Bits and pieces (6): free my soul

I did not know the song “Drift Away” before the animal known as “show choir” was foisted on me in 2004 at a two-year college.  I don’t remember whether it was the closer or opener, but it became, as far as I remember, the strongest tune that group performed.  It’s catchy, and this song is, in a limited sense, a lasting “bit” from life.

I wasn’t sure why a show choir existed at a college; such groups are more about competition and show than music.  (In interviewing prospective students during my time at Houghton College, from time to time, a student from more southerly climes would register disappointment that we didn’t have marching band competitions in college.)  In fact, my predecessor with this show choir school had already moved away from having this “choir” singing any harmony at all, and she was reportedly going to have them merely lip-sync and dance the next year.  Unbelievable, I know.  I digress.

Anyway, anytime I hear the tune “Drift Away” in Walmart (it would not likely be on my radio), I am transported to that time in Missouri, now two decades ago, and a few “bits and pieces” come to mind:

In the show choir itself, I recall young lady named Jessica, who seemed almost obsessed with looking at herself in the mirror.  Her goal was to be a performer in Branson.  I had never seen a choir room with mirrors like that, and I’ve been averse to them ever since.

James, a young man with energy and a terrific attitude, married Audrey, and they seem to have a fine family now.

Sandy, the recently retired high school choral director who became the adjunct show choir lead, and I had a conversation on the phone in which I registered some concerns about dancing.  She assured me she was “a Christian person” and would uphold family-friendly standards.  I noted she had not said “a Christian.”  Ever since, I have thought the distinction was important.

P.C. Thomas, a Christian colleague, and I were sponsors of a weekly Bible study.  One of my music students attended.  His name was Jeff, and he was a sincere, hard-working guy.  He is a family man and a deacon in his church.  His girlfriend at the time did not maintain her life of Christian morality.  An older student in this Bible study group reacted quite negatively to my questioning his sense of what “anointing” meant then and how it has been co-opted today.  I can see the ire today.  He seemed to be upset to the point that he thought I was blaspheming God.  P.C. and his wife Thankam has us into their home for a delicious Indian meal, and they took us to their church once — a conservative, nondenominational “Bible chapel.”  I recalled the thoughtful hymns and atmosphere there and visited the same place a couple of years ago.

All these are bits and pieces of life:  students in a Bible study group, faculty colleagues with whom I can share faith, and a few students who have stayed with faith or grown in it.

There are some bits and pieces from which I would prefer my soul to be freed.  Some positive bits are seemingly minor, yet they play a role in our spiritual consciousness.

Previous Bits and Pieces blogposts

No longer

The note I’ve reproduced below refers to a bygone era, and the book in which it was inscribed is not likely to be read again.  Still, the note itself is beautiful to me. I don’t want to part with it, so I’ve decided to save just this one page. 

Although not related by blood, the writers (and the givers of the gift-book) feel like first cousins once removed, and they were on my mailing list for the worship digest newsletter I sent out during the 90s.  Because of that and other interactions, they recognized a desire in me; at the time, I was very active in worship leadership and was relatively effective in carrying on a portion of my grandfather’s work and message.  At this point in life, however, that is no longer the case.

Now, I am deeply hurt over the current state of affairs with my extended family, for several have shown no regard (and worse). A decade ago, one of them overtly attempted to reprove me for “associating myself” with my grandfather.  I don’t recall ever making statements to the effect that I was like he was, although I did desire to carry on his influence. 

The image below tells the story of a portion of Granddaddy’s influence. A few years after he was told¹ he was no longer directing the Harding Chorus, his successor (who, incidentally, was a good deal more technically qualified, and who also influenced people for good) honored him with this tribute on the cover of a hymns record. 

[Please ignore typos on the name of Andy T. Ritchie, Jr.  I imagine those occurred during the later transference of these words to a CD liner.]

Today would have been Granddaddy Ritchie’s 115th birthday. 

A little more than forty years ago, he died. 

About thirty years ago, the above note of affirmation was written by family friends. 

Twenty years ago, my leadership opportunities were already drying up, but they still came once in a while.

Flourishing again seems possible only in the next life, as far as I can see.  Survival and maintenance are the order of the day.  Thriving is no longer in view, but man, would a return to thriving be a welcome change, if God wills it!  As for Granddaddy and my mom and dad, they would have loved me, anyway.  As for some others, I’m not so sure.  I depend on the grace of my Eternal Father, whose love never has a “no longer” attached to it.

TT: The Bee and me (censorship, bias, NPR, Google)

I was once censored.  Just like The Babylon Bee. 

Oh, I don’t matter much, and I can actually see the other side, in my case.  I’m not even sure if The Bee matters.  But they got far more notably censored, notably when Twitter was still Twitter.

