Tuning Slide: 3.37- Summarizing and Moving On

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

In the past three months (December through February) I reviewed a good number of the summary statements we put together at the closing session of last summer’s Shell Lake Trumpet Workshop. Directly or indirectly here they are, alphabetically arranged, to jog your memory.

• Always have a relaxed breath. Warm, moist air
• Always play with your best sound
• Animals can’t change emotion- we can.
• Be comfortable being uncomfortable [Expect the unexpected]
• Be yourself at your full potential- Example of the rose, Inner Game of Tennis, p. 37
• Best way to go 1000 miles is to take first step
• Can’t do it alone
• Circle of influence is important
• Have to schedule the not urgent/important or it gets lost
• Hear it, study it, make it become natural
• If you panic you will die
• Just have fun! It will happen faster.
• Keep a journal/log
• Listen to your body.
• Negativity is exhausting. You will be negative about others if you are negative about your self.
• Never give up
• Never put out someone else’s light to make your light shine brighter
• Obstacles appear if we take our minds away from the goal.
• Only see our path of dots going backward
• Power of ask
• Setting goals (short, intermediate, long term) for practicing etc.
• Shoot high- don’t sell yourself short
• Taking the theoretical and making it real.
• The way we do anything is the way we do everything
• Therefore make good dots
• There’s always time to practice
• Trumpet’s a skill, but it impacts everything.
• When given opportunity to share- do it.
• Worst sin is feeling sorry for yourself- because it’s all about me
• Your best trumpet playing hasn’t happened yet
• Your best trumpet playing is only a thought away

An impressive list of ideas and thoughts that can keep us all busy for years. Take a look at it again and see where you might need some prodding- then do it.

Oh- this year’s Shell Lake Trumpet Workshop is less than five months away! I’m already registered and excited.

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This month’s series I am calling

Myths, Misconceptions and Holy Truths.

It is easy to live under many misconceptions and myths. They are often based on seeming common sense or just plain old personality quirks. Over the past three years of digging into trumpet playing in many ways that are completely new to me, I have faced a few of these. Each Wednesday this month I will start with a myth or misconception I or others around me have had, talk about it, work with it, then summarize it in what I am calling a “Holy Truth.” You’ll get the picture.

My mind is made up. Don’t confuse me with the facts.
-Various sources

A few trumpet players were having a discussion. As is often the case it turned to mouthpieces, perhaps the single most common area of discussion among us. We all have had experiences and all have our opinions. Opinions are, of course based on our subjective look at what has happened to us.

The question became, “What mouthpiece do you use?” The usual answers were there: Bach 3C, Bach Megatone, Schilke 14A4a. Discussions then wandered around to “cheater” mouthpieces, that is those that give an advantage for use when high register lead playing is a necessity. Again, we shared experiences.

“I just never felt comfortable with….”
“I liked it but my lip seemed to collapse with…”
“I got better range and endurance for the first time with…”
“Did you know that so-and-so has only ever used…”

Just for the fun of it I looked up Schilke’s list of standard trumpet/cornet mouthpieces. There are 53(!) and 11 heavyweight mouthpieces! That’s just one manufacturer!

Mind boggling and probably confusing as hell to anyone trying to figure it out. But we all have our opinions and they are, of course, right. Until we change our mind because we think there must be something better out there.

Looking for the better mouthpiece may be the #1 task.

But what really got me thinking was a very simple question. One of the trumpet players wondered if getting a mouthpiece that improves your upper register would hurt your mid-register playing, up to the G at the top of the staff, for example.

Well, I guess it could if you used one of the really upper-register-type mouthpieces for all your playing, but on a more general level, I am not sure why it should. Here’s why…If we are truly working on our overall sound and musicality, the equipment we use will not be the most important thing. It will be the practice and the sound.

Which brings me around to the misconception or myth this week:

the exaggerated importance we put into equipment as the magic bullet that will turn any one of us into the next Doc or Maynard.

In our pursuit of being a better musician, however each of us defines it, we may at any given time think that a different horn, a different mouthpiece, a different lead pipe could push us that one bit closer to Doc or Miles. Yes, a better horn or mouthpiece can make a difference in our playing. An old clunker horn that has too much (or too little) back pressure or valves that are poorly made will not sound as good as a good horn. Yes, a different mouthpiece may work better for you. I am even told that a model of a horn by the same manufacturer can even be different depending on the year it was built.

It can also degrade our playing if we think that all we have to do is get a new (fill in the blank) and all will be great.

The Holy Truth for the week then is simple:

• Equipment is not the answer.

Okay, let’s amend that, equipment alone is not the answer because it can make a difference. But at the heart of it is the sound we make and the practice we put into it.

The question about a mouthpiece that improves upper register hurting middle register is a good example. A year ago I bought a new mouthpiece that has definitely increased my range and endurance. I am, as I said in last week’s post, hitting upper register notes I would never have thought possible with greater endurance. It also has a brighter and better projected sound. My wife, a non-musician, noticed that right away. I like it. AND, it has not caused any problem with my middle range because I made sure it didn’t.

• I did not concentrate on the upper register. I continued to do my routine of expanding long tones starting at G on the staff. I kept going higher while maintaining the lower end. I made sure that I did not sacrifice that middle range.
• I also concentrated on the sound I was producing in that range. I was letting the mouthpiece and the horn work together. When I am playing they have to be a single unit. Together they produce the sound.
• Finally, I also worked on pedal tones. Guess what- I am also playing pedal tones better than I ever have. I realized that unless I was truly using a “cheater” mouthpiece to get to the upper range, the whole sound has to be there. Pedal tones are one of the “secrets” of high register playing because they help with the flexibility of the embouchure. Makes sense.

I will admit that I continue to look at mouthpieces as ways of improving my sound. After all, I am a trumpet geek. But it is going to have to be significant for me to spend the money on it, after all, again, the Holy Truth is

Equipment is not the answer.

6,700 and Some Music to Celebrate

One of those relatively "round" numbers today.

This is the six thousand seven hundredth post in the ongoing saga of the Wanderings of a postModern Pilgrim.

Next week will be the blogiversary date so I will save any more comments until then.

Thanks for being here.

Here's a video from the great people at Playing for Change to help celebrate the milestone:

4th Week of Lent: Living Your Beliefs=Happiness

In a gentle way, 
you can shake the world.
-Gandhi




Thoreau did not just have an impact in the United States. Among his widest impacts in the wider world was through Mohandas Gandhi, the non-violent protestor fighting in India for freedom from the British. He read Walden in 1906 while working as a civil rights advocate in South Africa.

He first read Civil Disobedience "while he sat in a South African prison for the crime of nonviolently protesting discrimination against the Indian population in the Transvaal. The essay galvanized Gandhi, who wrote and published a synopsis of Thoreau's argument, calling its 'incisive logic [...] unanswerable' and referring to Thoreau as 'one of the greatest and most moral men America has produced'."
-Link

Talk about shaking the world! It is also changing the future.

