Month: March 2016

Blessed Silence

/ Cheryl / Leave a comment

…what they had to say communicated itself best in the blessed silence of their release and isolation.

Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

At times during this past year I have experienced the beauty of shared silence at level deeper than I could have imagined. It is true that silence can feel awkward, but in a relationship of trust, the communication that occurs with the eyes, with touch and through quality of presence transcends words. Anyone who knows me knows that I believe in the beauty of words, both written as well as spoken. I sometimes crave the voice of one I love. In those times, though, when spoken words seem awkward or unnecessary, I am still richly content.

Where words are restrained, the eyes often talk a great deal.

—Samuel Richardson

Recognize the Good

/ Cheryl / Leave a comment

… for her, every day was the same, and when each day is the same as the next, it’s because people fail to recognize the good things that happen in their lives every day that the sun rises.

—Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

I awakened from a season of life when I often saw each day as the same as the next. During my emergence I came to embrace my personal mantra, “There is always something good.” I often follow that with “even if it’s just the smell of coffee.”  It was long before I read The Alchemist that I began to not only embrace this for myself but to share it with others and to frequently close written or typed communications with “Enjoy Today” or “Enjoy This Day”.

As I began to focus more on the good, I was able to acknowledge the less-good and even the bad. My hope began to have substance. Now I had drive to look for what I could do to begin to make necessary changes in my life situation. I became like a Baudelaire:

This story is about the Baudelaires. And they are the sort of people who know that there’s always something. Something to invent, something to read, something to bite, and something to do, to make a sanctuary, no matter how small. And for this reason, I am happy to say, the Baudelaires were very fortunate indeed.”

—Lemony Snicket, A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Bad Beginning

If you know anything about this story either from the book or the movie, you know that there are a lot of extraordinarily unfortunate events that happen to these children. They always do find something, though. If the Baudelaires can find something, we can always find something “to make a sanctuary, no matter how small.” So could the girl referred to in the The Alchemist.

As I now sort through photos and other artifacts from that difficult season in my life, I can see how much good there was. I am thankful that even as I am poignantly aware that it is impossible to retrieve time and relive the past, my perception of it can shift. Each day was not the same as the next. This is a beautiful awareness.

Enigma of Meaning

/ Cheryl / Leave a comment

Telling someone about what a symbol means is like telling someone how music should make them feel.

Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code

The same is true of a poem, song lyrics, an editorial, a painting, a sculpture, a novel, spoken words of a conversation. I would contend that each in this representative list could be deemed a symbol or collection of symbols on a certain level. Each represents its creator’s attempt to communicate meaning to some audience. At times, the audience is the self—and even then the meaning or feeling evoked can shift over time.

I work daily in the realm of the symbols of music in teaching young musicians to decode them. Some days the enigma they feel in their early attempts is palpable. The sounds as well as the feels are rustic—but rustic is its own kind of beautiful. The shift from the basic learning of the meaning of the symbols to how they should make a musician feel and then to how the musician may then connect those sounds to the emotions and feelings of life and communicate in the process of decoding is often mysterious but also very beautiful.

Stuff Your Eyes With Wonder

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Stuff your eyes with wonder. … See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.

Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

It is good to renew one’s wonder…

Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles

This may be my shortest blog post ever. It is a reminder to myself to stop occasionally to feed my eyes and to appreciate the smallest wonders in my world.

Wonder

Beyond Limitations

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Argue for your limitations, and sure enough they’re yours.

—Richard Bach, Illusions

The first time I read Illusions, this was not one of the lines that caught my attention. The second time, it leaped right off the page and got caught in my brain. I never would have thought I was one to argue for my limitations, but how often did I catch myself thinking that I couldn’t do something because of: lack of funds, lack of time, lack of talent, lack of support, lack of energy, lack of perfect location, lack of younameit.

I remember sitting in my first teaching position interview and being asked a question about the barriers (limitations) the students in that school face on a day-to-day basis. At that point, 98% of the students in the school qualified for free or reduced lunch. My immediate response was that I was one to more quickly see possibilities and potential than to give in to barriers. This is true when it comes to my students. But is it true when it comes to me? Do I still sometimes argue for my limitations and see them as stronger than my potential? Yes. Do I more often now push beyond those limitations to see what could be? Yes. This is a daily – sometimes moment-by-moment – choice.