It wasn’t that a Tweet was removed because it was deemed “hate speech.”

It’s that the account access was suspended without notice, indefinitely, until the Bee’s management removed the post.  In essence Twitter was forcing thought-subjugation.

Based primarily on this 7-minute speech by Seth Dillon, CEO of TBB, I see this problem as more conceptual than procedural.  While an entity such as Twitter has the right to set its own policies, the picture changes when that entity it is essentially a public utility.  It ought to be more broad-minded and free of constraint.  (For example, mobile telephone carriers don’t tell you what you can talk about via their cell towers.)  The editors at TBB were essentially forced to recant an opinion in order to have their access restored.  They did not do that, and I’m glad they didn’t sacrifice principle for dollars.

At least, in my case, something I had displayed was actually removed, and I was given the option to speak about it.  (I didn’t.)  (There would have been no point.)  (So I sometimes put things in my car window now.)  (If they ever ask me to take those off, I won’t.  I’ll just park somewhere else.)

I think The Babylon Bee is pretty delightfully funny a lot of the time.  Sure, it’s politically conservative in spots where I’m not, but it’s got a point, a reason to exist.  Also, they got this right on!  So, today, the topic is free speech, and also the right to tell jokes . . . and then to consider on your own, without threat of the loss of livelihood, whether anything was awry in what was said or joked about.

I think it’s pretty cool that Elon Musk called The Bee and asked what happened, commenting, “Well, maybe I should just buy Twitter.”  The Bee thought it was just an offhanded comment, but it wasn’t . . . and he did.  But we still have censorship problems.  Both of the above-mentioned censorship events were many months ago, but the topic of what one can and should say has come up again, sort of like indigestion, with this Free Press essay of Uri Berliner.  He was an NPR senior editor who was subsequently suspended and then resigned.  Hear Mr. Berliner:

An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don’t have an audience that reflects America. . . . But for NPR, which purports to consider all things, it’s devastating both for its journalism and its business model.

. . .

[T]his, I believe, is the most damaging development at NPR: the absence of viewpoint diversity.

I myself began to taper off my NPR listening a few years ago.  It had gotten monotonous to hear the formerly interesting shows.  The last 3-4 years have been particularly bad in my limited, personal perception.  Not surprisingly, Berliner’s act of calling out the censorship and viewpoint guardians within NPR resulted in the end of his career there.  In his resignation message, he wrote, “[I] cannot work in a newsroom where I am disparaged by a new CEO whose divisive views confirm the very problems at NPR I cite in my Free Press essay.”

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I read last week of pro-Hamas protestors that shut down highways near major airports and occupied a boss’s office at Google, of all places.  Some of them were arrested, and that’s a good thing, in my book.  The problem is, they are probably so ideologically and morally corrupted that they’ll think they were sacrifices for a cause and not just children doing childish things they had no right to do.

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Bias?  In a Tech Giant?

Google is biased.  (Go figure.)  Mutant dystopian AI creations such as dark-skinned Vikings demonstrate the bias toward leftist agendas, as though sane people needed any evidence.  I’m not sure whether that example will prove to be a more or less serious indictment than recent findings that Alphabet/Google has interfered in U.S. elections for at least sixteen years running.  Project Veritas and MRC were key journalistic investigators in that area.  It was asserted, for instance, that the margin by which D. Trump beat H. Clinton would have been significantly greater (2.6MM votes) had the search engine not slanted searches toward favorable Clinton results.  96% of the company’s political donations went to Democrats in a recent year, it was found.    https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/morning-wire/texas-law-scotus-ruling-google-s-alleged-election-interference-3-20-24

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Gender Medicine

The British Cass Report is out, and its author has been denigrated, and some “fact-checkers” failed, and the honest reviewers and critics of the fact-checkers are right, but the biased activists won’t ever find out

A review from Colin Wright:  https://www.realityslaststand.com/p/the-final-cass-review-and-the-nhs

Fact-checking the fact-checkers:  https://www.realityslaststand.com/p/fact-checking-critics-of-the-cass

Free Press report on some of the fallout:

→ Cass report author can’t take public transport: Earlier this month, British pediatrician Dr. Hilary Cass published her landmark report on gender care for minors in the UK. Its findings were shocking, if not surprising to anyone who has been following the growth of “gender-affirming care” worldwide. Cass’s report concluded that ideology had trumped medicine in Britain’s healthcare system—and that thousands of young people were given life-changing treatments when there was “no good evidence on the long-term outcomes of interventions to manage gender-related distress.”