The future depends on what we do in the present.
-Gandhi

We don’t often give much thought to what influence we can have on the future. Maybe that is the life of “quiet desperation” Thoreau mentioned in his writings. What is the sense of what we do? We live until we die and then we are gone. Very few of us will have the level of influence that a Thoreau or a Gandhi had on the “future.” Perhaps, though, we need to remember that we are still in our own spheres of influence quite significant. Our words and actions go together because they are what we have right here and now to share. Gandhi recognized this in Thoreau. Here is what he said about Thoreau in For Passive Resisters in 1907:

Thoreau was … a most practical man, that is, he taught nothing he was not prepared to practice in himself. He was one of the greatest and most moral men America has produced. … He went to gaol for the sake of his principles and suffering humanity. His essay has, therefore, been sanctified by suffering. Moreover, it is written for all time. Its incisive logic is unanswerable.
-Link

Words are made real in actions. They speak louder than words. Even though Thoreau’s act of civil disobedience was quite small, even appearing trivial in comparison to what Gandhi was going through, the fact that he was willing to take the action in and of itself gave power to the words. They caught Gandhi’s attention as “sanctified” words, words containing the “holy.” Therefore Gandhi paid attention and the world was changed. I doubt that Thoreau would have ever thought his words would have such power more than 80 years later on the other side of the world.

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.
-Gandhi

In many ways that is what Lent is about. For me it is a kind of time to take inventory of how my life and my faith, my words and my actions, work together. Each year I discover new things about myself since I am not the same person I was last year let alone 50+ years ago when I became a Christian. The world is also far different. Perhaps it needs the same words but with different actions. Perhaps I need to understand God’s call to me today and not what it was when I started this journey.

So my questions for this week in Lent lead me to thinking about the melding of thoughts, words, and deeds

• Who has had this kind of impact on my beliefs?
• What  have I learned from them?
• This Lent, how can I more deeply be a living action of what God wants me to do with my words?
• This Lent, where are my actions not showing the truth of my beliefs and therefore undermining my words?
• This Lent, how can I confess and be transformed from them and be guided into a more holistic life?
• This Lent, how can I be open to the life-giving surrender to the power of God in Jesus to bring me healing?

To be in constant conflict with ones beliefs and actions is a sure way to lose ones sense of self and direction. If I am not open to living out the beliefs of my conscience, and my Creator, it will steal any sense of peace and hope I might be able to find. To be honest and live a life of integrity to what I believe is essential to mental and physical health. Perhaps Thoreau was right in saying that such would lead to death itself instead of the life promised by God.

Is there not a sort of blood shed when the conscience is wounded?

Through this wound a man's real manhood 

and immortality flow out,

and he bleeds to an everlasting death.

― Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

Third Sunday of Lent: The Truth of Friendship

The language of friendship is not words but meanings.

It is an intelligence above language.

-Henry David Thoreau

A number of years ago I was involved in the development of a Christian renewal movement within our denomination. One of the directions of the movement was “evangelism” which at that time (mid-1970s) was not quite as loaded a word as it has become. In any case it was a gentler version that we talked about in that movement. It was based on “friendship” with the mantra being

• Make a friend,
• Be a friend,
• Introduce your friend to Christ.

Not a bad idea in and of itself. It was always based on the idea that when something is important to you, or touches you deeply, you are almost always ready and willing to share it with your friends. We often talked about how when we see a good movie or read a good book, we are excited to share it with friends. Our natural conclusion was we should be ready to do that with our faith.

There were those, however, who saw it from a slightly different angle. They saw it as a technique to win souls. I am over exaggerating a bit, but it became for some, “Let me find some non-Christians, befriend them, and then when they are ready I’ll talk about Jesus.” (As I said, an over-exaggeration, but you get the idea.)

The problem with that was often in the reasoning and not in the ideal. Becoming friends with people had turned into a technique to get someone to believe. In its most raw form it lacked the true heart of both friendship and evangelism. It lacked caring and compassion and was simply the often seen “numbers” game of “How many have you saved today?” It was “Who can I make friends with?” not “Who needs a friend?”

A big difference!

I always liked the “Make…Be…Introduce” approach to evangelism. I still do. I liked it because it was how I became a Christian.

A close friend and his family befriended me when I needed it. They reached out to a lonely teenager whose mother had been sick and died. They were already friends before my mom got sick, but they saw a greater need than just being a friend. They became a second family with many hours spent with them. They eventually invited me to church with them. Of course they did- it was an important, an essential part of their life. Why wouldn’t they want to share it with me? They weren’t out to “win souls”; they were out to help me be introduced to their friend Jesus.

It took a number of months for me to say okay to their invitation. When I did, I kept going back. They knew I needed something and were sure that Jesus would be right for me.

They were right! The rest is my own history. From my baptism at age 15 through college and then seminary, years of being a pastor and a counselor until now, just two months shy of 55 years later, their friendship at that important point in my life made all the difference! They were kind to the hopes I didn’t know I had and to the dreams yet undreamt!

Friends . . . They are kind to each other's hopes. 

They cherish each other's dreams.

-Thoreau

I have had many friends over these 55 years. They have all known about my faith in its various stages and understandings. Some were members of my church; many were not. Some were Christian; some were not. My faith always informed my relationships. Again, not because I wanted to win them to Christ, something I cannot do, but because my faith is who I am. I can no more separate my faith from my personality and personhood than I can change the color of my eyes or the genes of my European ancestors.

I reflect on all that today with the quotes from Thoreau for this Sunday of Lent. It is tempting to use the friendship thoughts to think about my friendship with Jesus or God. (What a friend we have in Jesus / All our sins and griefs to bear…) That is naturally the foundation. Instead, what I have been led to this week is to think about the friends I have had- and the friend I am being. Jesus’ friendship toward me is the model of what friendship means.

• It means openness to the friend and their needs. 
• It means supporting their hopes and dreams for them.
• It means sharing my hopes and dreams with them. 
• It means caring and compassion, not asking for anything in return. 
• It means grace.

All trite cliches I know, but cliches become time-worn because they are true and get repeated.

• Lent reminds me of the spiritual path of friendship as Jesus himself lived it.
• Lent reminds me of the treasure of friendship that I have been given by and with my friends.
• Lent reminds me of the gifts of friendship that I have to offer to my friends.

[S]urely my Friend shall forever be my Friend, and reflect a ray of God to me,

and time shall foster and adorn and consecrate our Friendship,

no less than the ruins of temples.

-Thoreau

• This Lent, how am I living out my friendship to others?
• This Lent, how can Jesus teach me more about being a friend?
• This Lent, how can I grow in my closeness to God through Jesus?
• This Lent, how can all these be consecrated by the Holy Spirit working in me?

The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, 

not the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; 

it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one 

when you discover that someone else believes in you 

and is willing to trust you with a friendship.

― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Detecting Precious Metals

The beach person that most intrigued me last week was the gentleman who slowly walked up the beach with a metal detector. They are quite common. I assume they are looking for metal that someone has dropped out of a pocket or whatever.

Once in a while I see someone with a metal detector being pulled from their own walk to help someone find something. The crew who was putting the beach chairs out for the season corralled a passing metal seeker to walk around to find something that was lost. It took about ten minutes but it was a successful job.

The usual pattern, though, is the slow walk up the beach, the detector at the end of a wand that is slowly moved back and forth in front of the walker. Headphones are used to transmit a sound of detected metal. When that happens the prospector stops. He then double checks, moving the wand back and forth making sure the sound was correct.

If so, the next step is to do some digging. Down on their knees they go to do some pushing around of sand and seashell fragments. After a moment or two of digging the detector is brought back into play over the spot. If the sound is still there, the digging continues.

