Wednesday April 22, 2009

insight on spirit-centered leadership

Choose Your Cello
LIBERATING YOUR IMPROVISATIONAL LEADERSHIP

by Tim Scorer

Where shall we turn in the world of music to see spirit-centred leadership expressed? I know of no more refined expression of such leadership than the work of David Darling, a brilliant cellist who leads improvisational workshops in the United States and Switzerland. I was first captivated by his performance and improvisational skills when I saw him playing with the Paul Winter Consort in the early 1970s, but it wasn’t until almost thirty years later when I took a workshop with him at the Omega Institute in Upper New York State that I came to appreciate his remarkable capacity to teach, empower, and inspire.

Since you accessed this article online, I’m going to assume that I can direct you to two YouTube “pieces” during the course of this article. You just have to promise to come back to the article after you’ve visited the short YouTube illustration to which I’ll direct you! You probably know, as I do, how easy it is to be diverted and distracted by the bobbles, bangles, and beads of YouTube. So, in the spirit of healthy YouTube watching, go to www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5WtzCGKCmQ and let David introduce himself in a way that hints at the eccentricity in his improv workshops.

Okay, you’ve come back from Find Your Groove at Omega. Before your next YouTube visit, I want to make connections between what David does in the world of music and what you are doing in the world of spirit-centred leadership.

• You and David come to the group confident that if you really pay attention, you will find the curriculum of learning present right there in the group, both individually and collectively.
• You and David bring with you years of personal experience that enables you to create the environment in which the members of the group will learn. Your skill may not be in music as David’s is; it might be in your knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures, or your skill as a visual artist or potter, or your background in astrology and the 13.7 billion year history of the universe. There are a number of places where you feel confident to stand as an improviser, but perhaps one in particular stands out.
• You and David walk a fine line between respectful care and loving challenge. You are both willing to walk with someone to the edge of their self-awareness and then accompany them to where they have never gone before. You both have a highly tuned capacity to be inside the experience of the other, knowing when to urge them down that next dimly lit part of the path, and when to stop and see where you’ve been together and celebrate that much.
• You and David understand that the space in which you meet with the group is flexible space. Music is just one human discipline with which teachers shape the space and the people in it to make the most of rhythm, sound, voice, movement, contact, and imagination. You also both know that traditional models of adult learning in “western” culture have been so restrained that, for most people, going into a land where the curriculum is not clearly defined ahead of time is so risky as to be suspect.
• You and David both honour something mysterious and indefinable that is released in the interactions of the group. You both recognize that this high level of leadership does not depend on you alone. You carve out a space in which a life-affirming spirit is liberated.

The list isn’t complete, but it’s enough to give you a sense of what I’m asking you to consider in terms of your own spirit-centred leadership.

Here’s a wobbly and distorted yet very real two-minute excerpt from a David Darling workshop in which you will see a woman who has never handled a cello before, improvising notes along with the voice and movement of the group members, and David’s piano chords. The title is “David Darling Teaches Blues Improv on the Cello” and you’ll find it at www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdCIflKFs14

This short amateur video doesn’t give you much to go on, but you can get a sense of some of the detail of David’s leadership craft: his attentiveness to everything that’s happening; his search for the right moment to bring the next supportive element into the emerging environment; his downright confidence that something positive can be shaped from whatever happens next; his encouragement of the whole group as he shapes the ensemble in support of the individual; and his capacity to break down traditional boundaries in order to get to the shared centre of human experience.

If you want to know more about this remarkable musician and improvisational teacher go to www.daviddarling.com/bio1.html. And to hear excerpts from his latest recording go to www.daviddarling.com/recordings/PrayerForCompassion.html.

In closing I want to be clear that just because I’ve focused on a small group and workshop experience, I’m not seeing the insights from David Darling’s leadership as being limited to that kind of setting. Everything I’ve said here can be applied to any arena of leadership. Following the principles of spirit-centred leadership will deepen your capacity to make a difference in all the places of community and relationship that matter to you.