Yesterday, in an interview with The Times, Cass revealed she has received a torrent of abusive emails for doing her job—along with security advice that she should not travel on public transport. Asked if the abuse had taken a toll on her she said, “No. . . it’s personal, but these people don’t know me.” She said she is more annoyed about those who have misrepresented her findings, including a prominent Labour Member of Parliament who claimed Cass had omitted 100 transgender studies from her report. “I’m much, much more upset and frustrated about all this disinformation than I am about the abuse,” she said. “The thing that makes me seethe is the misinformation.”   – Oliver Wiseman, The Free Press (digest), 4/22/24

Also in the gender medicine area, but representative of a broader concern

Citation cartels represent a growing concern in academic circles, where the integrity of scholarship is compromised by networks of researchers artificially inflating citation counts. These networks, also known as “citation rings,” strategically boost the visibility and perceived impact of specific research domains, as well as the reputations and academic metrics of those involved.

The problem of citation cartels extends beyond individual disciplines and affects global academic rankings and the distribution of research funds. Universities and researchers driven by the pressure to climb international rankings or secure funding are tempted to engage in these unethical practices.

Reality’s Last Stand, Gender Medicine’s Citation Cartel. 4/13/24

Of takers and givers

 O Lord of heav’n and earth and sea,
To thee all praise and glory be!
How shall we show our love to thee,
Who givest all?

. . .

To thee from whom we all derive,
Our life, our gifts, our pow’r to give;
O may we ever with thee live,
Who givest all!

– Christopher Wordsworth, 1863

That song was a bit too poetically high-sounding for most leaders to choose it, but it was sung in my congregation a few times when I was young, and it still inspires.  How can we give to God?  As recipients of all good from God, we are forever in the spiritual position of the requiter.  But how can we really requite?

Indeed, how could anyone undertake to give anything to God?  He is the ultimate Source, the ultimate Giver.   Of course, we cannot in actuality give Him anything He needs, but we will still want to do for Him, to give to Him.

We give thee but thine own,
Whate’er the gift may be;
All that we have is thine alone,
A trust, O Lord, from thee.

– William How, 1858

We humans could and should be giving of ourselves to God and to others.

But we are takers.

And, man, there are lots of dyed-in-the-wool takers around me.  Mostly I think of a few parents, some of whom I’ve never met.  They seem just to take, take, take all the time . . . to reap the benefits of others who give, give, give to the idle takers’ children.  Ideally, sharing can occur.  Sharing of rides, reciprocation of gifts, meals out, and more.  But some parents never seem to realize what’s happening with their own children:  how much is given to their children, how much they are missing out on!  And how much the children too, are in a position of taking!  In this scenario we are talking about humans taking from other humans, and the humans are actually in a position to be able to give in return, to give something needed.

I try to be a giver, and I enjoy being able to be generous here and here, but sometimes it just feels that I’m being taken advantage of.  When a friend of my son needs something bought before her game, or needs a ride, I’m happy to provide if I can, but then I find out a parent is just sitting at home doing nothing, and I start to feel that parent is a taker.  And I hope the daughter learns to be a giver instead.  I want to be helpful, and I want to be an adult that can be depended on, but I don’t want to enable a behavior pattern that will create irresponsibility in the next generation.

A third song of which I’m reminded is from yet a third middle-19C poet.  (This concentration in another era leads me to wonder whether anyone thinks much about giving anymore.)  In my experience, this song was often used as a contribution-motivation song, and I rather wish this song were used more overtly as a catalyst for deeper thought about a deeper kind of giving.

 I gave My life for thee,
My precious blood I shed,
That thou mightst ransomed be,
And quickened from the dead;
I gave, I gave My life for thee,
What hast thou done for Me?
I gave, I gave My life for thee,
What hast thou done for Me?

-Frances Havergal, ca. 1860

Truly, what have we done?  What have we given?  The prophet said all our righteous deeds, even, amount to nothing but “filthy rags.” (Isaiah 64:6)  The ultimate giver is God.  Both before Jesus lived and became Christ, and through Him now, we find the Example of giving.  We take from Him; we receive from Him.  And all we have to give is nothing  . . . and everything.

Whatever, Lord, we lend to thee,
Repaid a thousand fold shall be;
Then gladly will we give to thee,
Who givest all!

– Christopher Wordsworth, 1863

Reflections of a similar kind:

Of wine and whine

Reflecting on it: asking, and being asked

A friend used to seem coy about things from time to time.  Once, I asked why she hadn’t mentioned something before.

“You didn’t ask,” she smiled.

I met her brother once, and he gave me a similar “you didn’t ask” about a separate matter.  This keeping-things-to-yourself-until-someone-asks thing was almost a family trait!  Although it seemed a little unusual at the time, it is more appealing now, and it strikes me as often wise.  Sometimes I wish I could say less to other people, just being content in my own thoughts.  There are many other times, however, when simply having an information interchange beforehand would shed light, head off a problem, or generally make life easier.  I would often rather the person ask, so that when a problem occurs, I don’t have to say, either under my breath or out loud, “You didn’t ask.”