I realized that the metal seeker is a good metaphor for what I do as a counselor/therapist. Whether in group or one-on-one my first task is to detect what's happening. I rummage around the edges. I ask questions. I listen carefully to what 's being said. I pay attention to what is NOT being said. If it's someone new it takes more time than if it is someone I have worked with previously. It takes concentration and an attitude of acceptance- "Something is in here for me to discover," is my opening thought.

Then I hear it. It is sometimes subtle and sometimes so blatant that it's like alarms going off. A key word, an attitude shift, a change in tone or body position. "Hmmm!" I think. "Let's do some digging." I ask different questions, give feedback on what I might have heard- the old Rogerian-method "What I hear you saying..." or just simply repeating what they said and see what they do with it. In essence I am the metal seeker getting into the story. Was the intuitive "ping" I felt real or just a false alarm?

Intuition is an important piece here for me. It is often built on experience. Very few times do I hear something so completely new and different that it is totally unlike anything I have ever heard before. There may be a new twist to it, but the underlying concern or issue is almost always something I have seen and worked with in the past. That is why more experienced counselors tend to be better at intuitively understanding situations. We aren't smarter, just been around the block a few more times.

That is why counseling/therapy can be so rewarding. It is a "treasure hunt"- a stroll along the shore of another person's depths and worries, hopes and disasters. In so doing I am hoping to be able to help them find the answers they seek- or at least help them ask the questions that will move them in a healthier direction.

Counseling is not magic nor mumbo-jumbo. It is an engagement with another human being on an exciting journey. I am humbled to have been able to do it for so many years in so many different ways.

The Tuning Slide: 3.36- Ask! Just Ask!

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

One describes a tale best by telling the tale. You see?
The way one describes a story, to oneself or to the world, is by telling the story.
It is a balancing act and it is a dream.
-Neil Gaiman

All of us who know Bob Baca from UW-Eau Claire and the Shell Lake Trumpet Workshop know that he likes to tell stories. Actually he is as much a storyteller as he is a master trumpet player and teacher! We listen because we know the story will be interesting and have an application for us. Personally, I am a big believer in stories. I write fiction stories because they can illustrate truth in ways that real events may find difficult. Those in 12-Step recovery programs tell stories about what people “used to be like, what happened, and what we are like now.” The goal is to illustrate what works- and what doesn’t. The result will be a new understanding.

I had another one of my events in the past month that needs to be told. It is a story of learning what I thought I already knew and a reminder that we never know as much as we think we know. It will also illustrate eight more of the summary thoughts from last summer. As usual, these summary thoughts will be indicated by a check mark.

The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think,
but to give you questions to think upon.
--Brandon Sanderson, fantasy and science fiction writer

I have been on a great roll with my trumpet playing. A few ups and downs with the usual plateaus and then moving forward again. Toward the end of January I following my routine and Arban’s lessons. I was at a slight plateau but I was not worried. Plateaus happen. I noted in my journal that it was beginning to improve with some solid sound in the high C - E range. I was playing them with a solid sound and confidence. For me, that is a huge step forward. A week later I noticed pain on the inside of my upper lip, almost like a pressure sore where my lip and teeth came together. That was a first to that extent. I remembered what I had been told at Shell Lake:

✓ Listen to your body

• It was telling me it hurt.
• It was telling me it didn’t have the range or endurance.
• I didn’t want to miss any days of doing my routine. I have not missed a day since the end of March last year. Yes, that was ego at work, of course. I want to go a whole year of not missing a day. I also had a concert coming up and didn’t want to lose anything of my endurance, even though that was happening any way.
• I had bragged a few weeks ago to one of my trumpet friends how I was regularly playing notes in the upper register - now I was struggling and finding even my upper mid-range register was beginning to sound mushy. It was the worst setback in my playing since I started this part of my journey almost three years ago.

An important reminder from the words of Bob Baca:

✓ If you panic you will die.

Yes, Self 1 was in panic mode. That meant, for me in this case, that I wanted answers and wanted them fast! I couldn’t afford to lose my ability. I was doing so well in so many ways and now here I was, almost floundering, seemingly overnight. I was “dying”.

I wondered whether it is possible for Self 2 also to slide toward panic? Self 2 is supposed to naturally do what is the best. All is generally cool with Self 2. But, what happens when there is something out of even Self 2’s control? Whatever the physical reason(s) behind my inner lip problem/blister/sore, it was hindering what I was doing. I was hurting. I didn’t want to make it worse and have to stop.

So I did the normal plateau things of not pushing beyond pain limits; I went to slow easy pieces in the lower and mid-register; I worked on pedal tones. Nothing was working.

Oh- even my wife had noticed something was wrong. “Your playing sounds tired, exhausted. Take it easy,” she said. “Nah, I’m fine,” I said at the time. Typical.

✓ Circle of influence is important
✓ Power of ask

More words of wisdom from the board at Shell Lake.

Ask.

So I turned to the community. I went to the Shell Lake Trumpet Workshop Facebook page and posted a question, explaining what had been happening:

ME: OK, gang of trumpet gurus: I have developed a pressure sore (not a cold sore) inside my upper lip where it hits against the tooth. I have been practicing daily for almost 11 months. I had gotten to a good level of endurance and range! That is now going backward. Knowing opinions about taking a day off, etc. what might I do until sore eases so I don't make it so bad I can't play? Any thoughts?

Quentin replied first with a good practical question, but right behind him was the one who knew more about my embouchure than anyone else at camp. Bill Bergren. He worked with me on it last year-

BILL B: This can be caused by a crooked tooth, braces, or bad playing habits. Are you still playing with open lips? [He was remembering our private lesson last summer.]

ME: Thanks! More info: Bill- if you mean breathing, I have been working on it. …. Blah, blah, blah… more blah, blah, blah… Any other ideas or questions? [When you don’t get an answer, just talk more, add more information, fog it up with words. I can be good at that!]

BILL B: I reiterate; This can be caused by a crooked tooth, braces, or bad playing habits.

ME: I would agree since it …. Blah, blah, blah… It happened so suddenly, though. Oh well. I keep on playing. Thanks, Bill. [Ramble on my wayward son.]

I thought we were done. But I hadn’t heard Bill and he knew it. Bill, not one for extra words (or putting up with fools like me being dense) had one more, simple six-word reply.

BILL B: You are over analyzing. The sound..................

Mumble, grumble, huff and puff.

He was right. I was doing what I hate when other trumpet players do it- analyze the life out of everything. Ramble on and on about what’s happening looking for a quick solution. By focusing on the pain and lip and the sudden lack of range/endurance I was ignoring what Self 2 can do best- play with the right- and best- sound. Back to the board at Shell Lake:

✓ Always play with your best sound
✓ Just have fun! It will happen faster.

Self 2 knows how to make sound- good sound. It needs to convince Self 1 that it can still happen. “Be easy, man,” it was telling me through Bill’s words. “Don’t get so hung up on all that crap. Make the best sound. Always.”

I went back to the long tones and Getchell with slow and easy playing. I let the sound go from the horn. I stopped nerding-out and obsessing about what I was experiencing. "It’s a plateau, dummy. You pushed too far, you didn’t pay attention. Relax! Have fun. Make music!”

