Tuning Slide 5.32- Music in a Time of Pandemic

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

This will be our reply to violence:
to make music more intensely,
more beautifully,
more devotedly than ever before.
— Leonard Bernstein

I have used this quote by Bernstein before. It was originally written after the death of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. It was a time of uncertainty and chaos, fear and grief. As I sat down to write today, already late in posting this week’s Tuning Slide, I realized that I cannot write what I had intended to write about- the interaction of sound and rhythm in music. I will get back to that, I promise. But first I had to clear my mind of all the things running around in there in the midst of the current time of uncertainty and pandemic and fear.

These are times like none other we have seen in many years. Perhaps the closest we can come to it in the last fifty years is September 11, 2001. Suddenly things were different. It felt like the world of order and sanity was under attack. These things that are this disruptive of life as we have known it don’t happen often, but they are gut-wrenching when they do.

This afternoon I did a simple shopping trip. We are on our way back home to Minnesota from Alabama, our time cut sort by the exponential growth of the virus worldwide and the cultural and societal changes that are coming along. It may be that we will never again see the world as we did just a few short weeks ago. Churches, schools, gyms, concerts, band rehearsals, coffee shops, movie theaters, fast-food restaurants are all different today. As I drove through the small Missouri city where we are staying this evening, I saw the impact with some empty parking lots and empty shelves in Walmart. And not just the hand-sanitizer and toilet paper. Food aisles are empty, too. Over the counter medication shelves are less than fully stocked.

Then I see again that amazing story from Italy where they have been in lockdown for a number of days. The streets are empty across that country. But there’s this trumpet player standing on his balcony or the neighbors singing with each other. Music becomes a source of strength for those as they shared their time and talent, even in the midst of the chaos and uncertainty.

Take time to listen to music these next weeks. Extend that listening into the months after that. Turn this time of fear and chaos into a time when the depths of our humanity can be touched with hope and peace. Those of us who play in musical groups, it doesn’t matter what the style or genre, start thinking about what and how you can make a difference when the curfews come down and the lock-downs open up. Listen and research and practice. Take time away from the daily chaos of the news and retreat into music or reading or meditating or taking a walk if you can. Find the music in your own heart and enhance it.

We may not know where all this will lead; We can know that if we follow the music of the heart and soul- each of our individual hearts and souls- we will find the sound and the harmony, the rhythm and the style that can bring greater hope to the world. Those of us who are musicians have a wondrous gift to share. May we take this time to discover how to expand it for the good of ourselves, our families and friends, and wherever we may go.

I guess I needed to talk about this- to adjust my personal tuning slide, to remind myself of why I am doing this and how important it is to me. Now I’m going to listen to some music, read a while, and do it again tomorrow. I’ll be back next week with the Sound and the Rhythm.

Tuning Slide # 5.22- Building Blocks of Creativity

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

The desire to create is one of the deepest yearnings of the human soul.
— Dieter F. Uchtdorf

A few months ago I bookmarked a link I thought might be interesting to dig into:

Creativity and the Brain: What We Can Learn From Jazz Musicians (Link)

It was an NPR interview and story about Charles Limb, associate professor of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at John’s Hopkins University. It seems that Limb was studying jazz musicians and their creativity to discover the workings of the brain when we are being creative. The article said:

Creativity may even be hardwired into human brains, an essential feature that has allowed the species to adapt repeatedly over the course of history. “Very early on there’s this need for the brain to be able to come up with something that it didn't know before, that’s not being taught to it, but to find a way to figure something out that’s creative,” Limb said. “That’s always been essential for human survival.”

Creating is core to the human experience throughout time, Limb says. “The brain has been hard wired to seek creative or artistic endeavors forever”…

Interestingly, the creating brain looks a lot like the dreaming brain, one of the most creative states humans can enter, but one associated with unconsciousness. Similar to what Limb observed in jazz musicians, when people dream the self-monitoring part of the brain is suppressed and the default network in the brain takes over. (Link)

While it didn’t give me any direction about how I could get more creative in my life, it did affirm two things. The first was that music, and jazz, in particular, can be a source of developing creativity. The second was that the actions of creativity, making new things happen, may actually be part of our human evolutionary survival mechanisms. Creativity is essential, if for no other reason than to keep us from being bored. Creativity makes things new, not just making new things.

Creativity, then, is one of those ideas that can apply in many different areas. I wondered what the experts of the world might say about developing creativity so I Googled the question, “How do I learn creativity?” Among the landslide of links were a number that gave specific lists.

• 9 Ways to Dramatically Improve Your Creativity | Inc.com
• 17 Ways to Develop Your Creativity - Verywell Mind
• 6 tips for building creativity and innovation | Management ...
• 3 Ways To Train Yourself To Be More Creative - Fast Company
• 5 Habits for Building Creativity Into Your Team - Brightpod

Creativity doesn't wait for that perfect moment.
It fashions its own perfect moments out of ordinary ones.
— Bruce Garrabrandt

So how then do we develop it? Looking over the web sites mentioned above, I came up with some ideas that struck me as basic. Here are some of them, with my thoughts on their importance in italics:

▪ Be Willing to Take Risks
Often the fears (see below) get in the way, or the opportunities to do something different don’t occur. When I went to my first Shell Lake Big Band Camp it was a big risk. I knew little about improvising, but I went to a safe place to try it out. It was so-so, but it was a start.

▪ Build Your Confidence
Just going to Shell Lake and playing music outside of my comfort zone did work. I found out that I might just be able to do something more with it. It was a few years before it fell into place away from the safe confines of the camp, but it has been a steady growth in confidence.

▪ Keep a Journal
Part of the way I know these things is that I have kept a journal. That is a place for me to be honest and open with no one but me! I can express what I am feeling, including my fears. I can wander in my thoughts and take note of new ideas and possibilities.

▪ Overcome Negative Attitudes that Block Creativity
By taking risks, I end up confronting that wonderfully negative inner critic that every artistic person talks about. I can document the many times that those negative attitudes have gotten in the way and then prove them wrong. This leads to new ideas and new challenges because sometimes I fail at being as creative as I want to be.

▪ Fight Your Fear of Failure
But failure is okay. If you haven’t failed, you haven’t tried- and you probably haven’t learned anything new.

▪ Ask for Advice
Be a learner, a student at all times. Other people can make a difference with a different point of view.

▪ Learn a New Skill
Sometimes it helps to find different areas to build creativity. I love photography- it is a great creativity booster since it sharpens my vision. I love putting videos together- it makes me think in a melding of sound, pictures, and motion.

Surprisingly there was very little overlap in the lists I looked at. Creativity is quite varied. But there were two items that were in more than one list. First was some variation of:

▪ Exercise.
It may be doing workouts or, as one put it, taking a walk. Exercise is a source of energy that can help boost creativity. It works with the mind to take you into new things.

The other common suggestion is even easier than that:

▪ Do nothing!
Introspection time. Be mindful. (I knew that would show up somehow to another in all this.) Take the time to let the mind wander into nothingness. Be aware, non-judgmentally of what is happening around you. In your quiet nothingness, a great deal can happen. As long as you are listening to the inner voice, the creative muse.

The word [music] derives from Greek μουσική (mousike; "art of the Muses”)…. In classical Greece, [the term "music" refers to] any art in which the Muses presided, but especially music and lyric poetry." (Wikipedia)

Listen to your muse. Play your music. Be creative. You will come up with something that no one has ever done before. Then go ahead, and do it some more.

You can't use up creativity. The more you use the more you have.
— Maya Angelou

Tuning Slide 5.1- The Important Moods of Music

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

This will be our reply to violence:
to make music more intensely,
more beautifully,
more devotedly than ever before.
— Leonard Bernstein

I had already started this week’s post, the first of year 5 of The Tuning Slide. I wanted to look back and see what I’ve learned over the first four years of the blog and where music is taking me. When I woke up Sunday morning and checked the morning news on Google I was forced to face another day of mass killings, the third in a week. I decided I needed to do something else. I needed to search my own soul and find a place of peace and hope in this endless news stream of senseless violence and death.

My first thought was the quote above from Maestro Leonard Bernstein. They were part of words he spoke a few days after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963. It was a difficult time. Bernstein, like the nation, was in shock and mourning. He said it was made worse by the violence involved. He asked..

And where does this violence spring from? From ignorance and hatred…

By saying that, Bernstein knew that the response to such violence can often be calls to even more violence. The anger and sadness of a mourning and shocked people can lead to finding ways to make the situation worse instead of better. The Maestro knew that was not the way of people of music and art!

But this sorrow and rage will not inflame us to seek retribution; rather they will inflame our art…. This must be the mission of every man of goodwill: to insist, unflaggingly, at risk of becoming a repetitive bore, but to insist on the achievement of a world in which the mind will have triumphed over violence.