For instance, it baffles me why someone would unilaterally change a schedule that impacted my work and space without even mentioning it, much less asking whether it would work out on my end.  This was not collegial behavior, and it affected my state of mind and the ability to do my job, too.  (Yes, I know I’m too feelings-aware.)  Had I been asked later why I didn’t pipe up, I could say, “You didn’t ask,” I suppose.  At the point at which the problem surfaced, there was actually nothing to be gained by discussing it:  other, more far-reaching factors were in play.  Still, the other side should have asked first.

“Why didn’t you tell me how you felt or what the impact would be?”

“You didn’t ask!  (Also, it wouldn’t have changed anything if I had spoken up, and you and I both know it.)”

So many situations could be improved if at least one party would genuinely ask the other party what it is thinking, or why it did this or that.  At least some dialogue could occur.

The responsibility can fall on either side, or both.  On the one hand, a person making a change should consider ramifications.  Administrators and managers should help to head off problems.  On the other hand, when a change is in the works and one party is not asked, the ignored party could be so bold as to offer its side of things, even uninvited.

This is not me. But I surely do feel like that a lot.

In some situations, asking a question of someone can be a trap.  If I am on the receiving end of a question that feels uncomfortable, I might avoid the question.  If a questioner has a conclusion in mind already, he should take care to examine his own mind and heart before asking a question of someone else.

“Why did you ask if you already thought you knew?”

I suppose the difference lies in the nature of the scenario.  If it’s a work relationship and the question is relatively surface-level, just ask me.  (I’ll try to do the same.)  I would rather you ask me than assume my preference, thoughts, feelings.  Whether you ask or not, if you assume something, or act unilaterally, I’ll be left somehow muttering, “You didn’t (really) ask.”

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There is another type of situation that pertains to asking and being asked.  This concerns professional, collegial, relationships.  Here, I think to myself,

“You didn’t even ask.  Why haven’t you asked?”

Long ago, when in my first teaching job, four colleagues planned and produced a fun concert, with guitars and bass and drums and redneck humor.  I was the new music teacher,  had some connections with one of them,  and was trying to develop friendships with the others.  I was negotiating my new roles and felt excluded by these four.  I went to one of them to express my sense of hurt, and he responded with some understanding, but also with a question along the lines of “Well, why would you assume we should have asked you to join in?”  Again, I was making my way in this new school as a very young teacher, and I still wonder why they didn’t ask me at least to play a supporting role, maybe on piano or another guitar.  It was my area, after all, and being included could have helped me secure an approachable reputation more quickly.  But they did not owe me that, and they knew each other better than they knew me.  They just didn’t ask, and they didn’t have to.  It was my insecurities and youth that made that situation difficult for me.

Today, my local music friends are important to me.  It’s not a huge group, but it’s fairly solid and a growing number, I’m glad for that.  Naturally, I can share more with some of them than others, and I hope I’m the kind of person who invites their words, too.  One in particular has asked for musical favors quite a few times, and I’ve almost always been able to oblige, and glad to do it.  She makes it easy to participate and support, and she has been doing musical service for one of my groups, too.  It’s a nice music-friend relationship.  She asks, and I say, “Sure, can do.”  I ask, and she says the same.  After the first time or two, if she had not asked again, I would have thought something was up.

It’s not the same with another music friend.  There seems to be an inexplicable distance.  By all rights, we should be real friends.  I have made overtures on two or three occasions, and those have not resulted in anything, really.  I am left to presume why this person has not made occasions to spend time together, and why he has not asked for more from me.  (Presuming is usually a bad idea, but my instincts tend to serve me well, so I allow myself to presume, unchecked, at times.)  I am right here, and I have some expertise that would help.  I am right here, and this person has yet to ask me for anything.  I am right here, floundering, and this person could actually help me by asking for my help, and we would all be better off!  If you would just ask!  Or is there some reason you are not asking?  (I shan’t speculate out loud.)

Now for a concluding, shamefully out-of-context reference to Romans 12:3, NET:

For by the grace given to me I say to every one of you not to think more highly of yourself than you ought to think, but to think with sober discernment, as God has distributed to each of you a measure of faith.

(I think I have a realistic estimation of my value and am not thinking of myself more highly than I ought, but I could be wrong.)

 

TT: Deeply upset by it (and guardedly encouraged by something else)

Below I have reproduced a Facebook interchange.  This began when an acquaintance reposted this from a meme-producing “reverend”:  “God celebrates who you are.  If your church doesn’t, get a new church.”