✓ Your best trumpet playing is only a thought away [therefore]
✓ Your best trumpet playing hasn’t happened yet

It’s been over a week now. I have regained the mid-range sound- simply by playing it the way I was before. I have regained the fun of playing. I am watching that I am not pushing the limits- I am paying attention to the body and what Self 2 is saying. The body does not like it when I push to playing tired. It unlearns what it has learned. It wants to feel good playing, not exhausted.

I've played two concerts in the past 6 days. The second was last night. I played well, with range and endurance! It was fun and I liked what I was doing.

Sometimes we have to listen to those around us.

As always and every time, thanks, Bill!

If you're going to have a story, 

have a big story, or none at all.
--Joseph Campbell, mythologist, writer and lecturer

Third Week of Lent: The Wilderness Path of Light

We shall never achieve harmony with the land, anymore than we shall achieve absolute justice or liberty for people. In these higher aspirations the important thing is not to achieve but to strive.

-Aldo Leopold

Most people would agree that Thoreau was the original American nature writer. His reflection on his two years on Walden Pond is classic and the root from which many others have grown. One of the greatest of these was Aldo Leopold.

Aldo Leopold (1887 – 1948) was an American author, philosopher, scientist, ecologist, forester, conservationist, and environmentalist. He was a professor at the University of Wisconsin and is best known for his book A Sand County Almanac (1949), which has sold more than two million copies…. Leopold was influential in the development of modern environmental ethics and in the movement for wilderness conservation…. He emphasized biodiversity and ecology and was a founder of the science of wildlife management. -Link

What does Leopold as an heir of Thoreau have to teach us this Lenten season? How can we discover new insights into our spiritual lives in this world from him? I for one believe that wilderness and nature is always an excellent starting point for any spiritual journey. It is not coincidence that we use Jesus’ wilderness temptations as the starting point for Lent or that the Desert Fathers and Mothers went into a wilderness to find their own souls closer to God. The presence and possibility of nature in all its hope and danger is a place to learn about the limits of our human condition.

Leopold began the Foreword to A Sand County Almanac:

THERE are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot. These essays are the delights and dilemmas of one who cannot. Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them. Now we face the question whether a still higher ‘standard of living' is worth its cost in things natural, wild, and free. (P. vii)

Leopold was in the forefront of a movement that saw great danger in what we humans were (and are) doing to the natural world. He understood that his view can only begin to be discussed once we have enough food to eat, that is, we are beyond basic survival mode. But unfettered progress was not necessarily a good thing either.

The whole conflict thus boils down to a question of degree. We of the minority see a law of diminishing returns in progress; our opponents do not. … (P. vii)

I am currently reading a truly interesting history of the two sides of the debate of the future of humanity. In The Wizard and the Prophet, Charles Mann tells the story of the “two sides of a century-long dispute between what Mann calls “wizards,” who believe that science will allow humans to continue prospering, and “prophets,” who predict disaster unless we accept that our planet's resources are limited.” (Kirkus Review)  Leopold was part of the side Mann calls the “prophets.” They see the earth’s resources as limited, needing to be protected or we will misuse, abuse, and eventually eliminate them to our own and the world’s detriment.

These two sides have not been reconciled and remain clearly opponents in the debate. Leopold concludes his Foreword with these words:

[O]ur bigger-and-better society is now like a hypochondriac, so obsessed with its own economic health as to have lost the capacity to remain healthy. The whole world is so greedy for more bathtubs that it has lost the stability necessary to build them, or even to tum off the tap. Nothing could be more salutary at this stage than a little healthy contempt for a plethora of material blessings. (P. ix)

Many of us raised in the environmentalism of the 60s will easily fall on the Aldo Leopold side of the debate. Such a view is based on an understanding of ultimately limited resources, maintaining stewardship of what we have, the absolute interrelatedness of humans and nature, and finally, the dangers of a consumer-driven society where more and bigger is always better (even as we gladly participate in it.)

I am a fugitive and a vagabond, a sojourner seeking signs.
- Annie Dillard

Many of us also know the advantages of “nature.” Books like A Sand County Almanac and Annie Dillard’s A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974) have opened many of us to the amazing world around us. They have shown us both the “otherness” of nature and our connectedness, even dependence on it. It is a place that, as others have said, one must go prepared, or not at all. I am one of those who believes that the “spiritual” is the best way to be prepared for what it has to teach us and what I need to learn.

I don’t mean just wilderness, either. It can be the town park, the woods off the side of the road, the Bald Eagle’s nest along the river on the edge of the city. It can be a bike trail, a neighborhood street, or the nearest state park. If we go there with an openness to what’s there, what’s new, and what’s old, we will never be disappointed. Sometimes we look up at the canopy or the sky; at other times we get down and explore the square foot of earth beneath our feet. They are both filled with wonder and beyond.

They are filled with God and the words of God. They are icons- images that open to the indescribable. They are sacraments- outward and visible signs and means of God’s grace.

The world is wilder than that in all directions, more dangerous and bitter, more extravagant and bright. We are making hay when we should be making whoopee; we are raising tomatoes when we should be raising Cain, or Lazarus.

Go up into the gaps. If you can find them; they shift and vanish too. Stalk the gaps. Squeak into a gap in the soil, turn, and unlock-more than a maple- a universe. This is how you spend this afternoon, and tomorrow morning, and tomorrow afternoon. Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you.
-Annie Dillard

I pray that we not lose sight of this value of the natural world. I pray that as we go through our days, the possibility of finding God in all places will deepen our spiritual health through the world around us. The inward journey of Lent can prepare us for that. It is why we return here every year. We walk our inner labyrinths in order to circle and then touch the holy center of who we are.

There are many lessons to be learned, explored, and acted upon in these writings of Leopold and Dillard, heirs of Thoreau. We in the faith community know some of them, in our own imperfect human ways. We preach stewardship but often forget about the stewardship of the world around us. We sing of our “awesome wonder” at all the works God’s hands have made, yet pay little thought to how we can help protect and enhance that. We know of the value of community but overlook the greater community of the interconnectedness of the world.

I cannot cause light; the most I can do is try to put myself in the path of its beam. It is possible, in deep space, to sail on solar wind. Light, be it particle or wave, has force: you can rig a giant sail and go. The secret of seeing is to sail on solar wind. Hone and spread your spirit till you yourself are a sail, whetted, translucent, broadside to the merest puff.
-Annie Dillard

This week of Lent, may I walk into the Light, put myself into the path of it’s cleansing and healing beam. Then sail into the presence of the Creator! Let us do it together.

To those devoid of imagination a blank place on the map is a useless waste; to others, the most valuable part.

-Aldo Leopold

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.

Fascinating History

Bellevue: Three Centuries of Medicine and Mayhem at America's Most Storied Hospital by David M. Oshinsky

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Intriguing history of an iconic hospital, public health in New York, and medicine in America. Quote a story of epidemics, change, riots, wars, AIDS, and a Superstorm. It is fascinating to read of how different medical care was not that long ago!



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Second Sunday of Lent: What Drumbeat? What Path?

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.
-Henry David Thoreau


Okay, I better address something this week. Why in the world am I using someone like Thoreau for leading me deeper into the world of Lent? Thoreau was not supportive of Christianity. In fact his “diary” entry for Sunday in A Week on the Concord and Merrimack is more about western religions' faults and hypocrisies. On top of that he is often seen as self-centered, narcissistic, pompous, and hypocritical. An article in New Yorker magazine in 2015 by award-winning author Kathryn Schulz severely criticizes Thoreau.