Our reply to violence, he ended with the top quote, will be to devote ourselves more fully and more deeply to our music! By making beauty in music and art perhaps we can move the world a little more distant from the feelings and actions of hatred and violence. Music may be unique among the arts, it can touch us without words, move us without saying anything, surround us with hope with a depth and intensity unknown in other ways. Again, from Bernstein:

Music can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable.

Music’s connection with life is at the level of experience. Music causes synapses to fire in our brain and nervous system; it starts a process that can flood us with important neurochemicals that change our mood. It prompts awareness of things we never can explain and inspires us to actions of hope. Yes, there is angry music that can do the opposite, that can incite violence and fuel rage. There is also music that can be used as a sedative, numbing us to the world around us. It is the responsibility of the musician/artist to be wise and mindful of all the consequences of what we produce.

A few years after Bernstein’s words at John Kennedy’s death, the group The Rascals were in a similar situation when Robert Kennedy was killed in Los Angeles. They penned their immortal words- "All the world over, people got to be free." Many were inspired. At the same time singer Dion reflected on this history of violence in Abraham, Martin, and John. These gave voice to people’s emotions and allowed people to both grieve and move forward.

Bono, of U2 understood this when he said:

Music can change the world because it can change people.

Will your music or mine change the world? Yes, it can. If we are willing to be devoted to the music, seek to make it as beautiful as possible. We may only start with changing ourselves when we pick up our instrument and play. But isn’t that where all change must start- within each of us as we dare to think and act differently? We then learn to live with the promise of peace and the reduction of violence. As we live it, as it becomes part of us, others can be touched, if only momentarily, but it is a start.

Musicians and artists are important. Don’t lose sight of your gift- and use it well.

When I find myself in times of trouble, mother Mary comes to me,
speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
And in my hour of darkness she is standing right in front of me,
speaking words of wisdom, let it be.

Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be.
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be.

And when the broken hearted people living in the world agree,
there will be an answer, let it be.
For though they may be parted there is still a chance that they will see,
there will be an answer. let it be.

Let it be, let it be, .....

And when the night is cloudy, there is still a light, that shines on me,
shine until tomorrow, let it be.
I wake up to the sound of music, mother Mary comes to me,
speaking words of wisdom, let it be.

Let it be, let it be, .....”
― Paul McCartney

Tuning Slide 4.46- Being Free #2

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

If you keep doing what you’ve always done, you will keep getting what you’ve always gotten.
— Various

Last week I started a series based on a blog post at Planet of Success. It is about 10 powerful ways to free yourself if you are stuck. I took the concepts and riffed on them from my own experiences in the last 8-10 years to overcome self-defeating attitudes that kept me from changing and growing in my trumpet playing. Last week I looked at the first three:
1. Face your fears
2. Break your routine
3. Effect change, one step at a time

This week we take the next three and see where they can take us as we work to keep from staying stuck. Again, my thoughts are in italics.

4. Overcome the perception of impossibilities
✓ Feeling stuck in life … paralyzes us and diminishes our ability to see exciting new opportunities. Instead, we feel as if the options at hand are impossible to execute. If every solution you can think of seems impossible to accomplish, you’ll get even more stuck. … no progress can be made. nstead of getting trapped by these thinking patterns, try to explore your options… [T]ry to find the one solution that you like the most and commit to the decision.

It is not impossible to start a new career at least twice in one’s lifetime. Nor is it really too late to do it. I have seen many people over the years just kind of waste away into retirement- and spend many years moving toward it. It is not impossible to find new opportunities. As I have talked about with my trumpet playing, I was convinced that it would be impossible at my age (any age after about 40), to do anything about my shortcomings. Fortunately, I was wrong.

5. Be honest with yourself
✓ If we do want to break free from being stuck, it’s necessary to be honest with ourselves. Astonishingly, we almost always have the answer within ourselves. It might take some time to discover it, but it’s always there. The problem is that we do not act upon this knowledge. We prefer to keep this answer locked within ourselves.
Have the courage to at least think about the possible solution. It might be challenging to even consider acknowledging that you took a wrong path in life. But ultimately, it might prove to be better than suffering from this decision for the rest of your life.

Honesty. I have talked about this as part of the trio of honesty, openness, and willingness. The first honesty is to call BS on yourself when you say “I can’t do that!” or when we say “I don’t know what to do. It’s beyond me!” Neither is true. Because I had that moment of uncertainty at age 18, it does not mean I can’t do it now. Because I am trained in one area of life doesn’t mean I can’t get new training in my mid-40s or mid-60s for that matter. Admit that the biggest obstacle to getting where you want to go is YOU. That’s the first step of courage. The second is to say, “… and I don’t have to continue to block my own way!”

6. Change your perspective
✓ When we feel stuck in life, we most certainly do not have a good overview of the situation. Unfortunately, the feeling of being stuck in a rut can heavily affect our perception of life. It’s time to broaden your perspective!

▪ Stop walking the same path you’ve always chosen.
▪ Explore new perspectives by taking other paths.
▪ Ask yourself what your real goals are.
▪ Explore what you’re passionate about.
▪ Discover what it is that truly energizes you.
▪ Find your true purpose in life.
▪ Challenge yourself to have a vision for your life.

Discovering your vision and the pursuit of your passions can create a powerful drive. It can help you to liberate yourself from the vicious circle of being stuck.

That list above says more than I can absorb in a few moments. In essence, it replays that old cliche that if you keep doing the same things you will keep getting the same results. As long as I said I can’t change, that people my age can’t do that, someone with my history will fail, or I don’t know how that could happen- it won’t happen. Nothing will change if I don’t change. Nothing will improve if I don’t take the steps to make the change and improvement. That means looking at life from a whole new angle and finding out what I really want to see happen.

Remembering the first three things needed to get unstuck:
1. Face your fears
2. Break your routine
3. Effect change, one step at a time.

These were the prelude to everything else. I remember being asked to join a brass quintet, which I had never done in over 40 years of playing. (All three of those.) I remember deciding to get a trumpet teacher and then asking him. (All three of those.) I remember sitting with my teacher and him mentioning music camps and my then signing up for the Shell Lake Adult Big Band Workshop. (All three of those.) That’s when this week’s list came into play.

1. Things were no longer impossible. I did things I had never done before and began to see results, changes in my playing and increases in my skills.
2. I got honest with myself. I had been getting in my own way, but I also saw where I needed help in improvements. So I asked for help. My fears had been lessened, I had broken my routine of decades. I was taking it slowly, one issue at a time.
3. My perspective was changing. For one I began to see my third career in life included music. I was actually beginning to see myself as a “musician” and not having to excuse it away. Getting involved at Shell Lake with Mr. Baca’s trumpet workshop then gave these three items even more power and direction. I could see a vision, a movement, an honesty that was refreshing and exciting!

These first six things, interacting with each other and my new experiences, were life-changing on a surface level. That is where all change begins. We act our way into a new way of thinking, one small step or change or action at a time. After that, the changes get internalized, normalized. But that’s for next week.

Last week I asked you to take time this past week to find a fear that needed to be confronted or something in your routine that can be changed. Did you find a way to make a change? In the next week

• begin to look at those from last week and how your perception is changing,
• how you are no longer getting in your own way.
• What are you still saying is impossible?

Take it deeper- and keep moving forward.

Tuning Slide 4.45- Being Free #1

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.


Confucius

Last week I re-told the story of how I got stuck on a Memorial Day 50 some years ago. It held me under its control for nearly 50 years. Every now and then I would break through a little, but only in the past six to eight years have I been able to break out of it and begin ever so slowly to move forward.

This happened in my career as a pastor when I moved from the church where I had started as a “student” pastor to my second congregation and became a “real” pastor. I discovered confidence and my own gifts. It happened again in my early career as a counselor. When I was able to do things more naturally as a counselor, I knew I had moved into a new place.

Why did it take so long with my music? It’s hard to know, but for some reason my trumpet playing always sat there in the background, while I quietly wished I could do something about it. I did not face it, until finally, I did. I never stopped playing, but I didn’t advance. So I recently went digging into how people get past those stuck points. When you reach that kind of plateau or wall, how can one break through?

I came across a website/blog called Planet of Success that calls itself a “ community designed to inspire you to live a successful life full of joy, meaning, and happiness.” I found there a post about ten powerful ways to free yourself when feeling stuck. Steve Mueller, the founder of Planet of Success, tagged the post as “comfort zone” and “limiting beliefs.” Looking at his post I knew he had presented some good insights that showed how I managed to get unstuck in my careers- and then in my music. So in this and the next three weeks, I will look at these 10 ways to get free- and stay that way.

