On leaving

I conduct a community chorus where I live, and until recently taught choral music at a local high school. In a recent gathering, I found myself in polite conversations about next academic year. Later feeling the answer needed more explanation, I penned them a letter, which I hoped would succinctly answer their questions as to my leaving.

"If there's something that makes us artists and singers, it would be the power of a vulnerability we use to examine and love our unique selves, and the ability to honestly put those truths into our music, thus sharing and communicating the beauty one embraces with others. The bravery to remain authentic in this pursuit often brings you against walls constructed by those who wish to mute your honesty in their equal pursuit of making lives of parents, colleagues, and donors comfortable, purposefully ignoring the truth that our diversity is what truly unites us. I will not be returning to teach at ******* next year, because on principle, I will not fall into lines that walk toward conformity at the sacrifice of authenticity, suppression at the sacrifice of honesty, and ultimately dogmatic regurgitation at the expense of the careful, loving formation of indelible, young lives. There comes a point where one must walk away from an institution that chooses discrimination over dignity, asking for a form of normal that calls for uniqueness to cover herself, lest someone become uncomfortable when presented with the opportunity to have their mind opened. I cannot live this way as a teacher, an artist, or a human being. It is said that there is a place called vocation, where your greatest passion meets the world's greatest need. I believe this to be true, and simply ask for your thoughts and prayers as I continue to seek this place..."

"Oh Spirit of Guidance, shine thy divine light upon my path."

On walls

This week was an absolutely historic week in our countries politics. Marriage equality has come to all 50 states, the Affordable Care Act remained the law of the land, and the confederate flag, a symbol of racism to so many has been taken down from the South Carolina state house has been taken down (in quite dramatic fashion). And while this happened, Obama gave provided perhaps his greatest oratory moment in his eulogy for Rev. Clementa Pinckney, a tragic victim of the Charleston 9 shooting. There have been other legislative decisions, which seem to have divided families, friends and parties causing an epidemic of Facebook un-friending.

When I was a kid, I remember thinking just how funny fences were. I remember asking why don’t we just take the fence down if we’re going to keep jumping over it? In elementary school, when we learned what borders were and thought just how confusing and absurd that was. What about this dirt makes it Missouri dirt and what about that dirt makes it Illinois dirt? As elementary school progressed, learning of actual fences were designed to keep people out and border protection was a thing. I just wanted to scream that borders are just made up in our minds, why doesn’t anyone else see this?!

These walls become famous. The Berlin Wall, designed to keep Western fascist out of East Germany. The Great Wall of China, designed to keep out invaders but later to symbolize protection from outside influence of Western influence. Hadrian’s Wall kept Rome’s colony from Scotland and remains the largest wall in Europe.  Hailing walls as architectural feats would be like calling the guillotine a great feat of engineering or calling avoiding eye contact with a homeless man as self protection.

When I think of how despicable walls actually are, I’m reminded of one of my favorite spoken word poets, Andrea Gibson. In her poem “Gospel Salt”, she says:

“in that 1906 California earthquake, when 28,000 buildings fell and the people said, “When 28,000 buildings fall do you know how many walls are no longer there?”

When we have no walls left, what are we left with? Each other…and this has to be a good thing, or at the very least, a start. Another poet I admire, Buddy Wakefield says,

“please stop inviting walls into wide open spaces”. Building walls of ideologies, politics, and who people choose to love? A swing from the hammer of compassion and common sense will destroy that, and I for one will be happy to pick up the rubble with you if it means we’ll talk to each other.

I’ve seen this article being passed around Catholic circles, and while admittedly disagreeing with some of their assertions, the three main points of staying an institution that ‘listens before it speaks, encourages love, and encourages working together starting with dialog’ resonates. How can we be a united people if we cannot even speak with one another? Tell me how building walls promote unity: when Jesus begged ”that they may all be one”; when the Buddha proposed that “he who experiences the unity of life sees his own Self in all beings, and all beings in his own Self, and looks on everything with an impartial eye.” And did not Muhammad speaks: “Do not the unbelievers see that the heavens and earth were a unity joined together before We clove them asunder?

If our conversational goals can be unity instead of conversion, we might just stay in our chairs across from one another instead of throwing them at each other. We could build a wall of Sweet and Low, Equal, and coffee creamers, and that would be just as ridiculous to me as the Berlin Wall. When that first hammer flew, a people cried, “can we talk?”

On hope...

It comes at the least expected times. I can be at a red light, mindlessly waiting for the chance to go and catch a runner in my peripheral vision and feel the same surge of motivation she feels. In the way her music sounds in her ear, something sounds in my wounded depths and says ‘go’. For that instant a sense of infinite accomplishment and possibility lies just within reach if not submerges me. The light changing from red to green becomes the universe’s cordial invitation to go and become. What exactly constitutes that sound escapes my comprehension.

I’m reminded of the Sufi poet, Rumi:

“What was said to the rose that made it open

was said to me here in my chest.”

Perhaps it was that what of which Rumi speaks that gave a sense of purpose and intention to pressing on the gas pedal and pressing confidently forward. I imagine it to be the sweetest of songs. A melody composed of moments someone decided to put their feet on the ground instead of sleep in, dance when chairs were open for sitting, or sing when speaking would have sufficed. Its symphonic timbre resounds within my bones, reverberates and knows that anything less than possible simply is not.

Do you remember Shawshake Redemption? Andy tells a resistant Red in prison:

“Remember, Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”

Good never dies. Hope lives forever. Hope is a fabric woven into the warmth and promise of forever’s safety. If hope is in anyway part of what is sung to the rose, who am I not to sing along, or at the very least listen? Hope illuminates the street when some misguided joker thought he could throw rocks at the streetlights. No one has aim good enough to extinguish that light. Why? Because the rocks they throw cannot make a martyr of the light. There’s a back up generator that they don’t see, and when she woke up this morning, tied her running shoes, and placed her headphones in her ears, a thousand roses bloomed the moment her feet hit the sidewalk as her presence demandingly whispered that we grow.

“Every blade of grass has an angel that bends over it and whispers, "Grow! Grow!" – the Talmud