The real Thoreau was, in the fullest sense of the word, self-obsessed: narcissistic, fanatical about self-control, adamant that he required nothing beyond himself to understand and thrive in the world. From that inward fixation flowed a social and political vision that is deeply unsettling. -Link

She goes on to analyze and question how in the world such a person could be so honored and even deified by so many?

I am not here to defend Thoreau. To some extent I agree with Schulz’s general review of him. He was a very strange man in so many ways. In spite of the popularity- and importance- of his ideal of civil disobedience, or his ideal of Walden pond, his arguments as presented do not always hold water, especially in the 21st Century. He was an excellent naturalist and the founding father of so much of what has since been written, but again it may not be all it seems. In many ways he was writing a metaphor, not a strict natural history. But again, we are dealing with the pre-Civil War 19th Century! The world of New England in 1845, which Thoreau presented as the seeming pinnacle of civilization, looks nothing like our world. It is, for me, the principles and directions of his thought that impress me.

As we remember that we are not dealing with a contemporary of ours, so too we should understand that he was not a “wise elder.” Thoreau never made it to being an elder; he died at age 45 of tuberculosis. He was 28 when he moved to Walden, 30 when he left, and 31 when he delivered the lecture that would become Civil Disobedience. In other words he was still a young rebel. He never left that behind.

Which is why I am so impressed by him and why the quote at the top of this post is his legacy for me. He was always marching to a different drummer. I believe that we as Christians should never forget that thought. We should find ways to move our own lives with an attitude of following our own music- or more fittingly for this series- the music of the soul and spirit as we Jesus-followers experience and discover it through Jesus Christ; him crucified and resurrected. Jesus told us that we should learn the ways of the world because he was sending us out

like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. (NRSV)

Part of that, Thoreau would remind us, is to listen for the beat of that different drummer! That is what Lent reminds us. Here is the call of this season for us-

dig deeply, look inside to find the drumbeat of our lives. 

More to the point may be that we are hearing the heartbeat of God when we do so. That heartbeat can be restless. That can make it a heartbeat that animates us, gives us direction and meaning and life. It keeps us moving.

A friend on Facebook posted a challenge to his fellow Baby Boomers last week. He asked what happened to the idealism and hope, the fresh ideas and directions, the radical and revolutionary understandings that propelled so many of us in the 60s and early 70s? Instead we have become “elders” (read: old), often more interested in the status quo than the possibilities of growth and peace, grace and spirit. “Have we lost our soul?” was my personal response. Have we become afraid of our own shadows, or even ashamed of some of the naive and innocent ideals of our youth? As a result have we turned away from asking the hard questions for fear of offending ourselves or others? Have we turned off the drumbeat and simply given up on making the world a better place?

But the word naive comes from deeper roots than that.

1650s, "natural, simple, artless," from French naïve, fem. of naïf, from Old French naif "naive, natural, genuine; just born; foolish, innocent; unspoiled, unworked" (13c.), from Latin nativus "not artificial," also "native, rustic," literally "born, innate, natural" -Link

Maybe we weren’t as “foolish” as some think we were. Maybe we were listening to what is more innate, a more natural way of living. Thoreau’s time at Walden Pond was a similar move. No, he did not leave the world behind and live like a hermit. Far from it. Instead he used that time to dig into his own soul and the spirit of the world around him, to hear the different drummer’s beat for him.

That’s what I am doing this Lent. I am using my faith and my experiences to bring that beat into clearer focus. I am using the wrestling with Thoreau to help me fine-tune my ear for the music and the ways to bring what I still believe as important from my “naive” years into this time and place.

• Where am I turning to hear the beat of God’s drummer?
• How can I pay closer attention to what the Spirit is calling me to do?
• What is the path in front of me that I may need to follow?
• What of my past is valuable to translate into this new century and the next decade of my life?
• How can I leave a trail that others may follow and find their own place in the work of God?

Do not go where the path may lead,

go instead where there is no path

and leave a trail.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Literal or Serious (3)- What is Success?

I had originally just planned on this being two posts from last Friday and Saturday. Wednesday I realized that these are answering the questions raised by a friend a few weeks ago that I have not been able to put into words. I was challenged to be as specific as I can about what Trump policies I disagree with. Because so much of what we have seen is wrapped in his language, tweets, and rhetoric, I really had to start with the first two that set out some of the ideas.

One thing I have seen asked of liberals like myself is

Do you want Trump to fail?

The inference being that any good, patriotic American wouldn't want the President to fail at what he wants to do. To wish for him to fail would be to wish ill to the country.

I don't agree with that argument.

It assumes that I agree with the direction he appears to be taking the country. It assumes I agree with his ideas, politics, and plans. It assumes that if the President fails, then the country has failed.

Over the eight years of the Obama administration there were many Republicans and others who wanted Obama's policies to be stopped. They took some of them to court and won. Others never happened because Congress didn't agree. In other words, they wanted his agenda, and therefore his plans and directions, to fail.

That is where I am today.

Let me start then by saying if Trump's policies do result in a even stronger economy than we have had growing these past three to five years, then I am with him. I want him to succeed. If his policies provide safe and fair immigration and security, then I am with him. I want him to succeed. If his health care policies provide good, positive access to the health system for Americans, then I am with him. I want him to succeed.

But if he does succeed at those,

• I don't want it to be at the cost of who we are as Americans. 
• I don't want it to undermine the system of social support that has been around since at least the mid-1930s. 
• I don't want it to result in hatred and racism becoming more prevalent, further dividing us as a nation. 
• I don't want it to be because he was unwilling to stand up to American values against white supremacists and Russian hacking. 
• I don't want it to be at the expense of the first use of nuclear weapons in nearly 75 years.

If his policies result in those things, then yes, I want him to fail, and fail miserably. We will be a better nation if he does. That does not mean I am against our country. Much the opposite.

• I want him to fail at those so that we may remain a strong and vibrant nation, offering hope, and opportunity, even to those who were brought here as children and have made America a better place because of their contributions. 
• I want to see children feeling safe at schools, not because we have turned their buildings into locked and armed institutions, but because we have become willing to stand up to the false god of guns as a national symbol.
• I want to see the middle class be given the opportunities to benefit from the advances we as a nation make and not simply receive some crumbs thrown out to them while fanning their fear and dislike of immigrants or others.
• I want to see him challenge his friends in that upper 1% to give of themselves like many in the middle and lower classes do on a regular basis. Yes, many do, but they are being given some incredible advantages in the new tax law that should bring with it greater responsibilities. And not just to shareholders or in one-time bonuses in place of real salary increases.
• I really do want him to face Russia and say in no uncertain terms that meddling in our elections is NOT the way we want. The hell with collusion. This was, and continues to be, an act of aggression against the basics of who we are.

We do not blindly follow any President. The GOP didn't blindly agree and follow Obama or Clinton. Democrats did not blindly follow either Bush or Reagan. We don't have to! We can debate and disagree. And yes, when it comes to specific policies that we feel are detrimental to the health and welfare of our country, we can hope he fails.

This is called democracy!

(I think there will be one more of these in the next week.)