While I think there are a lot of reasons to “get a new church,” I found the message there to be not-so-subtly off its mark.  Apparently, I have not learned to keep my mouth shut.  A brief interchange about that occurred over a period of a couple of days.  I first tried to comment deeply, if briefly.  Then I got myself in too deep, I think.

Me:  God knows who we are, even if we sometimes don’t.

Interlocutor:  Ain’t it the truth!

Me:  Yes, and anyone who coddles deluded senses of “identity” is not being truly compassionate in the long-term sense.  Being compassionate is doing all we can to help people accept who they are.

Based on a few things in the past, I feel like this comment might need to be deleted by one of us . . . and I absolutely hate feeling like that. Maybe I’m wrong.

Interlocutor:  Oooo… you were SO close. Actually it’s: “Being compassionate is doing all we can to accept people for who they are.” There… fixed it. Because the way you had it is the opposite of compassion, and in fact results in daily suicides.

And then I deleted all previous comments, for there was no point.  (And I was too deeply upset.)  In addition, it struck me that the aforementioned acquaintance/interlocutor turned a horrific reality into a light-hearted game with the interjection “Oooo.”

On the topic of “identity,” this acquaintance appears to be reading biased, erroneous data.  And I am deeply saddened over that.  I believe he is often quite misguided, possibly because of wishing to distance himself from certain aspects of his past.  Here, he is wrong with respect to the allegation and ramifications of increased suicide rates.  Even given a few terrible suicides (and surely various self-harm incidents) related to gender dysphoria, no one can say they wouldn’t have happened if gender transition actually had been started.  The way some states are driving wedges between parents on the one hand and children and schools on the other is of deep concern.  When school officials offer to hide things from parents, how can parents, who know and love their own children far more thoroughly than a guidance counselor who is influenced by a corrupt ideology, save the day?  Put another way:  certain educational and medical organizations are quite likely themselves increasing the risk of self-harm.

Furthermore, neither can anyone say whether suicides among transitioners and detransitioners will be less frequent or more frequent down the road, i.e., months or years later.  Studies can be so very biased.  And mental and emotional illnesses will continue, regardless of external, sometimes medically aided, fallacies.

Hear Dr. Heather Heying again:

Parents are told that if they don’t affirm or comply, their child may die—from suicide. . . .  The message becomes personal and direct:  You could have saved your child, but you didn’t.  If the worst happens, how will you live with yourself?

See this for what it is:  an attempt to scare you.  They would convince you to embrace the very thing that is truly dangerous for your child, and convince you, too, that if you don’t, anything that happens to your child in the future is your fault.  Heather Heying, “Me, She, He, They,” 3/7/23  https://naturalselections.substack.com/p/meshehethey

A parent wrote this in reflection on his own teen daughter’s dysphoria:

“A couple years ago I asked what she thought about Jazz’s one-hundred-pound weight gain.  Just an ordinary binge-eating disorder, she replied, unrelated to anything, least of all puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones or multiple botched surgeries.

 

The delusions and abandonment of logic can run so deep.  The influences on that young lady had convinced her to point the finger at the wrong things . . . and all the while, her own underlying, root issues were going unattended to.

I’m deeply upset when anyone cannot see, or refuses to see, reality related to teen mental and emotional health.  The acquaintance referred to at the top lives in California, and, as with many others, the state’s cultural climate¹ appears to have influenced him to see things wrongly, sending him down poor pathways.  When people as divergent as evolutionary biologist atheists, most “conservative” and many “free-press” journalists, world-class psychologists such as Jordan Peterson, whistle-blowing lesbian healthcare workers such as Jamie Reed, best-selling feminist authors such as J.K. Rowling. and right-thinking Christians agree on something (and they do), then the thing on which they agree appears unassailable.  I admit that my creation of a virtual posse there is not very logical, but it does add to my certainty.

On the upside, a meeting last Friday (with people who work with local teenagers) seemed to indicate that they are at least aware of the seriousness of some mental/emotional health issues with teenagers, if not the origin and ramifications.  Social media contagion has unleashed an unimaginably destructive influence on a large set of young people.

I lament all who are deluded into thinking that one can be “born into the wrong body.”  That is not a thing my God would allow.  (This is not to disavow anomalies, nor do I intend to downplay the difficulty that will occur in the face of a biological anomaly.)

Believe God

Or believe biological science

Or believe both! 