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insight on small groups

Music of the Hours
EXPERIENCING THE SPIRITUALITY OF MUSIC IN A SMALL GROUP PROCESS

by Tim Scorer

One of my best “book finds” of 2008 was Seven Sacred Pauses: Living Mindfully Through the Hours of the Day by Macrina Wiederkehr (Sorin Books, 2008). As a member of a Benedictine community, Macrina has lived the practice of honouring “the hours” through consciously pausing for prayer at specific times of the day. The hours she refers to are those times of day that stand out distinctively as the earth moves in relation to the sun: midnight, dawn, mid-morning, noon, mid-afternoon, evening, and night.

In her introduction, Macrina writes: “Although every hour is sacred, these special times have been hallowed by centuries of devotion and prayer.” It’s in the spirit of that ancient tradition that Macrina guides us through the seven hours of the day, offering highly accessible and poetic introductions to the quality of each hour, and then, several pages of prayers, poems, and antiphons for each one's celebration. The book creates a wonderful bridge between the traditional discipline of the hours and the contemporary living of them.

I used this wonderful resource to shape a weekend retreat. We lived the rhythm of the seven hours from two o’clock in the morning (which is known as “the night watch”) until late evening when we entered “the great silence.” At each of the seven hours of the day we heard about the themes of that hour, and then engaged in prayer, song, and spiritual practice related to that hour.

I wondered how we could live into “the hour of illumination” – noontime – while eating our lunch! The solution was with music. The themes for this hour are commitment and passion, courage and faithfulness, healing, truth, and peace. Before the weekend I asked each member of the group to bring a piece of music which represented for them these themes. While eating our lunch, each member of the group introduced and played the recording they had chosen. We listened and ate in appreciative silence. It was fascinating to experience the variety of ways in which the themes were expressed, and we repeated the experience on our next weekend together.

Here are some of the selections made by our group of 10:
Virgo Virginum from Stabat Mater by contemporary British composer Karl Jenkins
Sanctus from The Armed Man: A Mass For Peace by Karl Jenkins
Gabriel's Oboe by Ennio Morricone, from the movie The Mission
Semele from the CD Luminosa by the British boy's choir Libera
Hymn to Freedom, Oscar Peterson
Praises for the World with Jennifer Berezan
Dark Night of the Soul by Loreena McKinnet
Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For by U-2
We Are Connected by Eric Bibb from the Friends album
Lonesome Road by James Taylor
My City of Ruins by Bruce Springsteen from his The Rising album
Come Now, O God of Second Chances by David Haas

In his book The Spirituality of Music, John Bird writes about the power of music to create community, deepen relationship, open up depths of spiritual connection, and communicate without words. The members of the group experienced that kind of power in the lunchtime sessions. We were surprised by the power of disciplined listening; both to the music and to the meaning it had for each member of our community.

Even though I haven’t done this, it would be quite possible to choose any one of the seven hours of the day and its attendant themes as a focus for this kind of musical sharing. In case you are interested, here are the seven hours and their themes as presented by Macrina Wiederkehr:

The Night Watch: Midnight until dawn
        Themes: vigilance and deep listening, mystery and silence, surrender and trust
The Awakening Hour: Dawn
        Themes: praise and resurrection, joy and delight, the coming of the light
The Blessing Hour: Mid-morning
        Themes: the coming of the Spirit, wind and flame, breath and blessing, strength and courage, the sacredness of work
The Hour of Illumination: Midday
        Themes: commitment and passion, courage and faithfulness, healing, truth and peace
The Wisdom Hour: Mid-afternoon
        Themes: steadfastness, surrender, forgiveness and wisdom, impermanence, aging, maturing, death and transition
The Twilight Hour: Evening
        Themes: gratitude, praise, serenity, mystery, the lighting of the lamps
The Great Silence: Night
        Themes: silence, rest and sleep; darkness, trust and protection; personal sorrow, completion, intimacy

That’s the basic idea. Try adapting it to any small group situation where your interest is in deepening the spiritual life of the group, appreciating the diversity of membership, or opening up to music’s power to connect, heal, and inspire.

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insight on authors: John Bird

by Ingrid Turnbull

Ingrid: Chapter 4 of The Spirituality of Music is entitled This is Me and is about music and the authentic voice. You write that singing is a “total person experience;” I take that to meant that it encompasses body, mind, and spirit or soul. Could you say a bit about how you have come to know this and/or what this might mean to you and me?