A Gripping Book

Oliver Loving by Stefan Merrill Block

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


It is only by coincidence and not planning that I started reading a novel about a fictitious school shooting. But it opened worlds and thoughts. A marvelous and gripping book of pain and loss, anger and fear, lost hopes and dreams that are hard to let go of. From various points of view we watch a family and a town disappear into varied concerns and habits. We get a picture of rage that might more often than not be the underlying root of mass shootings. In the end it is in the power of grief AND of letting go that movement can occur. Quite a book!



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The Tuning Slide 3.35- Aim High!

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood…
Make big plans; aim high in hope and work.
– Daniel Burnham

Attitude- how you approach whatever you are doing and how you act on it. With that in mind here’s this week’s Trumpet Workshop Summary quote:

✓ Shoot high- don’t sell yourself short

Yeah, but what if I am only fooling myself when I think I can do that? What if I’m setting myself up for failure by shooting too high? Is it possible to shoot too high? In other words:

How do you know how high to aim?

I found some thoughts in a book a friend recommended to me, Making Music for the Joy of It: Enhancing Creativity, Skills and Musical Confidence by Stephanie Judy. She talks about making a self-analysis of our goals and purposes.

Begin by asking yourself hard questions like these: “What am I making music for? What part of music making gives me pleasure? What kinds of challenges do I welcome, and what kinds of challenges are pointlessly frustrating?” The purpose of such questions is to discover which musical experiences provide, for youth greatest meaning, the greatest connection, the most nourishing environment, the most direct route to your musical self. (p. 22)

Which in many ways brings us back to the question I didn’t dive too deeply into last week: Passion. How do you know what your passion is in order to go for it? In setting our goals, how high to aim and what to aim at, we go back to the questions related to passion.

Each amateur, and most of us will be advanced amateurs who are not earning a living at our music, will have different answers. Even if we plan on being “professionals” there are all kinds of different answers to them as well, jazz, classical, performance, education, etc. Actually the questions are similar in setting the goals. For example,

• What kind of music do I want to play? Classical, jazz, Americana, pop, rock?
• What kind of musical tradition do I see myself being part of? Folk, bluegrass, American jazz, Classical era?
• What kind of ensembles do I want to be part of, large or small? Concert bands or orchestras, jazz big bands, combos- jazz or classical or combinations?

With these questions we are giving ourselves a general direction. Stephanie Judy comments that what we are doing when we find these answers is finding the “welcome soil” in which we can plant our musical seeds.

So here we are, today. Each of us has gotten to today’s musical place. We are where we are, we have accomplished what we have accomplished, we have some idea of what we are able to do- today! This is where we start.

• Has the type of music I want to play changed?
• Is there something new I want to learn?
• Is there a different type of ensemble or group that I want to play in?
• Is there something I want to get better at doing?
• What are the strong points of my musicianship?
• What are the weak points of my playing?
• What are the ways I can apply the stronger points to the weaker points in order to improve?

Then aim and plan. Set the goals and do them.

We are talking about an attitude of passion AND openness in this post. The passion is what excites us and keeps us practicing even when it would appear to others to be “dull” or “boring” or when we feel that moment of boredom before picking up the instrument. (Not those long tones again!) The passion pushes us forward because it’s who we are.

The openness is the attitude that says “I don’t know if I can do that, but the only way to find out is to do it.” Stay away from “try to do it” and, to borrow a well-worn phrase- “Just do it.” Pick up the horn and play. Pick up the phone and call a teacher. Make a recording of your routine and listen for where it can be improved. Google the ideas you are thinking about and see what others have done to get there.

• I WANT to do this, it excites me, and
• I CAN do this if I am willing to work on it.

But what if I fail? What if I’m not talented enough? What if…?

Okay, what if the sky falls tomorrow or the promised warm weather goes south for the winter? See how silly that can sound. “What if?” is good, old Self One being its over-analytic and fearful self. It’s selling Self Two short. Again. Don’t let it happen.

Do it and see what happens. Not everyone can hit a double high C, no matter what some people say. But if we don’t aim at it, we won’t get up to the G a fourth below it. Not everyone can move their fingers as fast as Dizzy or Freddie, but we won’t know how fast until we do it.

And yes, “professionals” do have more specific time they spend on their work. Those of us who have other jobs spend as much time on our “professions” as “professional” musicians do. But that can still leave a great deal of time to do what we want to do with our musicianship. That does not mean we are second-class musicians. I will never be asked why I wasn’t as good as Doc or Maynard. I should be asked, “Are you as good as you can be?” The answer is, naturally, “Not yet but I’m working on it.”

One last thought on attitude. See how this might change you attitude if you are worried about that amateur-professional dichotomy. If you are an “amateur” and have no plans to become “professional” Stephanie Judy has a reminder that puts our “amateur” music-making in perspective and can change our attitude.

To be an amateur is to be, literally, a lover. An amateur pursues a thing for itself alone, not for profit, recognition, or perfection in others’ eyes, but purely as an end in itself. In many ways, there is no higher calling than that of amateur. So be proud of your amateur status. (p. 27)

2nd Week of Lent: Getting Beyond the Idols

The atheist staring from his attic window is often nearer to God than the believer caught up in his own false image of God.
― Martin Buber



My Wednesday Lenten posts this year will be reflecting on quotes from people who were influenced in one way or another by Henry David Thoreau. A good one to start with is Martin Buber. His attachment to Thoreau is not based on Thoreau’s famous naturalist writings but on his political activism.

Martin Buber (1878–1965) was a prolific author, scholar, literary translator, and political activist whose writings—mostly in German and Hebrew—ranged from Jewish mysticism to social philosophy, biblical studies, religious phenomenology, philosophical anthropology, education, politics, and art.

He is most famous for his philosophy of relationships based in the short but extremely influential book, I and Thou. In it he differentiates between I - It relationships which are subject-object interactions and I -Thou or dialogue-based interactions. (Note: A reminder that “thou” in the original English usage is NOT the formal pronoun, but the informal version of close and intimate relationships. It is the equivalent of “du” in German and “tu” in Spanish.)

So without getting too complicated or philosophically technical, Buber sees the main difference between “I-It” and “I-Thou” as the first is an experience by one of another. It is in observation and analysis that this occurs. It can be said that it is also a non-interaction in the sense that there is no back and forth. I watch the sunset; I watch the heron on the beach; I watch the people walking by me.

On the other hand, “I-Thou” is interactive; we meet each other and dialogue or we seek to deepen our understanding of the other. Buber says this dialogue relationship is what happens in love. We live IN love; we don’t watch it. (Again, oversimplified, but that’s my understanding of the gist of it.)

Thoreau, when he went to live by Walden Pond really went into what he was expecting to be an “I-It” relationship. It was a self-serving, selfish motive on some levels when it began. How could it be anything else? He didn’t know the pond or its inhabitants either present or past, human or animal or plant. It didn’t take him long.

He dug into the ground and found history with old foundations and burial grounds of previous villages. He went out and discovered his fellow residents. He began to enter into a dialogue with them and discover what they had in common and what he had to learn from their teaching.

Every major naturalist writer since him has had the same experience. To repeat Sunday’s Thoreau quote, they discovered heaven is under their feet as much as it is about their heads. When we discover heaven it might be safe to say we begin to discover and interact in love. When Thoreau did that, he also saw connections he needed to make in other areas; we are all inter-connected whether we like it or not. That led him to his political views and the essay, Civil Disobedience. It was in that writing that Buber connected first with Thoreau.