First, so you know where we are going, here are the ten.

1. Face your fears
2. Break your routine
3. Effect change, one step at a time
4. Overcome the perception of impossibilities
5. Be honest with yourself
6. Change your perspective
7. Differentiate between feeling and fact
8. Avoid blaming others
9. Stop comparing yourself to others
10. Stop making excuses
11. Be grateful for what you have

I will look at only the first three this week in my normal way of presenting some of the original ideas and adding my riff to it. My riffs will be in italics.

1. Face your fears
✓ People are unable to move forward because they are afraid.

At some point in life, we simply became afraid of going any further…. We gave in to our fears. We allowed fear to stop our progress in life.

Everyone on this planet, and I mean really everyone, has fears. It’s not something to be ashamed of. … There’s no need to be afraid of failure. Be concerned about not having the courage to try.

In my case, my fear was that I would fail. No, my fear was I knew would fail- I was convinced I wasn’t as good as I used to think I was and people might find that out. I put everything into hiding that. In my careers, I managed to overcome that because I was able to put in all the 10,000 hours needed for expertise. I was afraid of doing that with my trumpet.

2. Break your routine
✓ Feeling stuck in life can be the result of unhealthy and restraining routines.

Developing a routine can be quite beneficial. It helps you to keep moving when the going gets tough…. Moving on in life, however, requires us to break the existing structures from time to time. … Break restricting routines whenever they need to be broken.

Actually, I had no routine to break; it was the lack of one that kept me from growing. In reality, my routine was simply to avoid confronting my personal status quo and to accept my inappropriate self-judgment. My pattern of avoidance was finally overcome only by ending up in a big band and quintet in addition to a regular concert band. It was the first time I was willing to open myself to something different. It was difficult at first. I had to learn the whole new language of actually playing jazz. I also had to move away from my comfort zone and be more visible in a quintet. That became a new routine that eventually led to even more change.

3. Effect change, one step at a time
✓ If you’re feeling stuck in life, it’s important to overcome that which prevents you from moving forward.

It’s better to tackle one problem after another than half-heartedly trying to address everything simultaneously. Not only will the sheer size of the problem overwhelm you, but it could also make you reluctant to truly free yourself.

Just don’t be too hard on yourself. Try to stick to one problem until it is solved. One problem after another. This way you can affect positive changes in your life step-by-step.

At first, I didn’t know what I was changing other than finding new things to play in new ways. Small steps, playing 4th part in the big band, beginning to practice more often with the quintet pieces. I then decided to take some lessons. Simple. Back to basics reminders. One small step that at the same time expanded my horizons.

We will expand on these ideas in the next three weeks. These are the starting points for any change that we hope to be successful in.
Start small:

◦ What is a fear you need to confront?
◦ What in your current routine may be holding you back? (Note that it is not necessarily the routine, but how you perceive it. That’s a hint of what’s to come.)
◦ What can you change in the next week to begin the small, but important change?

Tuning Slide 4.31- On Getting Stuck

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
E.M. Forster

In the past couple posts or so I have been talking about being a student, how to improve what we can do, some ways I am working on a particular direction, i.e. more precise playing. It is always exciting when I get started on something new or different. I can hardly wait to pick up my horn and do that day’s exercise and routine. That goes along well for awhile until I reach a point where I get stuck. There are two things that can happen. First, I stop progressing. While I have been doing well, hearing and feeling the changes and growth, one day it seems to just stop. Over a period of a few days I notice that there is no more change. It’s all still good and I am doing better than when I started on the new goal, but it hasn’t improved any more. My natural response to that I simple. “Well, I guess I’ve gone as far as I can go on this one. That’s it.”

Which leads almost naturally into the second thing that can happen- I feel like I’m going backwards. The sound isn’t as good as it was last week; the endurance has decreased; my range has suffered. I then become more self-critical and less motivated. I cut corners on the particular routine that I was working on and I get stuck. So I start looking around at the music in my books, the routines I have available, the etudes and lessons that I have worked on- and start practicing without a goal. It will keep my endurance up, my embouchure in shape, but it won’t necessarily improve what I’m looking to improve. I become complacent, satisfied with the status quo. While that status quo is light years from where I was even four years ago, I stop growing.

It is all in my head, sort of. Attitude and self-defeating thoughts can do a lot of damage to our growth and movement. Self 1 has taken over and is telling Self 2 that we’ve reached the end of the journey. We can’t go any further down the road. Just sit back and take it easy.

In the end, when you feel like you have gotten stuck, just move on. In order to move on I usually do the following:

◆ I remind myself why I am playing trumpet in the first place- and why I have continued to play and to find ways to grow in these 57 years since I got my first trumpet. It’s all about the music!
◆ I remember the line if you don’t like playing long tones, you don’t like playing the trumpet for its own sake. If it’s all about the music, it’s also all about the sound!
◆ I then remind myself of something that I wrote about way back in the earlier days of this blog- that one often reaches a plateau or even a step backwards just as one is about to make the next move forward. I call that darkest before the dawn theory of growth. Just when you think you can’t continue- you can. With deliberate practice and direction.

The “Aha!” moment has been reached and I can take a look at what has happened, what I have accomplished, and where I can go. It’s at that point I discover a number of things about myself and my growth. I get stuck when one or more of the following things get in the way

◆ Boredom
Playing those long tones and scales can get very dull. Boredom is actually the inability to find the new that is right in front of you. Boredom is unmet expectations telling you that this is crazy. That’s why, if I do nothing else with my horn on a given day, I play those long tones - and I try to play them with as much life and soul as I can. Soulful long tones? Yep. It’s all in my head and how I hear them.
◆ Fear
The fear is the one mentioned above- what if I am at the end of my ability? What if I can’t get those intervals down right or that lick to fall into place under my fingers? Maybe at my age I should just be satisfied with all that I have done in the past few years and be satisfied. I am afraid to fail, afraid to lose, afraid to not be able to grow and improve. So why try? I can recognize the craziness in that statement the minute I say it or write it. Yes, there may very well come the day when I am at the end, but a quick look at Herb Alpert (age 83) and Doc Servinsen (age 92) will quickly remind me that if I keep going I will grow!
◆ Exhaustion
This is a flip side of boredom which is a form of mental exhaustion. It comes because I have been working and working and getting nowhere. It is also possible to overwork your willpower which can lead to both mental and physical exhaustion. This leads, I think, to some of the leveling off of improvement or even the steps backward we take before making an growth jump. This means I have to take a look at how I’m practicing and how I may be over doing some aspect of it.
◆ Lack of direction
These all lead to this fourth reason for getting stuck- I don’t know for sure where I am going. I’ve lost my way, gotten off the path, been distracted. It is time to look at my goals and what I want to get out of- and give back to- my music. It is a two way street and I need to develop my self-awareness, mindfulness, and goal-setting.

These are not just specific to music. I mentioned in a previous post that I have difficulty at times in my physical exercise routine. When that happens I can look at these same four things to discover a possible underlying issue with my exercise, or my writing routine. Fortunately there are ways to deal with them after we have taken a look at ourselves and what we are in the midst of experiencing. I will deal with that next week.

Until then, find out where you may be stuck and what have been happening. It may be one of those four things above, or it may be something very specific to your situation. Don’t be afraid of it- none of us can grow unless we look at what may be holding us back. No matter what, keep moving; don’t stop. Go back to the basics until you discover what you need at this moment in time.

4.17- Tuning Slide: Mistakes or Not

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time.
— George Bernard Shaw

Scanning some notes and articles on the Internet I came across an article that referenced some research. It was in Wired magazine and burst the bubble that we “learn from our mistakes.” There are many motivational quotes that would have us believe just the opposite. Or so I thought. I went looking and found that this idea about mistakes being learning is a short-cut in thinking. What many of the quotes really say is that mistakes are to be expected as we are learning. If we haven’t made any mistakes, we haven’t done anything. Einstein, Teddy Roosevelt, and Meister Eckhart, among others, lead us to understand that.

In essence though what mistakes teach us is what NOT to do. If we continue to do the same things and keep getting the same mistakes, we are not learning and growing in our musicianship. If we don’t do anything to correct the mistake, all we are doing is reinforcing the mistake. One I had to learn the hard way was missing accidentals or even key changes. I was adamant that as a good musician I should be able to learn what key I am playing in and not miss that F# or Eb. Yet time after time I would miss it. Or I would hit the F# when it wasn’t. What I wasn’t doing was marking the note I was regularly missing. You know, circle it or some other notation.

I was being stubborn- and perhaps not wanting my colleague on the left or right to know I had to (God forbid) mark a note that I should be playing correctly. (Even though they clearly heard every wrong note I played!) Instead of improving as a musician, I was stubbornly getting stuck where I was. Once I was willing to use a pencil correctly, things began to change. I also developed a series of notations that I use to remind myself of certain things that I have tended to get wrong or struggle with. I see that notation and I know what I need to do.