John: About 17 years ago, I started a new and very challenging job helping the Anglican Church promote healing and reconciliation for the damage done in its residential schools for Aboriginal people. At the same time, my colleague and very good friend Shirley was diagnosed with cancer. Within weeks, I was totally stressed. I remember someone commenting that my upper back and neck were as hard as cement.

One day, driving down a country road in the privacy of my pick-up truck, I was feeling so stressed that I opened my mouth and let rip a deep-throated roar of frustration and anxiety. Immediately, I felt release. I tried it again, and again, and each time there was more release.

Perhaps because I’d just been at events with Aboriginal drummers and singers, I found my unfocused scream turning into a chant, a bit similar in style to some of the falsetto-type singing I’d been hearing. I went with it, repeating the chant again and again, letting it evolve and change shape, adding rhythmic emphasis by banging on the dashboard.

What a healing experience.

This became a regular practice for me for several years. Late at night I would follow a familiar path into the woods behind our house. In the remote centre of the woods was a clearing with a small tree that I would dance around while chanting. The dancing chant evolved into a form of prayer that eventually developed words of thanksgiving. It included all those elements of music and spirituality that I talk about in the book:

• Rhythm and Metre
  I found my chant matching the intensity of my feeling and expression, speeding up or slowing down, getting louder or quieter.
  
   
• Melody
  Simple and repetitive, but still there.
  
   
• Singing
  Because I repeated the chanting many times over many nights — under many moons — I began experimenting with the sounds and the ways they would make my whole body vibrate. The higher pitched sounds resonated in my forehead and nasal passages. Others buzzed right in my throat, and still others rumbled deep in my chest. I found myself breathing more deeply, expanding my lungs to enlarge the resonance cavity, and feeling that vibration move up and down my spine, releasing muscular tissue as well as mind and soul.
   
• Dance
  I stamped my feet, hopped up and down, shook my hips, and swung my arms in time to my prayer song. It all helped me shed anxiety, loosen up my body, and become more grounded in my physical self.
   
• Lyrics
  Well, at first they were non-lyrics (I believe ethnomusicologists call them vocables; Van Morrison calls them the inarticulate cries of the heart). The real words came later as statements of thanksgiving addressed to my Creator for my healing and for all the gifts of my life.

As I sang, I felt myself held and borne up by the Creator. I felt that I could deal with whatever came my way because of that connection.

As my singing-teacher friend Sue Smith explained to me (it's in the book), when you sing words, you inhabit them longer and in a different way than when you just speak them. You stretch out syllables, emphasize beginnings and endings differently, and change pitch, so the meanings evolve and deepen. And you repeat phrases that would normally go by just once in conversation, writing, or even in prayer.

Singing, dancing, and playing music are also practices that can help ground you in the moment; “the eternal now,” as Eckhardt Tolle calls it.

I once saw a saying on the wall of a karate school: “The master makes a ceremony of every action.” That’s what music is; a ceremony. Whether you are singing, playing an instrument, dancing, or just listening, it’s a ceremony; a ritual that brings you into the sacred space and time of the eternal now. And it heals you.

The healing chant that was given to me as a gift from the cosmos and its Creator changed my life. It brought physical healing to the back pain I had developed from my tension. It brought me tremendous relief from mental anxiety, better than any counselling or tranquilizer. And it deepened my prayer life and my connection with my Creator.

I still carry the echoes of those experiences with me today.

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insight on spiritual practice: sound

by  Lois Huey-Heck, co-author of The Spirituality of Art

John Bird (see insight on the author) has gifted us with an up-close-and-personal look at the healing potential of sound. In John’s story, his spontaneous release of tension and anxiety through a roar-become-chant led him into intentional spiritual practice. His description of noticing and experimenting with sound vibration in his body put me in mind of toning , which is, practiced in some streams of Buddhism. Toning is sounding or singing specific or spontaneous sounds and is used for meditation, prayer, and healing. I first heard about toning when my aunt Merlin travelled to England to attend a training intensive. Around that time I’d been experiencing persistent and debilitating migraine headaches that were followed by extended muscle-tension pain. Comparable to John Bird’s experience, I found that the extended singing/sounding of a range of notes released a lot of the tension in my body and lessened my pain.