Martin Buber wrote, of Civil Disobedience:

I read it with the strong feeling that here was something that concerned me directly.... It was the concrete, the personal element, the "here and now" of this work that won me over. … He addressed his reader within the very sphere of this situation common to both of them in such a way that the reader not only discovered why Thoreau acted as he did at that time but also that the reader—assuming him of course to be honest and dispassionate– would have to act in just such a way whenever the proper occasion arose, provided he was seriously engaged in fulfilling his existence as a human person. The question here is … of the absolutely concrete demonstration of the point at which this struggle at any moment becomes man's duty as man....
— "Man's Duty as Man" (1962)
-Link

Because Thoreau has entered into an “I-Thou,” personal and intimate relationship with his world and the events of the world, he makes it clear in his essay that any thinking and honest individual would have to do the same when challenged by circumstances. In Thoreau’s case it was the annexation of Mexican territory by the United States and the ensuing Mexican-American War. He was also a strong Abolitionist who saw no way that owning slaves was a moral thing. How could it be when we are all interrelated? How can we turn relationships with other humans into “I-It”, non-dialogic interactions?

Why then was I drawn to Buber’s statement above? We live in a time when there are many false images of God (or gods) being thrown around. There is the angry, punishing God; there are the things we worship as having importance beyond themselves; there is the image of a God that hates the same people as I hate and believes the same things I believe.

The atheist on the other side has nothing to start from. There is nothing of that kind of value as a “God”. The attic is shuttered, but unlike the false images, an attic’s shutters can be opened more easily than a closed mind. Somewhat in the way that Thoreau discovered the ability to be in a personal relationship with the world and others, the atheist has more possibility of discovering an “I-Thou” relationship with “God” because he or she has no preconception about what or who God is.

That is far more technical than my mind wants to grasp. But that is what Lent is about. I don’t understand this relationship with God in and through Jesus. Intellectually I understand it less today than I did in 1964 when I  became a Christian. But I know it better today. I also know that it is just as intimately connected with the world around me than ever before. I continually discover new ways to move from “I-It” to “I-Thou.”

This past week we have seen another school shooting. I will write about that sometime else, perhaps. But what I see happening among the student survivors of the Parkland shooting is a movement into an “I-Thou” based civil disobedience. They have discovered the Golden Calf of guns in the public square and realized that they are not as important as the idol. A relationship to an idol is not a dialogue. It is "I-It" and never built in love. It is often a demand. We say "I will worship you (the idol) and you will protect me and make me powerful."

In our mind the idol responds with a beckoning smile.

The students in Parkland have seen the lie in that. They have lost 17 fellow students and teachers. They were not protected by the idol; the idol was used to kill them.

The power of the interconnections, the relationships, become clear. Students around the country I am sure sat in their classrooms every morning since then wondering if it could happen to them. They saw and lived the relationship between themselves and Parkland. They are tired of it. They see the evil in it on some emotionally deep level and say, “Enough!”

• What can I learn this Lenten season from paying attention to my relationships? 
• How can I drop the “observer” role and enter into dialogue with the world around me? 
• What does love compel me to do for those with whom I am in an “I-Thou” relationship? 
• Finally, how can I stop being an observer of God, or worse, one who turns God into a false-image idol, and give myself over to the love I can live within?

Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.

― Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

First Sunday of Lent: Breaking Through the Ice

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

-Henry David Thoreau

Lent. How many of these have I been through now? I became a Christian at age fifteen so that means my first Lent was spring of 1964. Of course as a Baptist we didn’t talk much about the church year like that, but I must have known something. That was a much different religious environment than we have today.

As I grew into a broader and more “liturgical” model of the faith I learned that Lent was about sacrifice and even suffering. After all, that is what Jesus did. That comes from an attitude that we have to tame the things of the body so the things of the spirit can grow. This is an outgrowth of what amounts to a more Greek than Hebrew understanding that says:

Heaven=good
Earth=bad

Spiritual=good
Material=bad

Thoreau would probably not agree with that, at least in the ways we often mean it. I picked the quote at the top of the post for this First Sunday of Lent to bring into light the idea that heaven is more than a place we go after this life and the earth is as much a part of our heaven as heaven itself, whatever that may be. This quote comes from Chapter 16 of Walden, titled “The Pond in Winter.” The chapter begins:

I awoke to an answered question, to Nature and daylight. The snow lying deep on the earth dotted with young pines, and the very slope of the hill on which my house is placed, seemed to say, Forward! Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her resolution. "O Prince, our eyes contemplate with admiration and transmit to the soul the wonderful and varied spectacle of this universe. The night veils without doubt a part of this glorious creation; but day comes to reveal to us this great work, which extends from earth even into the plains of the ether. [Emphasis added.]

Nature itself is the answered question; the glorious creation, “this great work” extends to the limits of the universe. Even in the midst of the coldest time of the year, Thoreau decided that much was going on that is the Creation itself. He continues:

Then to my morning work. First I take an axe and pail and go in search of water, if that be not a dream. … Every winter the liquid and trembling surface of the pond, which was so sensitive to every breath, and reflected every light and shadow, becomes solid to the depth of a foot or a foot and a half… it closes its eyelids and becomes dormant for three months or more.

The pond is not just some geographic occurrence. Thoreau senses that there is life there. Even at great depths. Many thought it bottomless but he will show more than that. Later in this chapter he will tell of his method of measuring its depth through an understanding of other measurements.  He will look at the water of Walden Pond as being part of all the waters of all the earth. He will understand that in some way more mysterious than magical, all creation is connected. The pond is now like a field.

Standing on the snow-covered plain, as if in a pasture amid the hills, I cut my way first through a foot of snow, and then a foot of ice, and open a window under my feet, where, kneeling to drink, I look down into the quiet parlor of the fishes, pervaded by a softened light as through a window of ground glass, with its bright sanded floor the same as in summer; there a perennial waveless serenity reigns as in the amber twilight sky, corresponding to the cool and even temperament of the inhabitants. Heaven is under our feet is well as over our heads.

Thoreau, in chapter 16, has rediscovered the spiritual under the material. He may have been fooled for awhile by the coldness and seeming lifelessness of winter. In this morning’s awakening he has the answer. Has he cut through his winter state, as the Cliff Notes suggest? Is he now about to open up to find new insight and new spiritual direction? It would seem that way. He has, in the metaphor of looking into the window under his feet, discovered himself and his own soul, alive and well. Heaven is not just some far off place, it is accessible here.

It does take work to get there, though. He had to cut through the soft snow covering and then the thicker, solid layer. Then he can drink from the source. It does not come either naturally or even easily. Our lives, our souls, are like the water beneath Walden Pond. Covered with soft and hard layers. These are the layers we have allowed to accumulate over our spirits. These are what we have felt the need to build in order to protect something we are afraid is too fragile- or perhaps too dangerous- for us to easily touch it. Perhaps there is more to this than that as well. Or perhaps we make too much of it.

Why is is that it takes us so long to become spiritual. I don’t mean religious. We easily and willingly follow rituals, especially ones of our own making. Even those who abhor ritual will do the same things over and over in a kind of religious fervor. Those rituals can and do keep us grounded; but they can also keep us frozen in place. It is when we dig through and discover the window into who we are and what Creation is that we can move beyond ritual into the spiritual.

