self-made props and trust that God is enough for you. You must stop being a pleaser and reclaim your identity as a free self.” -Henri Nouwen

So.... in a surprising development, I lost a part-time job that did not bring out the best in me. One that constantly forced me to do things that I thought did not help the organization I was working for, and as "just" a paid employee I felt it best not to interfere. The money situation will be tight, until I find more work, but I think that will happen.

I spent a day feeling very down - how had I failed them, what could I have done better/differently, etc. But truly, it was a financial issue plain and simple. Yet, I was surprised even with that knowledge at how my first instinct was to assume I was wrong, inadequate, not "enough".

Today at the beach I was greeted by a refreshing, yet tumultuous sea. As often happens, the waves' crashing and banging matched my mood. I felt I could not center, could not sit quietly, with all that racket. Maybe today the message was that sometimes the racket is okay. Perhaps I don't need every moment to be a "big" experience of value. Maybe just sitting and listening to what the sea had to share with me was enough for today. Because perhaps today I don't need any messages of improvement and enlightenment. Perhaps I should just be doing the sitting, in whatever way it comes to me.

Instead of Making Art

"Most of us spend many hours each week watching celebrated athletes playing in enormous stadiums. Instead of making music, we listen to platinum records cut by millionaire musicians. Instead of making art, we go to admire paintings that brought in the highest bids at the latest auction. We do not run risks acting on our beliefs, but occupy hours each day watching actors who pretend to have adventures, engaged in mock-meaningful action.

This vicarious participation is able to mask, at least temporarily, the underlying emptiness of wasted time. But it is a very pale substitute for attention invested in real challenges. The flow experience that results from the use of skills leads to growth; passive entertainment leads nowhere. Collectively we are wasting each year the equivalent of millions of years of human consciousness. The energy that could be used to focus on complex goals, to provide enjoyable growth, is squandered on patterns of stimulation that only mimic reality."

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Messages when/where you need them....

or... "Where will you be in five years?" - part two.

Still working out the question. Or... it's really the wrong question. The more appropriate, life-affirming, enlightening, accurate question is:

WHO will I be in five years?

I've got at least a shot a the answer to that one. And quite frankly, isn't that the more important angle? I have little control over there wheres and whys of my future - we all make decisions on where we hope to be, even plan to be, but how often are we there in the ways we planned on? And if we do end up exactly where we want to, is that destination based on limited knowledge? I certainly hope five years from now, I'll want more than I have now. Not more stuff, more achievements, more accolades, more projects - just a general need for a more developed sense of self, based on what I do every day.

This was a STUNNING realization for me. I'm sure it was banging around my brain for awhile, but it all became clear in a sudden moment in meeting on Wednesday. Some Friends in Cambridge, speaking to their hopes and fears of how they will ever get through all they see as necessary and asked of them. Living day-to-day through the burdens of the world. True dilemmas and crises, serious issues - how do we cope with them all?

By only attending to what is directly asked of us. I was reminded this week of the words of Thomas R Kelly (written during the build-up to World War II):

Kelly wrote of the “particularization of my responsibility in a world too vast and a lifetime too short for me to carry all responsibilities .... Toward them all we feel kindly, but we are dismissed from active service in most of them .... We cannot die on every cross, nor are we expected to .... The concern oriented life is ordered and organized from within. And we learn to say No as well as Yes by attending to the guidance of inner responsibility.”

Life for me is about choosing "stuff" right now - time with family and help with schooling for Maille, a graduate school path, daily interests and purchases and long-term commitments that are financial and physical. Health issues that are serious and demand my attention. Issues that help me to see the pain of others, and empathize in a way which I am grateful for.

What was I most grateful for this week? A gentle reminder that I have at least, in the last year, discovered a bit more of the emotional space I need, the spiritual guidance that I long to tap into, which surprises me at its effortless appearance when I need it the most. Often, in the expectant waiting of a Quaker meeting. This week, in a meeting of Friends, but not friends. The anonymity made no difference. Their message for me was abundantly clear. Keep calm and steadfast in the struggle to balance those problems of the whole world with the ones that I can address directly. Keep questioning - but not with the heavy heart of great burden, but rather with a lightened curiosity and faith that answers will come when I am ready to hear them.

"...I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer." - Rilke

Something Within Me (1993)

In 1985, the administrators of St. Augustine's, a poor Catholic school in the South Bronx where many children were failing miserably at basic academics, tried a new approach. They revamped the curriculum to stress the arts, particularly music. The kids lifted up their instruments and, eventually, their test scores, too. This infectious, inspiring musical documentary by Emma Joan Morris won three awards at the Sundance Film Festival.

This was great. Nothing I didn't already know, but it was just nice to watch the day-to-day teaching moments that I could relate to. And yes, test scores went up - but the school's improvement and quality of student interactions went way beyond that. I will watch this again right before I embark on my own school adventures in a new school community!

I watched this through netflix - not sure of its current availability.

A child's celebration of folk music [sound recording].

Children of all ages will delight in the simple melodies featured in A Child's Collection of Folk Music. These story-songs are repetitive and eminently singable. Material ranges from traditional twangy banjo numbers like "She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain" from Folk granddaddy Pete Seeger to the soulful song-in-the-round "Run Molly Run" by contemporary gospel group Sweet Honey in the Rock.

Really fun music - Maille loves to sing along already. I run from the canned-pop style of "new" kids songs - I am glad we found this CD at the library, and we will look for more classics soon. I plan on singing many of these with my fall classes at the Barnard School!

It's not about the coffee : leadership principles from a life at Starbucks / Howard Behar, with Janet Goldstein.

"Think like a person of action, and act like a person who thinks"

This book is filled with some wise words. Certainly in the "self-help" category - but there was a time in my life when i took to the genre, so it became a quick read for me. It's all about the people of this organization, as Behar effectively illustrates. I liked this quick read, especially as a reminder of how I like to look at organizations, since I will be teaching in a new one in the fall.