To say that mistakes are our friends and tell us what not to do can be a dangerous path- mistakes are not good things when we could have done something differently. Mistakes are not what we want to have happen in a performance. We will make mistakes, of course; notes will slip, something will be out of time or out of tune. Those mistakes will not improve our playing. The mistakes we learn from are the ones that we make in our practice rooms, or lessons- where they can be caught and corrected.

But there are other mistakes that we regularly fall into. These are more insidious that the missed accidental. They can go to the heart of who we are as performers. So here is a far from complete list of:

Mistakes musicians make that we can change:
Poor sound- We can’t truly hear ourselves when we are playing unless we are on stage and a monitor is giving us an idea. There are a number of reasons for this- we are on the wrong side of the horn, we get some of the sound through our facial bones and not from the air, we hear part of the sound in our imagination which “auto-tunes” the sound we are getting from the horn. In order to deal with these we can practice in places where there is a strong echo and we can record ourselves. The mistake we make is not finding out how we truly sound.

Lack of rhythm- timing and tempo are essential to good music. Some of it can be corrected by working with a metronome, but that will never give us rhythm. A metronome has no feeling, no rhythm. It is only tempo. Feeling the music is important, no essential. We will talk more about this next week when I talk a little about “flow.” Our big mistake in this area is to ignore how the music makes us feel and then translating that into the performing of the music.

Believing we can’t do it- actually, this is worse than a mistake. This is a killer of quality and creativity, a sure-fire way to fall into a hole we dig for ourselves. I know I may never be as good as Doc or Maynard, but that doesn’t mean I can’t continue to be better than I was last month. In order to get there, I must be pushing the limits in healthy, organized ways.

Not planning- if we don’t know where we want to go, we won’t get anywhere. That doesn’t mean we have to map out our whole musical journey. It does mean we have to have an idea where we need to go and where we want to go. This is where the errors we make or the recording we hear can guide us. When I discovered how poor my tone was, I knew what I had to work on. When I found my endurance decreasing, I went looking for ways to improve what I was doing.

Getting stuck on hardware- heavy caps and the latest version mouthpiece won’t correct what is wrong with our sound. For most of us we are no where near the best sound the instrument we own can make. A new instrument may be a good thing- and the right thing- for some of us. But it will still take practice, practice, and even more practice to continue to evolve as a musician.

Fearing mistakes so much that we don’t try- the ultimate mistake! Just do it. Move forward. Challenge yourself. Take lessons and get feedback. Record yourself and listen critically. Be ready to grow!

Don’t plan for mistakes; don’t build them into your practice. But listen for them; prepare for them; and when they happen discover what they can teach you about a better, more effective, more musical way.

I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're doing something.
— Neil Gaiman

Waiting in Imagined Fear

It is not a new subject. We have been through this numerous times in the past 19 years since Columbine in 1999. After the latest school shooting in Florida I was taken back in my memory to the two early incidents that had an impact on me. Beyond those directly involved, we are seeing that many are being affected. For those who are not at the scene, I wondered, "What does imagined fear do to a soul?"

Columbine. April 1999.
It was nearing the end of my daughter's senior year in high school. Living in a smaller Wisconsin city where school was often the center of the community and my daughter being a senior the events in Columbine seemed way too real.

I thought about my daughter sitting in school, in a study hall in the commons area right inside door 1, the main entrance. I thought about members of the church who worked in or near the office, right across the commons or my best friend, one of the band directors down the hall. I thought of all the young people I knew, through our daughter, the church or community activities.

Then, within a couple days, there was a threat made to the school just as has happened across the country in the past two weeks. I knew that student as well.

The school made a couple of immediate decisions, including changing the location of graduation. It had been held outside at a local park for years. People would bring their lawn chairs and enjoy the wonders of spring along the river while the students marched in graduation. It was quite a celebration for the students and the community. Now it would be held in the school gym, more formal, but safer to protect. Some of the seniors protested but to no avail.

Red Lake Shooting. March 21, 2005
Six years later short a month I was in southern Minnesota working as a chemical health counselor in the local schools. A 16-year old on the Red Lake reservation in northern Minnesota took his grandfather's police weapon, killed his grandfather and grandfather's girlfriend then went to the school and continued the murders. He was wounded in a shootout with police and then committed suicide in a vacant classroom.

The shooter was only a year or two older than the students I worked most closely with, and had lived in our district for a short period of time. In the odd way of coincidences, I also knew his mother. My office was about fifty feet from the main entrance, the only unlocked door, of course, into the school. I often sat in there working with my office door open. The days after the shooting I became very aware of the proximity of that entrance and how quickly someone could get to my office. I vaguely remember having discussions with other staff, but we never really went into any detail that I can recall.

The students seemed naturally subdued for a few days. None of them ever mentioned to me that they knew the shooter when he was in our district, although they may have. All kinds of thoughts ran through everyone's minds I would guess. It's easy to become a sitting duck in many of the buildings in any school district.

I would call this "imagined fear." It is fear of the unknown that can easily come with an awareness of powerlessness, loss of control, the unplanned events that "can't happen here!"

Reaction as a pastor and counselor
I first thought of this after Columbine when social workers and others reflected some of their feelings on what had happened. They missed clues, they believed progress was happening with the two shooters when the youth were faking it. It was still a rare event in 1999 so even the best trained social workers didn't know what to look for. (By the way, in many ways they still don't. But that's another post.)

As a pastor in the community as well as an addictions counselor working with adolescents and a close friend of two guidance counselors in the school system, I wondered with them over coffee how we would know. We didn't have any answers, just as the counselors in Colorado didn't either.

In Minnesota I worked closely with the school counselors and staff. I was officially working for the county and was part of the school social work group. While the Red Lake incident did not have the larger impact of Columbine, we all shook our heads wondering what we miss on a regular basis. Since we all worked with severely "at-risk" youth we knew that just about any of our students could potentially break and cause such a disaster. It is not as easy to identify the future shooter as many would like to believe.

Rage, extreme anger, being bullied- these are all triggers and potential symptoms of school shooters. But these youth are also very, very good at masking it- sometimes by becoming bullies, sometimes by extreme introversion, sometimes by just being damn good actors. Every counselor or social worker in any school is painfully aware of this. It may be the nightmare for many that they miss the cues of suicidality or a shooter and the unthinkable happens. I have never had a shooter, but I know the pain of missed signs of suicide. I would guess the missed murderer is even worse.

Don't attack the counselor or social worker who misses it. Even though signs and the understanding of causes are clearer now than in 1999 or 2005, they are still variable. Plus, we don't know how many we DID prevent without ever knowing it was a possibility. There, I believe, we have most likely done more good than we will ever know.

Safety and Security Reflections
I was also aware then and still am in many ways of the impossibility of security and safety. Looking back at the four schools I worked with in Minnesota, they were all active places. At times of the day there were people entering and leaving the main entrance- people like myself, the social workers, shared teaching staff who traveled from school to school as needed; parents bringing forgotten papers to school or picking up a student for some appointment somewhere. Sure, having one main entrance to watch helps, but that does not prevent a mass shooting with multiple casualties.

An armed teacher would not be in the same position as an armed guard or patrol. The teacher is hopefully more focused on a day-to-day basis with teaching. They are working with some significant number of students on a regular basis. They are lecturing, proctoring, helping with homework, watching for misbehavior in their own classroom. If they are doing a good job as a teacher, they are not in a very good position to respond as quickly as they would need to if an event occurred near them.

It is already tough enough to be a good teacher. We can't also require them to be a good armed guard. Many don't want that job. I wouldn't. Improved security is important, of course. But we should probably expect that an armed guard at a main entrance to a school may well be the first casualty, not the last.

Students today
Malcolm Gladwell wrote the famous book The Tipping Point which essentially laid out that before any significant change occurs, there has to be the point where a critical mass of people say, "Enough!" For some reason, at least as I write this at the end of February 2018, we seem to have hit that point. Why the students of Parkland, FL, have reacted this way when others haven't to this extent will be something for social scientists to ponder somewhere down the road.

It is not that they have been fed by some left-wing, anti-gun conspiracy. It is not that they are more liberal than any of the students in the other places. They survived what their friends and teachers did not. Instead of survivors' guilt sending them into a dark frenzy of self-questioning, they shouted, "Enough."

When these students responded, so students in schools across the country were reminded that they, too, have been living in fear of such an attack. As a nation, since 9/11 we have all lived with such a fear of terrorists. The government in all kinds of overt as well as subtle ways, has been reminding us of that threat for seventeen years.

