"On their deepest level, problems such as war and starvation are not solved by economics and politics alone. Their source is prejudice and fear in the human heart—and their solution also lies in the human heart. What the world needs most is people who are less bound by prejudice. It needs more love, more generosity, more mercy, more openness. The root of human problems is not a lack of resources but comes from the misunderstanding, fear, and separateness that can be found in the hearts of people." Joseph Goldstein, Seeking the Heart of Wisdom

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs--

"This is what the poet knows and what every wisdom tradition teaches: there is a great gulf between the way my ego wants to identify me, with its protective masks and self-serving fictions, and my true self. It takes time and hard experience to sense the difference between the two—to sense that running beneath the surface of the experience I call my life, there is a deeper and truer life waiting to be acknowledged. That fact alone makes “listen to your life” difficult counsel to follow. The difficulty is compounded by the fact that from our first days in school, we are taught to listen to everything and everyone but ourselves, to take clues about living from the people and powers around us."

From "Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation," by Parker J. Palmer. I keep going back to the Amazon page where one can read snippets from the book before buying it. In fact, I did buy it, and I just can't wait for it to come. At which time, I'm sure I will have more to share, dear imaginary readers.

But oh! the joy I now experience at the thought, a slow dawning one over the last months, that not only can I trust and act upon my deepest instincts, but I have the dearest obligation to do so.

I believe there is a groundedness, a deep security waiting for us all--waiting for us to finally tire of the self-serving fictions, and protective masks. "O say, what is truth?" asks the hymnodist Jean Jaques. "Tis the brightest prize that the riches of worlds can produce / Go search in the depths where it glittering lies / Or ascend in pursuit to the loftiest skies; / 'Tis an aim for the noblest desire."

A congregational singer may correctly read these lines as they pertain to doctrinal or religious truth. Important though that may be, I now posit... that we may never fully enjoy the fruits of doctrinal truth without first coming to intimate terms with the truth lying hidden in our own eternal soul.

Indeed, perhaps we have to search in the depths of our hearts, as well as ascend with our minds and spirits to the lofty skies. Back and forth, until we are at home both places...

Ooh, adventure--!

This is what I'm learning about lately. Among... many other things. But we'll start here. I think I must have a very active solar plexus. Often when I talk to someone about deep things--someone that scares me, or deep things that scare me, about whom, or about which I feel passionately--I feel a very physical, inward shaking earthquake. It always begins in the region depicted here as the solar plexus, and emanates out from there to cause tension in my my neck and head, shaking in my limbs and extremities, and general discomfort.

From Wikipedia entry "Chakra": "Key issues governed by Manipura [solar plexus] are issues of personal power, fear, anxiety, opinion-formation, introversion, and transition from simple or base emotions to complex. Physically, Manipura governs digestion, mentally it governs personal power, emotionally it governs expansiveness, and spiritually, all matters of growth."

Fear--anxiety--simple to complex emotions. I feel this issue has something to do with me holding onto my own vulnerability. That shaking, tension, rigidity is my fear of letting go, opening up, my introversion fighting against the clear and present danger facing it: that my very deep-seated inwardness is about to experience a mighty change.

And so there are earthquakes. Which as we've recently seen can be destructive indeed. But I also believe some earthquakes are cleansing, provide new territory to discover, and if we are prepared, an opportunity for re-building, starting afresh...

The danger of earthquakes is when there are tall unstable structures with questionable foundations, in which we live our precious, vulnerable lives. I think my earthquakes are trying to topple those structures. I just hope that I am outside in the open sun when they do.

Education

Just fleshing out some thoughts as a result of my internet research this morning on home schooling, and more particularly "un-schooling"--a term I'm surprised I haven't heard before now.

I just read an interview Mother Earth News did with John Holt, the culmination of my search for information about unschooling. I think I'm decided. About education. I've been struggling to decide whether I want to get a teaching certificate, since I'm here, getting my Master's in choral conducting. It would be so practical, don't you think, I keep telling myself.

Well, reading and researching this morning has led me to believe that in fact all of my misgivings, that I've had MY WHOLE LIFE about public education, my inclinations toward intelligent child-raising that go back as far as the young age of TEN, my aversion to the idea of teaching in the public schools, are to be trusted after all.

Number 1: I don't really want to teach in public schools, and I never have, so why would I prepare myself to do something I don't want to do?

Number 2: I personally believe, in my gut and my head, and this belief is backed up by an entire movement of home-schoolers and un-schoolers and research and writing and people's actual experience, that public education is damaging, mind-numbing, soul-killing. Oh also, the fact that my own soul is about to become extinct from too much school. I ought to trust my own experience. How dare I inflict on others what to me has been so confusing and motivation-sapping.