Sound affects us physically and mentally. Music is used for inspiration and healing. Music, especially music with singing, accesses many parts of the brain at once, making connections and improving mental function and capacity. Everything we do that brings the various parts of ourselves (body, mind, and feelings) into communion with each other makes us more present to communion with the Holy One, and to the joys, challenges, and acts of service that make up life.

Preparing
Choose a time and location where you will be able to make sounds without interruption or self-consciousness. Stand or sit comfortably and close your eyes. Breathe consciously for several breaths and “arrive.”

The Invitation
When you feel present and ready, begin by singing one note and holding it as long as your out breath lasts. Breathe in fully and sing again on the out breath. Repeat the note as many times as it wants to be sung. You may find that each vocalization stays on one note or that it rises and falls in pitch, loudness, and speed, as John related. Do your best to follow your impulses about what to do next.

Keep making sounds in this way until you are able to start noticing the sound in your body. Can you feel the vibration of the sounds you’re making in your throat? Do they resonate in your chest? In your hands or feet? As always in life, there’s no room for self-judgment, good or bad. Simply experience making sound and feeling it in your body.

When your urge to “sound” ends, simply stop and stay silent for a time. You may want to be still or you may want to gesture or move in some way. If you have a meditation or prayer practice, you may wish to follow this sounding with your customary practice.

Cynthia Bourgeault says that chant enables silence and meditation. There’s something powerful about immersing in sound and vibration and then entering silence attuned.

For more on Toning see www.vocalmeditation.blogspot.com

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insight on communal music

by Lloyd MacLean

Sing us a song, you’re the piano man, sing us a song tonight…
~ Billy Joel

One of the ironies of this “technological age” that we live in is the increasing isolation many people experience. In an age when it is so easy to connect with people all over the world, many are missing the experience of connecting even with local people, particularly in a musical setting. What’s more, in a society that is saturated with music, people have become numb to it. And many people have made a subconscious decision that their own musical efforts are not good enough to share with other people.

While there have probably never been more “formal” opportunities to sing communally, it seems that these days there are few places to sing informally. Many schools have no singing past the elementary grades; congregational singing in most churches is a weak point; and unless you are at a World Cup soccer match, singing at sports events does not happen. Patriotic songs? When is the last time you heard a rousing version of O Canada or Mon Pays? These days, it’s getting harder to hear a rousing version of Happy Birthday!

Communal singing is different from taking a microphone in hand for a karaoke performance with pre-recorded backup band and singers. Communal singing is singing in a group, with that group, adding your own particular sound to the collective musical output of the group, no matter how large or small. The results are often amazing.

What holds us back from being involved? Often it is the simply fear of the unknown. If we have never sung, we don’t know our own voice. If we don’t know how it will sound, we are often reluctant to let anyone else hear how it will sound. We don’t know the tunes, we don’t know the words, and we may not know how to read music. We don’t want to make fools of ourselves in front of a group of people who, we have likely convinced ourselves, are all excellent singers. These are genuine concerns. Some can be easily overcome; others are misconceptions.

The enjoyment and satisfaction from communal singing is wondrous, fulfilling, intoxicating, and addictive. The important thing is to take that first step, to sing those first couple of notes or phrases, to raise your voice in song with others. [Part of the rationale in choosing selections for More Voices, the popular new supplement to Voices United, was to find music that helped invite people back into the experience of communal song.] Yes, there is a learning curve, and yes, there are techniques that can be developed to polish the output, but there are many church and community choirs that are eager to welcome new singers, and these groups love to pass on technical tips.

We lose a lot if we lose the simple joys of life, and what could be simpler and more joyful than singing with a group of family or friends at informal occasions? Time was, the crowd at a social event would gather around a piano, and join in singing all the old favourites. That still happens in some places, believe it or not.

So next time somebody invites you to sing along, don’t hesitate! Remember that old sing-song chestnut: “The more we get together, the happier we’ll be!”

Afterthought: Maybe outdated terminology is part of the problem. If you can think of a 21st century replacement term for sing-song, send it along to Wood Lake Publishing, Inc. and we will send you a free songbook! Don’t forget to include your name and mailing address so we know where to send your prize. Email ingridt@woodlake.com with your suggestion.

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