Science, God, logic, and conscience are all in harmony.  Sex is binary, and “gender identity” wars are obscuring the terrible things going on in teens’ minds and hearts—particularly with girls.  Allowing girls to express personality through (socially acceptable, reasonable) clothing, hair style, etc., is fine.  What’s not okay is to allow precious souls them to harm themselves permanently.  People need the right kind of help.  Anything but ushering them into irreversible medical “therapies” that mutilate healthy body parts or are designed to defer or stop puberty (which is a design of God).  Anyone’s normal conscience will keep him from doing harm to someone for any reason, much less if that harm is based on a delusional self-diagnosis.

I believe 99% of the current rush to gender transition and acceptance of “trans” identities is attributable to three particular factors—mental disorders, emotional disorders, and social-media-induced contagion.  If it’s just a measly 20%, which is inconceivable to me, the professional and public responses to trans matters ought to be a lot different from what we’re seeing.

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Finally, something I’m NOT deeply upset by

In order to get myself off that topic, I will share an unprecedented (that is, in this weekly Tuesday Topics series) item:  a non-discouraging visit to a new church.  I visited a church in town where I’ve never darkened the doors before.  The preacher spoke of a topic on which I have a relatively developed opinion, and he assumed different things, and he was still easy to listen to.  The congregational ethos was fine, and I saw a couple of people I know from other areas of life, and that was pleasant.  Overall, I felt rather positive about the visit.  Today I had a text reach from an acquaintance who is a member there.  Could it be that this church could be a temporary home until I can be extracted from here?

“Church” is of course also a topic, and it should definitely be a Tuesday one, not to mention all the other days of the week!

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¹ It’s not just California, although I rather feel that the West Coast is a particularly negative factor in morality, unless one just stays home and enjoys the topography and the climate out there.  Living in Kansas has affected me in some ways, too.  Living in other places—say, New Jersey, Texas, Minnesota, a state not to be named at this moment in time—all these could affect a person before he knows it, and more deeply than he knows it.  It’s not just states, of course.  Living in a college campus bubble can be quite the factor, too.  We ought to realize these things about ourselves.

Pondering it: community processes and communal feeling

A few days ago, I attended a large-group meeting out of a sense of obligation.  The meeting didn’t turn out to be worthwhile, and I should have known that on the front side, but I was compliant.  I sort of wish I had just skipped the meeting . . . but then I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to explore this experience from both personal and pragmatic standpoints.

I immediately assessed the facilitator, apparently a new department head, as inviting and helpful.  However, the sense of the group dynamic—the “community” that he and others assumed—did not square with my sense of it all.  As a result, I left feeling worse about my place in the world.  Put differently:  I was an outsider, in that I didn’t know the organizational scenario or any of the other people in the room.  And my experience of the larger community has been increasingly one of distance,¹ not of shared communal warmth and support.  (This feeling is natural because of traditional and doctrinal differences.)

In addition, the meeting seemed largely to waste about two dozen people’s time.  It seemed clear that a few needed to air some things, sharing their department’s limitations and concerns, and that kind of thing can be well justified . . . but not at the expense of calling in many other people who have little to do with those concerns and nothing to offer, draining their patience and wasting their time.  To be fair, I did not see many signs that my concern with time-wasting was shared.  Others seemed just fine, although a few were occupying themselves with laptops and not paying too much attention.

There are connections to how I feel about most church gatherings.  Let me now extend the thinking on this meeting experience to “church.”

Leadership 
While a leader such as the one here might have wonderful intentions, a nice personality, and effective, diplomatic mannerisms and oral delivery, leadership also involves understanding the situation from others’ points of view.  If my conducting of a piece of music does not incorporate issues in the second violin section, the difficulties in horn parts, or the necessity of switching from Bb clarinet to A clarinet, for instance, then I might be assuming too much and will end up compromising good leadership.  Furthermore, if I am unaware of the personal backgrounds and capacities of the people I am leading, both I and the meeting will be less effective.  The leader of a large meeting can be a great speaker and facilitator, but he ought also to understand something of the lives of the others.  He might think they need to be there, and he might assume they on on board, but their life priorities and actual needs might indicate otherwise.

Similarly, a preacher or worship leader might also have some wonderful personal qualities, pleasing manner, and a good speaking voice, but all leaders should seek to understand those they are leading.  The larger the group, the less likely it is that a leader can grasp things like this on an individual scale.  This is one reason I tend to prefer smaller groups.  Then again, when the group can fit in the living room, there can be less excuse for uninformed leadership.

Differing experience
For an entire year, about 30 years ago, I led twelve Third Sunday evening assemblies at my church.  This was all about “one another.”  Owing to certain feelings in my life, I took a sort of sabbatical from worship leadership in the Sunday morning assembly, moving instead into horizontal focus for a time.