Number 3: If I try to get a teaching certificate, I will have to submit to another YEAR, at least, of soul-napalm by the hands of public educator types. WHY? What am I thinking? No. Get out at the soonest possible second.

Which I do believe will be next December.

Some of my values

Transparency. That turns out to be a really big one for me. It's kind of like agency: it's a thing that doesn't necessarily have a moral slant to it, but it's foundational to a set of moral values. That is to say: we must have agency, a kind of neutral pre-cursor to both good and evil, but without which we never would have good. Or evil, for that matter, but of course without evil what is good anyway? So quoth Lehi, on a subject for another day.

Me personally, I must have transparency as a way of understanding the truth in the moment, of another person, an institution, myself. If I don't know the quality of what's really there, there's no way to move forward.

The people I love the most are those who hide nothing, hold nothing back. And I almost can't stand to be around people who are for whatever reason hiding. Hiding behind an imitation of someone else, or creating anything in anyway false to obscure who they really are.

My next big value, then, I'm discovering, it individuality. Strange isn't it, that I discover these things in the midst of a degree studying an art form that demands such perfect unity as does choral music. But more and more, I'm having a big problem with the idea of a large choir with hordes of people dressed exactly the same. While I love choral unity of sound, within and between voice parts, I almost feel that if we don't find some way to highlight the singers' natural individuality, that sound means less. If in some way I as a choral conductor am trying to hide the fact that my choir is made up of individuals, by dressing them the same, by hiding the individuals in crowds of choral singers, there's some way in which I am obscuring transparency. Cooler would be for the eye to see 40 totally unique and different individuals, but for the ear to hear one unified voice. Doncha think? And truer to the truth.

In my future career, I never want to create an illusion. I want audiences to see my philosophies of transparency and individuality, and I want them to hear my values of choral unity. Because to me choral unity doesn't mean that we all sound the same, it means that our individual unique voices together create a whole, and we work every day to make something coherent and cohesive out of the disparate parts.

Music is a way for us to experience true unity, and to experience it truly, even before we get to the exalted state of unity in our relationships with each other. In fact, I do believe that music is a vehicle to true unity of hearts.

Sound Economies Require Rational Thought...

"Coming as I do from the world of business, I also mention obedience to the laws, not theories, of economics. One cannot continually spend more than he earns and remain solvent. This law applies to nations as well as to men. A worker cannot, in the long run, adhere to a philosophy of something for nothing as opposed to something for something. Nor can management dismiss as optional the necessity of an adequate corporate profit and a reasonable return to shareholders if an economy of free enterprise is to flourish.

"When economic decisions are based on theory rather than law, we find the chaos experienced a number of years ago in Uruguay:

“ 'Labor wanted higher wages; industrialists wanted bigger income; but nobody wanted to do any work. Citizens thought more of their rights than of their obligations. The country’s vast web of social legislation redistributed wealth but did not create it. … Nobody had the vision to see that what Uruguay needed was production.” (John Gunther, Uruguay—Utopia Gone Wild.)"

Thomas S. Monson, “In Quest of the Abundant Life,” Ensign, Mar 1988, 2

I will make this world of my devising

I remember once my Dad telling me how it was that he came to be an entrepreneur in the particular field and situation that he has worked for most of my life.

He worked for Dole in HR when my parents were first married, and then for Boise Cascade in south-eastern Washington after that. But he told me that when he imagined his ideal dream job/life, it involved: world travel, working from home and setting his own hours. Uh. I think there were some other things too but that's what I remember from the conversation.

Of course there have been ups and downs and difficulties and not so ideal situations, but at least on those particular points, he has lived his dream.

So. I now endeavor to set forth the tenets of my own dream job/life, as a first official/conscious step toward achieving it.

I want to spend most of my time at home. Yes, to raise and be with my kids, but even if kids don't figure into the picture for a while yet, it's kind of ridiculous how happy I am when I get to spend a day at home, or any length of time during the day at home. That might be because keeping things organized, for me, requires constant care in little bits and pieces, here and there. And keeping order really is pretty fundamental to my overall happiness, unbelievable as that may sound to people who know me really well. Being gone at work all day results in big intimidating disorganized piles that chip away at my self-esteem and motivation.

I want ample time to compose. This is the thing that above any other thing that I've ever spent significant time working at, inspires me the most and makes me feel that there's a purpose to my life. In fact I've wondered recently if there's *anything* else that I can be truly successful at. But that may be the work of the big piles, chipping away at my self-esteem...


Anyway, I think that's it. Those two things.


My brother Mason has recently been trying to help me see how these two dreams of mine can be possible through the use of a micro-continuity model of on-line business. I'm incredibly intrigued by it, and am fighting a (for now) losing battle against my techno-retardedness.

But--first step accomplished: dreams recorded, published and committed to.