Maybe this last school shooting, an act of terror if not terrorism in the usual sense, was a tipping point to deal with those fears. Here is something that we might be able to do something about. More of us are getting killed by "shooters" than terrorists. Students in schools, worshipers in church, concert-goers having a party, workers in offices. Terror-inducing scenes.

People are tired of being afraid. People are sick of fear. People want to be able to do something that might have an impact on the culture of mass shootings we seem to be in the midst of. (That, it should be noted, is also why gun sales increase after each shooting.) Nothing will be 100% effective at stopping mass shootings. No one should ever believe it would. What the students of today are saying is that they are tired of being on the front lines of a war they never signed-up for. They want to have a say. They want to throw off the fear and do something.

Courage is not something that means we are fearless. Courage is, as an old, trite phrase used to say, is simply "fear that has said its prayers." What that means is that to act with courage is to know that there is strength in action, with confronting what is causing our fear. Courage is doing the next right thing to make a difference. There is a generation out there, a whole school generation since Columbine, that is now saying they want courage, not fear, to be their guiding principle.

We should listen and then be willing to truly sit down in dialogue to find out what is possible. We need to stop throwing ideology and patriotic misunderstandings at them. We need to support them and perhaps in so doing cast off our own fears.

3.25- The Tuning Slide- The Unexpected

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Remember what Bilbo used to say: It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.
— J. R. R. Tolkein

This month’s theme is “The Journey” of being a trumpet player, musician, and human being. Last week we talked about that all important “first step” that gets us moving. This week we continue with two quotes from the board at the end of Trumpet Workshop this past summer:

✓ Be comfortable being uncomfortable [Expect the unexpected]
✓ Always have a relaxed breath. Warm, moist air

Don’t worry, they are not as disconnected as they seem. They are two more essential aspects of the journey you are on. As Bilbo used to say any journey is a dangerous business. When we truly set out on a new journey of any kind- outer or inner- we do not know what’s ahead or where it will take us. We plan and practice, gather resources and support. We step out the door and we meet a “black swan.”

What? You’ve never seen a black swan? Here’s Wikipedia talking about it. Black swan

is a metaphor that describes an event that comes as a surprise, has a major effect, and is often inappropriately rationalized after the fact with the benefit of hindsight. The term is based on an ancient saying which presumed black swans did not exist, but the saying was rewritten after black swans were discovered in the wild.

The theory was developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb to explain:

• The disproportionate role of high-profile, hard-to-predict, and rare events that are beyond the realm of normal expectations in history, science, finance, and technology.
• The non-computability of the probability of the consequential rare events using scientific methods (owing to the very nature of small probabilities).
• The psychological biases that blind people, both individually and collectively, to uncertainty and to a rare event's massive role in historical affairs.

In other words, black swans are the next-to-impossible-to-predict events that have HUGE impacts on life. Looking back we can rationalize them, but that never helps us predict what the next “black swan” event might be in our lives. Whether it is the 9/11 attacks, the wildfires in California, or Superstorm Sandy, the BIG events that have the greatest impact on people’s lives are often unforeseen and unpredictable. They happen and change the world. We will often look back and say “we should have known that!” but in reality if we could have we would have.

We can respond to this situation in different ways in our lives. First, we can live in terror and fear of the next black swan event. That will always be an existential, unconnected, free-floating fear that can never be pinned down or done away with. By definition we can’t know what the next big event will be. To live in that constant state of uncertainty is not any way to live.

Second, we can live with a carefree, not-give-a-crap attitude, rushing headlong into whatever is ahead. Life is a gamble for all of us. You can get the most toys, but in the end we all die. This may have a lot of adrenaline-pumping action; it may move us to do some brave and courageous or dumb and dangerous things. The result may very well be a toss-up.

Third, we can combine the two with that wonderful first quote and description. If you always expect everything to go smoothly and the way you want things to go, you will be disappointed. In spite of things like the “law of attraction” and certain ways some of us pray at times, we don’t always get what we want. That will make us uncomfortable! Can I put up with discomfort? Do I see discomfort as an enemy or a sign of what needs to be done?

I have talked a number of times about the process I continually go through as a learning, growing musician. I reach a point- usually quite unexpected- when things don’t just feel right. I may have a lousy performance where even that good old 2nd line G comes out like mud. Or I find my endurance slipping for no apparent reason. Maybe there’s a new piece that doesn’t look that hard that just doesn’t want to fall under my fingers.

I become quite uncomfortable at those times. Have I reached the end of my line? Is this as good as it gets? Was I being too comfortable with where I was and not expanding the envelope? I can easily be tempted at that point to cut back, even give in. I rationalize- well, after all, I am nearly 70 years old. I can’t expect to continue to improve like I would if I were 30 or 40. Then the picture of me with Doc Severinsen pops up on my phone and I give that idea up.

Is it okay to be uncomfortable? Sure it is. Usually it means I am at a turning or growing point. I look for adjustments I can make- perhaps work on some different exercises in my daily routine or pull back on some of my intensity to do everything right away. If I am expecting the unexpected, it shouldn’t bring me to a halt. If I have learned anything in these past 3 years of expanded trumpet playing and growth in musicianship, it is that the journey is real and is never in a straight line!

Which brings me to the second quote above about relaxed breath and warm moist air. Yes, that is how we are to play our horns. Doc calls it a balance between tension on the side muscles and relaxed on the center. If every time I pick up the horn I am tense and dry, nothing good will come out. Relax. Breathe calmly. As Bill Bergren rightly describes it- “Say ‘M’ and then breathe gently like cooling a cup of coffee.” How do we learn how to do that if we are always tense.

In a recent concert we were playing the beautiful, slow piece “Ashokan Farewell.” I realized in one of the rehearsals that I was tensed up so as not to over-blow or lose any tone by playing too loudly. Self Two caught that Self One was uptight. Self Two simply said, “I can handle this. I do it all the time in the practice room.” Self Two was right, of course. I am never tense like that in my practicing. I may lose endurance, etc. but it is not usually due to tenseness. That comes when I am afraid of—(among other things) the unexpected.

Take that relaxed, warming breath. Put the trumpet to the lips- and play.

Live with awareness of the unexpected- not in fear of what might happen but in order to go with it when it happens. Live with the breath- in and out in a simple rhythm. (Remember rhythm? It’s one of the foundations of all music.) Stay warm, stay relaxed, stay quietly focused. When we learn how to do that in our practice room, we will move closer to being able to do it in performance. When we can do it in performance, we can relax some more and learn how to do that when we are doing other things.

It is one of the secrets of our life’s journey. Go with it, as Bilbo used to say, “you don’t know where you might be swept off to.”

The Tuning Slide: 3.13- Find Balance in Letting Go

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

If you let go a little, you will have a little peace.
If you let go a lot, you will have a lot of peace.
-Ajahn Chah

Over the past two weeks I have talked about the three Inner Game Skills of

• Awareness
• Will and
• Trust

Together they form the foundation for our Self 1 and Self 2 to work together. That gets us into a balance that allows us to improve our musicianship and have more fun playing.

Unfortunately it is not as easy as just saying, “Okay. I’ll just be aware, exercise my will, and trust will follow.” Trust may be the last thing we can build and it may also be the one we must often work on. You see, at least in my experience, the rational, controlling, worried Self 1 is always on guard, ready to pounce. In order for the balance between Self 1 and Self 2 to work, Self 1 must “Let go!” But Self 1 has a history of fear and uncertainty, often placing barriers in the way in the form of thoughts of those fears and uncertainties.

Some of the most common of these barriers for me (and for most of us) are:

• Worrying about what others think of me
• Being a failure
• Feeling out of control
• Doubting my abilities.
• Performance anxiety

Fortunately these can be dealt with even though “letting go” can feel risky. Barry Green in The Inner Game of Music even says that we should see the feeling of risk as a good sign. It means we are about to let go and allow Self 2 to take over. Green says:

Self 2 deserves to be trusted because it proves how trustworthy it is over and over again….[and] the more you let Self 2 go through its paces, the clearer it become just how trustworthy and talented Self 2 really is…. But… we’re not trusting blindly- we’re trusting the most capable part of ourselves…. Self 2 is the real musician. (Green, p. 87.)

Green then says that letting go is a lot like falling asleep, especially when Self 1 is active and worrying. There are three phases of falling asleep using awareness as a technique.

• First, you notice what Self 1 is doing, for example keeping you worried, thinking, inner talking as you lie there. So you make a decision to shift your awareness somewhere else.
• Second, you focus on something else, hopefully something simple and natural. Some people count sheep, do breathing exercises, repeat a prayer or mantra. Self 1’s thought begin to fade.
• Third, you actually “let go” and Self 2 takes over. You are asleep.