For the Third Sunday evening each month, I was the planner and principal leader, facilitating the selection of songs and other material, inviting leaders, and conducting live interviews with people I selected.  The whole raison d’etre for this “one another” effort was my sense of the need for deeper focus on people, alongside focus on God.  I believe it was a good thing, and my intentions were certainly good, albeit born of personal pain.  I don’t recall knowing of any disgruntlement, but it could well be that the elders of the church received complaints.

You see, I could have been unwittingly ignoring other people’s experience of the community.  If I came off as “warm and cozy” in my touting of biblical one-another ideals, and if someone else felt the debilitating distance I now feel, the whole thing would have been counterproductive for that person.  In other words, if I’m singing and talking about loving people, and personably interviewing a personable person, allowing everyone getting to know him or her better, it could make a hurting person feel even worse . . . because no one knows her, and no one seems to want to expend the effort to understand her.  The emotional background of individuals, combined with varying senses of “community,” can have a great deal to do with receptivity.  If “communal feeling” is forced on you when you don’t feel connected, it’s unlikely that you will feel very communal about it all, no matter how conceptually excellent the words of the songs about loving people might be.

Similarly, when I hear people dialoging and nicely deferring to one another, apologizing and clarifying and seeking everyone’s good (just as I did at this campus meeting), it made me feel worse, because those things simply have not occurred in my personal experience.  I felt even more excluded, not included.  I hurt even more.

Wasted time
A person I used to know once said, while raising three young boys, “Time is gold.”  I have felt that throughout most of my life.  Although my current “busy” level is not what it once was, I feel pressures related to time that will probably never evaporate.  Rather than ramble about time and responsibilities, I’ll suggest this:  if the feeling of community were rich and genuine, I don’t think I’d have nearly the problem with “wasting” time with the group.

My experience with pretty much all meetings is that they waste a lot of time and often turn out not to be as communal as they purport to be.  Those leading meetings, whether church gatherings or office meetings, should consider well the processes and people involved, so that the desired goals are met without making people feel worse through the effort.

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’ Distance because of questionable judgments (mostly other people’s), differing rationales, and mistreatment of programs and people

Enjoying almost every minute of it: big stuff

Big stuff is happening.  After a major chamber winds concert that I played in last Sunday, two upcoming events have been large in my life.  They have proven time- and thought-intensive.  They have been, and will be, fulfilling.  Big stuff for this little person!  The first is an Atchison Jazz Express concert, and the second is a Benedictine College/Atchison Community Orchestra concert.

In both cases, I am pleased to have been solely responsible for the programming, the planning, and the rehearsing.  I am the primary musical leader, but that doesn’t mean I worked in a vacuum.  I collaborated with soloists and colleagues in certain respects, but at points I deemed some things better than others and made some decisions unilaterally.

I believe that ensemble programming is an art in itself, and I take the responsibility seriously.  By “ensemble programming,” I mean not only the act of selecting certain pieces for rehearsal and performance, but also the work of pondering and sequencing the individual works, all the while considering the program as a whole, as an over-arching artistic expression.  (This document, written some years ago, provides more of my thinking in this area.)  I consider such factors as style, era of composition, difficulty level, perceived energy level, key/tonality, player stamina, texture (sometimes including chamber groups in a large-ensemble program), and overall “shape.”

~ ~ ~

I.  Jazz  Other than jazz ensembles at three two-year colleges, I have not been responsible for much jazz programming.  At two of those institutions, I founded and led small combos, so there was no particular tradition or performance precedent to uphold.  At the other school, there was a big band, and I think I programmed satisfactorily, if not perfectly.

For tomorrow’s AJE program, I had more talent at my disposal, and more leeway.   I’m pleased to have been directing rehearsals for three months.  A couple of programming decisions were made as late as a week ago.  I’ve worked all along to enhance the variety and audience appeal of this concert, of course also considering the players’ interests.  I’ve added auxiliary percussion, had a multi-talented player move from bass trombone to electric bass while our regular upright bassist sits out, and added guitar for four tunes. Having substitute players can also affect the constitution and shape of the program.

Certain other aspects have made this concert a bigger deal, at least for me, than one might expect—namely, the inclusion of a young vocalist, Daysia Reneau.  She’s a freshman in college but has already had some significant experience.  Using a vocalist in a jazz program means there are extra issues, at least in our world.  We have only one chart that’s arranged for a vocalist, so some tunes we’re doing with Daysia have required significant adaptation.  We had to (1) change the form and (2) keep the melodic instruments from playing the melody at times.

In addition to Daysia’s songs, we will also perform styles such as “up” swing, gentle swing, a Dixie-ish rock march, Latin-influenced jazz, jazz-rock, and pop.  Our “home” style is medium swing in this ensemble, but I think we’re doing well with the other styles, too.  Here’s the program:

With composers and arrangers such as Count Basie, the Gershwins, Henry Mancini, Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Sammy Nestico, and Johnny Carson, we probably can’t go wrong.

