Making Music

Making music with another musician is a wordless, near-thoughtless, near self-less dance. There’s a strange paradox between the experiences of making the music flow out of us and allowing the music to flow through us.

My brother-in-law makes music in the kitchen of the restaurant where he works. He orchestrates the kitchen’s operation, the process of creating meals, the creativity and surrender when he channels the flow of culinary art.

My friend Eric makes music through ceremony. He is the consummate fire tender, ritualizing our men’s group gatherings with care, love, and consideration.

My friend Pete is a musician and an educator. He brings vulnerability, creativity, and insight to his work with his students in a way that invites them to also live vulnerably, creatively, and insightfully.

We are all instruments and we’re designed to make music. It’s not music we can force, but more like music we allow to flow through us. It’s a dance where our actions are ours but seem to come from somewhere else too, somewhere more grand and more universal than from within this mortal body and mind alone.

Similarly, working with students, colleagues, families, and even ourselves is a dance. We need to both listen and create. Each engagement with another is an opportunity to participate in a divine dance with another soul, and what a profound opportunity it is!

Whatever tune you are here to play, please play it. And please allow and acknowledge the tunes coming from the rest of us. I promise to do the same.

I participated in a workshop in 2020 where I was asked early on, “What’s your art?” My initial response was "teaching," but subsequent exploration revealed a more complete answer to me: transformational conversations.

Thanks so much for listening to my song. ❤️