Green points out that we do not remember the moment we fall asleep, or even the moments before. It just happens. We have trusted Self 2 to take us where we need to be. You can’t “make it happen”. You just do it. (Green, p. 89)

Letting go means being willing to allow life to carry you to a new place, even a deeper more true rendition of self. Holding on means trying to push life into the place of your making or be damned. (Psychology Today, March 12, 2016) To put it into our Inner Game words,

• Letting go is being willing to allow Self 2 to carry you to an even deeper, more true experience of your music and your ability to make music.

With that in mind, let’s look at some of those Self 1 barriers above and see how we might be able to learn to “let go” in spite of what Self 1 thinks. Or, in a better attitude, how can Self 2 show Self 1 that it is competent and knows what to do? (Marked (TB) from Tiny Buddha- https://tinybuddha.com/blog/40-ways-to-let-go-and-feel-less-pain/)

Barrier #1: Worrying about what others think of me
Change your perception (TB)
Look at it from a different view. If you make a mistake, people understand and usually don’t remember anyway. That also can mean look at wondering what others think can be a blessing- it makes us work more efficiently in order to do a better job.

Remember why you are a musician (Green)
One of the reasons many of us are musicians (paid/unpaid/whatever) is because we like what happens when music is played- and heard. Relax. People like music. The more relaxed you are, the more relaxed the music will be, the more will like it. If you have done your practicing and preparing, know that Self 2 wants you to be the best musician you can be.

Barrier #2: Fear of being a failure
Allow yourself to be imperfect
A performance musician once told me that they never get through a show without some mistake. I never heard one in any of the times I heard them perform. (That’s back to #1 above). They also told me that they cannot be perfect. It is a highly unlikely place to go. Give yourself permission to be real and imperfect- but work to be the best you can be. Chances are you are better than you think.

Make a list of your accomplishments—even the small ones. (TB)
Let’s get real with ourselves. Let’s be honest about what we can do, what we have accomplished. Humility does not mean ignoring what you have been able to succeed at. Humility is an honest perception of who you are and what you are able to do. Somedays it is a very big success to practice for a whole hour without throwing the horn out the window. Keep a notebook/journal of what you have been able to do. You will be amazed when you look back at it.

Barrier #3: Feeling out of control
Channel your discontent into an immediate positive action (TB)
Go back and play the basics; notice how you play them now. Do you remember when you couldn’t do that Arban’s exercise at half the speed? Or pick something that you need to work on- and work on it. It can be that simple. Channel your energy into getting better. And really, it is Self 1 that wants to be in control, not you. We really want Self 2 to be in control.

Become part of the music (Green)
This is not unlike what an actor does when doing a movie or state role. They must become the character they are portraying so that we, the audience believe who they are and what they are doing. We are the channel for the music. We are taking the character of the music, interpreting it through our (and the conductor’s) understanding of the music and presenting it for the audience or at times just for ourselves. Practice this by listening to the music, singing it, feeling its pulse and life. We all do that when playing. Make it a study of the music so it is no longer you who are performing, but the music moving through you.

Barrier #4: Doubting my abilities.
Make a list of your accomplishments—even the small ones. (TB)
Just a repeat of above. This can be a surefire way to quiet Self 1. Use it whenever you can!

Sharpen your skills by using what you know you can do.
What we tend to forget is that as we continue to improve, that means our skills improve and that we can use the skills we have learned to improve some more. It is cumulative. It is not linear. There are times and places when we make great leaps and other times it moves very slowly. That’s okay. Move at the pace you are moving at. To rush it gets in the way. That’s Self 1 being impatient. Let Self 2 enjoy what’s happening.

Barrier #5: Performance anxiety
Visualization meditation
More to come on this one in a future post, but for now, if we work on the first four, this one will become less a barrier and more a reminder of what we are doing and why. In other words, awareness.

This Inner Game work can actually be a lot of fun. It allows us to get in touch with the playful part of ourselves and tells the judge and critic in Self 1 to keep cool and balanced. Self 2 often will naturally trust Self 1 when something needs to be analyzed and worked on. Self 2 knows that Self 1 is hyper about all these things. The more Self 1 can trust Self 2’s abilities and insights, the better balanced we will be. Self 1 is there all the time. We pay attention when we need to. But, believe it or not, Self 2 is in charge more often that we realize. And that is an insight we have only recently begun to understand through advances in brain studies and neurosciences. More on that next week.

Until then- give Self 2 a chance, let go and let the music play.

An Interlude: Dark Night Fears

I know that some of my conservative friends will accuse me of fear-mongering from my side of the fence. Or perhaps that my highly over-active imagination has gotten the best of me. Or even that age has finally caught up with my sense of reality and rational thinking.

Any of these may be true, but I don't think it is my goal to increase the level of fear in the world. In the posts on the Dark Night of the Soul that I have been doing my goal is to alleviate the fears and present ways that I, as a person of faith along with others of faith can find the light through what feels like a dark night. I will get back to that development next week. For now I wanted to take another interlude and talk about some of the issues that bring about fear. After 9 days in office, Mr. Trump has shown some clear directions.

What I see is an almost perverse style that wants to create chaos. The immigration orders from Friday are an excellent example. It appears on the surface that he simply put this executive order out and signed it without thinking through what needed to be done to implement it. Did it go into effect at that very moment is pen lifted from the paper? Was there any process of informing immigration points at busy airports what they should be doing? Was there any earlier consideration about what happens to individuals who are already here on green cards? What about those who had been here and were now overseas? Or those that were in the air at the fateful moment of signing? So far, I have not seen any information about that. (I hope we will get some answers to that!)

What happened was that somehow or another customs agents at places like JFK airport in New York just went ahead and implemented the order. The result was the chaos and fear at the airport. People who had already been upset by the order itself were mobilized through their networks of friends and family and protested. The court stepped in and put a stay on the order, as the courts had done with Obama's immigration order previously.

So, hold on to that image of chaos for a moment.

Something else has been happening in D.C. A pattern seems to emerge that when a highly public-impacting order comes out, there is also one that is more shadowy, that will get less publicity. In this case Mr. Trump also signed an order changing the personnel make-up of the "Principal's Committee" of the National Security Agency. Dropped from the committee was the Director of National Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Huh?

Added to the Committee was Mr. Trump's controversial chief strategist, Steve Bannon. Double Huh?

Even George W. Bush knew better than that. He clearly instructed his chief strategist, Karl Rove, to never attend such meetings. It is not the way things should be done. Oh, I am sure Mr. Bush shared information with Rove. Of course he did. But Rove did not have a direct voice at the NSA table.

So then, these two things happened in the past 48 hours. In the midst of the uproar and chaos from the immigration order it may be hard to see the slippery move with the NSA. The immigration order impacts many, many people. It goes against the law passed by Congress over 50 years ago. (That says if the President doesn't like a law, he doesn't have to follow it?) It is probably unconstitutional even though it may not be as obvious as we think it is.

Hence, the NSA order doesn't seem to have the greater impact. Some might even be able to argue that removing the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs enhances the civilian control of the military. Sorry, but national security is one of the important aspects of the military.

Some have used the word "coup" to describe what this means. I am not ready to go that direction yet.

Let's add another request by the President. He wants data that shows how criminal refugees and immigrants are. He wants a weekly report on that. Legal or illegal immigrants or refugees? It doesn't matter. These foreigners are a threat, is the message, even though statistics readily available seem to indicate that these groups have a lower crime rate than the national average.

But there have to be "alternative facts" and the President wants them. I am sure there may be those who can "find" them for him. This announcement came under the radar of his order to build the wall that Mexico will pay for- by Americans paying 20% more for goods made in Mexico due to a tariff. The wall made the news; the request for criminal data was secondary.

There are a number of possibilities of what could be at work here. He could be as clueless as these things indicate about what the repercussions of his orders are. I doubt that. He could be ignoring any advisor who warns him about these repercussions, because, Damn it! He IS the President of the United States and whatever he does is "legal."

He could also be attempting to satisfy his followers and will one day "pivot" and begin to make sense. We have been waiting for that since the nomination. I will be surprised if it happens in any significant way. Maybe he will step back some on the highly public issues and the other ones will have been slipped into place. Hardly noticed. Maybe he will "allow" his GOP Congress to turn these into some more sensible law as they seem to want to do in their own way with the Affordable Care Act. (By the way- I think all Democrats and Progressives should always refer to it as the Affordable Care Act. People don't want to repeal that. They want to repeal Obamacare!)

Here then is where the shivers begin to creep up the spine of many of us who know history, specifically the history of Germany in the early- to mid-1930s when Hitler could conceivably have been stopped. Some of this looks all too familiar. Most clearly the demonizing of a group of people. Hitler had his police report to him with all the crimes of Jews and these would be  posted. The Jews were not safe. They were criminals- even when they weren't. Before you knew it "everyone" believed that the "Jews" were bad for Germany.