Don’t get me wrong. I love liturgy and ritual. That is why, even all these years after having left the ministry of preaching I am compelled every Advent and Lent to write about them, to seek new answers and new questions to explore. In that I am part of a long history, my own of 54 years as a Jesus follower and the journey of other followers of Jesus for nearly two millennia.

It has a different meaning today. It was at one point all about some sacrifice on my part. It  meant giving up something, some symbolic action that showed I was serious about being a Christian. We didn’t put it that way, of course, but that was part of what we were doing. Now I write. I pray and ponder some very simple and even simplistic prayers. In the complexity of all that is happening in the world, I need to come back down to earth. I need to look around and find God in the details of every day living and my soul under the mid-winter layer of snow and ice. That snow and ice is not always of my own making. The world pushes and prods, undermines and challenges what I understand as the things that we as Christians are to stand up for. It can get mighty cold and frightening.

These are difficult times we live in. But then again, what times aren’t difficult if one is serious about finding the ways of God as one understands God? What times are not difficult when we are constantly searching for ways to be faithful to the Creator and the Creation? What times are not difficult when we are being pulled away from the task of being more fully in touch with eternity? Which is why we need a Lenten Journey every year.

Adopt the pace of nature:

her secret is patience.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Literal or Serious? (2)- True Believers

Yesterday I wrote about the statement that has been given as a way of "explaining Trump", at least from his supporters side. (See below for the whole post.) I said then:

Trump's critics take him literally while his supporters take him seriously.

The obvious inference is that when Trump speaks, don't take him literally- but take him seriously?

I talked then about how I might not often take him "literally" but I do take him very seriously. In fact, personally, I find the distinction quite difficult to understand. I believe many of his supporters do take him literally. For one, I have talked to enough of them who do believe what he says about, for example, his famous campaign line, "Lock her up!" or his recent agreeing with someone yelling out at a rally that not standing for him at the State of the Union was "treason." When he said it they believed it. Literally and very, very seriously.

But the other reason I think this is a false understanding and even a "straw man argument" is simple. Many of his staunchest supporters, his unshakeable 30% are Evangelical Fundamentalist "Christians". If there is one thing that Evangelical Fundamentalists believe beyond anything else is....

the literal, word for word interpretation of the Bible. They are well schooled in knowing when to literally believe something literally. And that is when it fits their beliefs.

• They believed that Obama was literally going to come for their guns. They took it so literally they were serious about it. 
• They believed that Obama was born in Kenya. Literally! It was not just some crazy right-wing extremist idea. When Trump said it, they believed it.
• They believed some crazy-ass conspiracy theory that Hillary was supporting some pedophile ring out of a pizzeria. Or worse, that there was some uranium-selling deal she fostered through her emails. Fox News said it, they believed it.

That is just the tip of the iceberg I am afraid. There is a very strong undercurrent like this running around the country. Trump feeds it. He himself may not believe all this shit literally, of course. But he has enough people convinced that the FBI is the "bad guys" and the our judicial system is out to get him that it is a literal understanding. Trump's critics don't take that literally. Many believe he is just throwing things out as a smoke-screen or diversion.

The real serious stuff is not what Trump says in his daily mega-tweets. It is what he wants to do to significantly change the social support structure of our country that we have been building little by little over the past 85 years and others that go back to the beginning of last century. He plays loose with facts, but who cares. He said it, it must be true.

Broadcast and cable news has had a very difficult time dealing with this. He is so good for sound bites, they all know it helps their ratings. Whether it's MSNBC yelling on the Left or Fox and others on the Right, they love the hype. The evening news shows, just as dependent on sound bites and good video, have the same issue.

Fortunately the print news has, overall, done a great job of trying to do the digging and publishing. The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and the Guardian have broken stories and dug into the depths they are taking this all very seriously and doing some difficult work. (Go see the movie The Post to see how the print media, esp. the Washington Post, stood up to a previous president who wanted to shut them down.)

It is time those of us on the Left do take Trump seriously and stop egging on his insane posting and statements. It is time for people like Stephen Colbert (who I enjoy at times) to stop making jokes that only serve to make him look like a buffoon we don't have to take seriously and instead focus on what he is doing.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, a contemporary of Henry David Thoreau once wrote

Your actions speak so loudly that we cannot hear what you are saying.

 Trump, so far, has been able to hide some of his actions by the loudness of his words. Let's move from that and see that his actions get more of the light of day they deserve.

Literal or Serious? (1)- An Excuse?

One of the comments I heard during the last Presidential campaign and in the first year of the Trump Presidency was that

Trump's critics take him literally while his supporters take him seriously.

The obvious inference is that when Trump speaks, don't take him literally- but take him seriously?

Seriously? But I do understand.

When he said that Mexico sends us the bad people (and maybe a few good ones), I knew what he meant and I took him seriously. He was playing to the crowd who didn't like Hispanics! I didn't think that was a good thing- but I took him very seriously!

When he said that we need to prevent immigrants from Muslim-majority countries entering the United States, I knew what he meant and I took him seriously. He was playing to Islamophobia and the fear of terrorist attacks, which there have been very few of. I disagreed with his presumptions and prejudice- but I took him seriously.

When he said he was elected to be President of Pittsburgh and not Paris and that we need to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreements, I knew what he meant and I took him seriously. He does not believe that global climate change is real (or of human causation) and we should not burden our country with trying to do anything about it. I disagreed with him- but I took him seriously.

It is clear that he is good at hyperbole and speaking to a clear constituency. It is clear that he may say things that sound over-the-top, but that he is clearly telling his supporters and all of us what he means. The news media in general loves sound bites and he is an expert at giving them what they want. Twitter is the new headline maker. But they get hung up on the ridiculous, self-serving ways he says it and the real meaning does get lost.

Through it all, he is serious. I take him seriously. Some feel he is a sloppy communicator. I don't think so. He really does know what he is doing and is enjoying every minute of the spotlight and attention.

Which is why I don't like what he wants to do. He makes it clear in many ways.

• Cut Medicare and Medicaid.
• Huge tax cuts that in the long run will help the top 1% and hurt the rest of us.
• Huge budget deficits. I know, people talk about the "Tax and Spend" Democrats. The Republicans are, for sure, different than that. They just Spend without adding to the taxes, lining pockets until we are bankrupt as a nation.
• Talking about "due process" when he has been known to make statements undermining such due process.
• Increase the "nanny state" the GOP has hated for years by taking choice of food purchases out of the hands of SNAP recipients, replacing it with this year's idea of a "Harvest Box."
• He plays a game of nuclear chicken with North Korea and wants to increase nuclear arms when we don't need any more. We still live in an era of "mutually assured destruction" if they start flying.

Don't take him literally? Take him seriously? I am not sure he is able to tell the difference himself. If he says it, I am afraid he believes it. Many of his supporters outside of D.C. do often take him literally. That's why they voted for him remember? "He speaks his mind. He let's us know what he's thinking."

In the midst of all that, then, we are being given a bunch of bullshit to hide the depth of what is happening. So I for one am willing to not take the specifics of what he says literally.

But I do take him seriously. He is deadly serious! Which is why I am scared to death.