The result was Kristallnacht.

But before that even happens, let's think for a moment about chaos. As protests increase- and they will- chaos will become more common. Already some state legislatures are eyeing laws to curtail the right of protest- even peaceful protest. Some of that already exists as a friend fond out when he and others were protesting the death penalty at the Supreme Court. They were in a very public area where no protests are allowed. He spent a night in jail. More of that will happen.

Chaos will increase because, as we have seen too often, there are those who use a protest to cause trouble. Riots make the news; they increase fear; laws will be enacted; protests will increase; etc.

The answer to chaos?

Martial law.

When will something occur that will be our equivalent of the burning of the German Reichstag?
I know that I am sounding like some of the more extreme critics of Mr. Obama over the last 8 years. I am very aware of that. As such, I DO understand where their fears came from, even though they were clearly unfounded, as history has shown us. These things did not happen. I hope and pray that in the end I am just as far off base as they were.

Okay, but now that I have gone this far down this dystopian road, let me make a few things clear.
First, I am not ready to say these things will happen. History, though, does have a way of following patterns and events. These are all way too much like what we saw in Germany in the 1930s. As such they can become a warning to us, not a prophecy. These events do not have to happen, but it is up to us, the people, to work as hard as we can to make sure they don't.

Second, a couple of my thinking conservative friends will tell me that this can't and won't happen here because of the way our laws and our checks and balances work. In theory I am in 100% agreement with them. Our Constitution and governmental form is set up to make sure these things do not happen. We have seen how it does work- and work well- many times over our 241 years as a nation. We came close in the Civil War. We came close in the 1960s and early 1970s. In the first it took a war. In the second it was a free and independent press and peaceful protestors being attacked that woke the nation up. In political theory, we should be okay. But theories can never take into account the insane ways we humans can find to screw things up!

I come back, then, to why I am working on the Dark Night of the Soul. This seemed like as good a place as any to enumerate some of the fears that underlie my search for direction. For me, any response and approach to these issues must be based in my spiritual life and my following the God I believe in, who can restore me to sanity if I trust that God with my will and life. The principles of the spiritual life must have something to say to how I respond to the concerns of the world I live in. If those principles are irrelevant to these, they are probably not relevant at all.

I believe they are. Thus the spiritual crisis, wrestling match, and ultimately pilgrimage of this series of posts.  I am working this out as I go along; I have no idea of where and what I will discover. I expect to be surprised when the light grows and I awake to what has been in front of me all along.

Back on the journey with another post in the next week.

4. Dark Night of the Soul- Path of the Dark Night

A couple weeks ago I was talking with a friend about this series. I commented that the impetus to explore the role of the Dark Night of the Soul was the fear and anxiety I and many were feeling after the election of Donald Trump. His first reaction was, you don’t believe this is the worst it’s going to get, do you? Isn’t that what the dark night means- that it will get better from here on?

An article I found online addressed this issue. From Our Sunday Visitor:

The dark night of the soul is not an evil to be endured; it’s a good for which we should be grateful. Of course, it doesn’t always seem that way. The thought of plunging into a spiritual abyss and losing all the sweetness in our relationship with God strikes few as appealing.

A Protestant writing in Christianity Today put it this way:

One lesson we can learn from the ancient mystics is that dark nights are not problems, but opportunities. Grasping this reality moves us beyond "How do we fix this?" to "What might I learn in this?"
--The purpose of the dark night, of course, is to strip us of our futile attempts to find God on our own terms and awaken us to a much simpler desire for intimacy with God
--Chuck DeGroat

With the awareness that this dark night is going to be helpful let us also remember that darkness IS frightening. Think about how much we are aware of things in the dark- even things that aren’t there- except in our imagination. Every creak and bump in a dark house is multiplied. The old Celtic prayer for protection included “things that go bump in the night” right along with “ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties”. Darkness, sometimes described as “wilderness”, however, is almost always seen as the path to spiritual growth.

Traditionally, spiritual directors identify three primary stages (or ways) of growth in holiness.

• The first is the purgative way, where we break habits of vice, acquire habits of virtue and learn to live a Catholic life.
• The second is the illuminative way, where we grow in virtue, charity and the life of prayer.
• And the third is the unitive way, where our wills and hearts move in perfect harmony with God’s.

In the dark night of the senses, God purifies us of our attachments to the things of the world — physical comfort, physical pleasure, material success, popular acclaim — as well as even the comfort we seek in prayer. Sorrows afflict us, and things that used to ease us — food, sex, shopping, compliments, even the liturgy — no longer do. Through this dark night, God prepares us for the illuminative way and a deeper, more contemplative life of prayer.

The dark night of the soul occurs at the end of the illuminative way, as we prepare to enter the unitive way. During this dark night, God roots out our deepest attachments to sin and self, and the desolation that accompanies that rooting out is overwhelming and crushing. - Our Sunday Visitor:

Let me talk about these stages of moving through the dark night. As we walk these steps it is important to remember the wisdom of Winston Churchill:

If you're going through hell, keep going.

It is tempting to stop, to "give up", or "give in" to fear, cynicism, anger, or reprisal. We have seen all that and experienced all that in many different ways over these weeks since the election. Those are not the ways to get through the dark night; they do not help us- or anyone- move forward. We easily get stuck in these and don’t move anywhere helpful or healthy.

What then do we go through? As in that quote from Our Sunday Visitor the first part is the purgative way. Purgative means cleansing, intense purifying, even liberating. We are talking about the path of the dark night moving us away from our attachment to things of our own doing and making; we are realizing that we are powerless over people, places, and things; we become aware of how we cling to things that are not helpful or productive in order to gain fame, fortune, or even at times a sense of calm and peace. Does it really make us feel better when we revert to angry, nasty comments? Does it help us- or anyone- when we lash out at those who differ from us? These are all the ways we act when we don’t know what else to do. “Well, they started it,” is not a good reason.

But in the dark night nothing positive seems to be working either. As John of the Cross describes it, even the deepest and most sincere prayers and rituals seem to lose their effectiveness. God seems to have abandoned us. We may cry, “How can God let this happen?” We feel lost and lonely.

At that point we have two choices.

• Admit we are lost and nothing can help us or 
• decide there has to be a power greater than ourselves who can get us through this. So we go searching in a sense of desperate hope. The Catholic Dictionary says we discover that as we detach from the things we have trusted we move closer to God and

the will becomes more firmly attracted to God and more securely attached to his divine will. This purification, however, is only a means to an end, namely, 1. to give greater glory to God, who is thereby loved for himself and not for the benefits he confers; 2. to lead the one thus purified to infused contemplation and even ecstatic union with God; 3. to enable the mystic to be used more effectively by God for the spiritual welfare of others, since the more holy a person is the more meritorious are that person's prayers and sacrifices for the human race. -Catholic Dictionary

This is the seed of the illuminative way- the second phase on the path. Down in the depths of that dark night, as we struggle and wrestle and seek beyond our deepest longings, we also discover some light. Enlightenment. In Twelve Step language, we come to believe that there is a power greater than ourselves. This is a power that can make sense of what is happening to us, that can lead us into new understandings of the world we inhabit- as well as the inner life we each can develop. We can be restored to sanity. We do not need to “give up” or “give in” to the world, our fears or desires, even our personal ideologies, political or religious positions, institutions. In our search for comfort and release of fear we have often relied on these. It is time to move on. We need to “surrender” to the Higher Power.

One would think that such a surrender would be the start of something wondrous and bright. And at first it does seem so. It is like a “pink cloud” where everything is hopeful. That is but the beginning. We are so used to hearing that all one must do is “trust God and all will be okay” that when it doesn’t happen that way we get upset, angry, or lose faith. What has happened is that we have experienced part of the joy of cleansing of the senses and physical issues. We must then, as John of the Cross guides us, also be cleansed of the spiritual issues.

It may be necessary for us to give up warm and fuzzy religious feelings, or have them taken from us by God so we can draw closer to Him. Catholics United for the Faith

The action of surrendering is not as easy as we would like; we are not done with the cleansing. Or more to the point, simply coming to believe is not the end. Much still can block us from the light at the end of the dark night. As part of the spiritual growth ahead of us we must also take a serious look at who we are and what has led us to this point. In the Twelve Step programs this is the “housecleaning” stage.

• We take a searching and fearless moral inventory and share it with a trusted mentor. (Twelve Steps, Four and Five)
• We discover our shortcomings and ongoing character defects and become willing to surrender them. (Twelve Steps, Six and Seven)
• We become aware of those we may have harmed or had difficult relationships with and make amends. (Twelve Steps, Eight and Nine)
• We learn how to take a regular self-inventory and be quick to make amends when we have hurt another. (Twelve Steps, Ten)

These are deeply spiritual steps.

• These force us to look inside and be honest about ourselves. 
• They make us confront the ways we may still cling to the old ways of self-centeredness, anger, resentment. 
• They lead us into finding new ways to relate to the people in our lives and the world around us. 
• They are preparing us to be awake in our spirit and in the Spirit of our Higher Power.

This may seem like a long way to get to what is happening in the world in these early days of 2017. We now have a new president, one who has arguably been the most controversial and disliked candidate-now-president in modern politics. Many remain fearful of what he is going to do. Many have seen him do things that they find unacceptable and promote values they have difficulty accepting. Many are ready to stand up to him and challenge him in the face of his supporters who tell us to “get over it.”

I believe what we are facing is an ongoing spiritual journey. We have only been at this specific journey since early November. It took many by surprise. Too many of us were complacent, almost sluggish. The election was a shock to our system. It told us that we didn't know our country as well as we thought we did. It told us that there is more going on here than we were paying attention to. Many of us have felt like we were swimming in quicksand, being pulled down and out. That is how, for me, the dark night began this journey.

Spiritual can be a confusing term. I am using it here in both the traditional "mystic" sense of becoming unified with a Higher Power (being part of something greater than ourselves) and in the awareness of being connected to those around us- our fellow human beings. These must always be together no matter what spiritual tradition, or lack of one, we may have come from. The journey will be unique for each of us, based on who we are and what we have experienced. It must also be in connection with others.

Marks of the spiritual can take many forms:

• love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control
• humility, forgiveness, and acceptance
• honesty, openness, and willingness.

to name but a few.

For us to be prepared for a spiritual journey, one must have been spiritually prepared. That is where we are now. We are at a beginning. These stages of the journey, or the Twelve Steps as a paradigm, or your training and direction and how that happens. We are less than 90 days into this particular journey. We are preparing.

Dark Night of the Soul #3: An Earlier Experience

My only previous experience of a dark night-type experience was over 30 years ago now. Details have become foggy, but it all began with a premonition. I envisioned a war in the Middle East during August of 1982. About two years earlier, in 1980, I had been asked to choose hymn verses and write prayers for our denominational devotional, The Daily Texts. I was assigned August 1982. As I read through the daily scriptures for the month I found myself growing afraid. They seemed to indicate that a war was coming in the Middle East. This idea got planted firmly in my conscious and unconscious mind.

This was only enhanced in November 1980 when I hosted a trip to Israel. Among the group who traveled with me were several people who believed that the Second Coming was imminent. An important part of that view is war in the Middle East. They spent a great deal of time talking about that as we toured the country. They almost seemed more interested in that than in the religious and spiritual aspects of the trip. The visit to Har Megiddo (Armageddon) was particularly difficult!

One afternoon I had some free time and I went to one of the hills on the outskirts of Jerusalem and sat there meditating, contemplating and praying. I could envision fighter jets flying over the walls of the Old City. My overactive imagination did its thing. It cemented the fear and uncertainty I was feeling. It remained there when I returned home. A few months after the trip our daughter was born. Now there was more reason to fear and worry.

I lost many nights sleep over the next 18 months. I didn’t talk about it to anyone for months. It was a constant presence in my thoughts, under the surface at times, but always bubbling up in the night. I became interested in St. John of the Cross and his writing at that point, but was unable to truly connect it with what I was going through. Nothing I did seemed to ease the tension. I began trying to figure out how to survive the coming war. It was no longer located in the Middle East in my imagination. It had become World War III. We owned a vacation place in the wilds of northern Pennsylvania so I decided that this would be as good a place as any to survive such a war. I planned that we would go there for the month of August. I never explained why.

I did go to see a pastoral counselor at one point. All he did was make it worse. “It must be something to have that ability at premonition,” was the only comment I remember. Not a help. I don’t think he was being sarcastic. Ironic, maybe. I did finally talk to my wife about it, but by then I was overwhelmed and just looking forward to getting past August. I knew it was crazy, but it was still alive.

Needless to say nothing happened. August 1982 came and went. I went back to “normal” life- or so I thought. Looking back from 35 years later I see that something else happened. It was but the beginning of a longer dark night that took another six years to finish. During this time my use of alcohol increased significantly. I would go up to our vacation place by myself. I would spend days alternating between drinking myself drunk at night and working on sermon and worship planning during the days. Days were productive; nights were hell. I would find renewal in the daylit woods and writing but the darkness would bring the demons. It is not an unusual pattern for a deepening alcoholic. I didn’t realize it was happening and even had trouble describing it several years later when faced with the outcome. But I tried something- in July 1984 we moved from Pennsylvania to Wisconsin.

Geographic escapes don’t work any better than any other actions of denial. The darkness was deepening and I was oblivious to the problems. A number of other personal and emotional storms began to develop. I began to question my own direction, desires, calling. I was outwardly doing well; inwardly I was falling apart. And no one knew it. Least of all myself. Can I blame it on the inability to identify the dark night of the early 1980s? Could it have been avoided if I had taken a different approach before it reached these stages?

No, I don’t think so. One of the difficulties of becoming spiritually mature and insightful is that you have to be old enough to have had the necessary experiences. Premature maturity is truly an oxymoron. The darkness at the beginning of that decade was the start of the dark night. It was setting the stage for what was to come. Through the mid-1980s I struggled with an inner darkness. I thought there had to be light shining somewhere in there; in truth I was fooling myself since I was looking for answers in my own understanding. I was refusing to allow the spirit touch my soul, although I knew that I wanted it.

My drinking expanded. It was a classic binge drinking pattern. It was easy to binge when I was away from home. I would go to conferences and hide in my room at night. I would visit friends in New York and make sure I had enough to drink when I was alone in what I called my “monk’s cell” in their apartment. I would walk the streets of New York with loneliness in the midst of eight million people. I was lost in my own darkness and unable to see the dark night St. John talked about.

Until finally, in late 1988 I had my own epiphany. I had become an alcoholic. I needed help. I entered treatment. Part of me expected it to be an escape. It turned into freedom. I thought it would be a way out of the inner hell I had created. Instead it became a way through that hell. It was a true dark night for in reality the night that John describes is an awareness of- and acceptance of- powerlessness and personal unmanageability in all areas of one’s life. Which is, of course, the First Step of Alcoholics Anonymous. I wouldn’t have used the words from John’s first stanza at that time. I do now!

On a dark night,
Kindled in love with yearnings
--oh, happy chance!--
I went forth without being observed,
My house being now at rest.

John describes this first stanza of the dark night as purging the lower self- the sensual self. In my years of sobriety and work as a substance abuse counselor, I would say that this is a good way to describe the work of the first three steps of AA. That purging or “housecleaning” is then described in steps four through nine. It is necessary. Most addicts and alcoholics have been hijacked by the senses and feelings of the “pleasure center” of the brain. Or rather, their chemical use has hijacked that area and turned their lives into hell. There is a constant search in the bottle or the pills, the weed or the next line, to get rid of the thoughts and feelings that seem to never go away.

—Oh, happy chance!— 

 that I was able to go forth and discover, in the midst of darkness, the light that shines in that darkness.

I could spend many days putting the dark night and early recovery together, which is not the purpose of this particular series. When I started this discussion of the dark night and how I have come to approach the current political and cultural issue I did not expect it to go this direction. I did not- and do not- have the whole thing outlined and ready for “prime time.” It is through my times of writing that these things work out. As I wrote the first two posts I realized that, for me, this is part of a longer and more profound journey. In putting this together I am describing my pilgrimage and its present location. I do not believe that this is unique to me. The language I use in the telling is mine but the experiences are far more common than not.

Within the next week we will have a new president. The divisiveness, anger, fear, and even hatred shown in the campaign and transition period was what spurred this series. There are times when I see a post on Facebook or a news story about some particularly difficult event that I get this awful feeling in the pit of my stomach. Anxiety builds; darkness seems to be more prevalent. It doesn’t appear as if that is going away any time soon. For today, and at least the next few weeks, the question is how do I live and grow through this? The Dark Night remains the best paradigm for me to work from.

In the next post I will delve more deeply into the path the dark night takes us on. John is very clear about what that is and why. I will utilize my experience of the Twelve Steps in that, but it is not about alcoholism or addiction. It is about the spiritual journey. John states that the goal of this journey into the dark night is

the state of the perfect, which is that of the Divine union of the soul with God.

I don’t think it is a coincidence that the purpose of the twelve Steps is the same, though in different words-

Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps… and to practice these principles in all our affairs. [emphasis added]