II.  Orchestra   Actually, wind band music, including chamber winds, constitutes my first choice of ensemble, repertoire, and sonic possibilities, but my largest responsibility as a professional musician lately has been orchestral leadership.  (My secondary doctoral study area was orchestral conducting.)  For a total of six seasons, I have been conductor of the Benedictine College/Atchison Community Orchestra, and the final spring concert is in a week.  I cannot come close to communicating how significant an event this concert will be in my personal life.  I am going big and then going home, basically, with this group.  Here’s the program:

The 1.5-minute opener, my transcription, centers on fanfare elements, but it also requires complex rhythmic capacities and evokes deep contemplation in spots.

Today’s concertmaster, and violin soloist for the second piece, took lessons with the concertmaster I first worked with, back in 2003-5.

I’ve invited two musicians back who performed with us in 2005, and there are several other supplemental musicians, making it the largest-ever orchestra to fill the stage here.

The largest pieces are the Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, a true orchestral “tour de force,” three of the four Malcolm Arnold English Dances, and the finale.  The James Bond music that ends the first half is also pretty “big” in spots.  All great music!

~ ~ ~

I look forward to both these programs, for different but overlapping reasons.  The variety of the repertoire is a particular joy to consider, program, and “make work” (a reference to necessary adaptations).  The jazz repertoire comes from about a 50-year time period, and the orchestral selections were composed over about 125 years.  All in all, there is some terrific music, and I intend to enjoy playing piano tomorrow, working with soloists, the final orchestral rehearsal on Thursday, pre-concert pep talks and spot checks, sharing some personal thoughts with the second audience—and of course conducting, which is my first musical love.

Someone recently asked me where God was in what I’d said.  That was a reasonable question in that context, and the same question could be asked here, too . . . so let me just say this, here and now.  Whether I express it or not, God is in all of it.  Thank you, Lord God, for music.

TT: Getting rid of it . . . and both of them

First:  I absolutely hate that I am thinking so much about ephemeral, national politics.  But here goes.  You could call this “TT post “Thursday Topics” or “Thursday Threads.”  Thing is, I read an article on Tuesday, and my Tuesday Topics post was already complete, and I don’t want to let this sit another week . . . so I’m getting rid of it.  Sort of.

Seriously, get rid of them both

The Biden administration announced a new student debt relief proposal yesterday that has the potential to impact nearly 30 million borrowers.

. . .

The announcement follows the Supreme Court’s rejection of the administration’s $400B attempt to cancel student debt last summer. This latest plan adopts a more targeted approach and relies on the 1965 Higher Education Act, which allows the secretary of education to “compromise, waive, or release” federal student loans. Implementation is projected for the fall; however, legal challenges are expected.   –1440 Daily Digest, 4/9/24

Personally, I think student debt is a nationally important matter.  If I had to establish a prioritized list, I would group this with other economic factors in about 13th place—less important than the border crisis, media and tech concerns, and gender/sexuality-related issues.  It’s hard to say what should be a lower priority than student debt.  (Every issue I type in makes me retract and delete it, because every issue has tentacles.)  It’s also difficult to know where to place Ukraine and Gaza, and other global issues among U.S. concerns.

I do have sympathy for the debt scenario of college students and their families.  I’m quite blessed to have emerged from college with one small debt that was paid off in about five years, and no debt after graduate school at all.  On one hand, I don’t think people should contractually obligate themselves for debts they can’t pay, and honest people can almost always find ways to pay their just debts.  On the other hand, higher education’s costs have risen.  What are aspiring students to do?  Without facts and stats to back up my opinion, I might suggest that a sizable chunk of the problem is the increased presence, status, and salaries of administrative positions that are peripheral to academic concerns.  Professors and deans should be paid well, but we don’t need more Directors and Assistant Directors of peripheral departments to drive costs up.  (For instance, most schools should follow the leads of Florida and Texas and maybe other states in banning DEI departments.)  College should not cost as much as it does.  $30,000 or more per year is simply too much.  Try $5,000 for state schools, and maybe $10-15,000 for private ones.  The cost is the issue that underlies the student debt problem.

Now, back to the Biden administration’s latest step.  I think he probably means very well on this (if he is cognizant of it himself).  It’s not a bad thing to give people relief.  Reducing debt could be acceptable, in some cases.  However. . . .

I think President Biden is a sham.  And a shame.  I think he is a worse president than former President Trump by a significant margin—but comparing the two men as men is like comparing (1) rotten meat and rats filling a classic car to (2) rotten fruit and maggots filling a yacht.  Although this new student debt relief program probably has merit, it is not something that the president should be dealing with.  Call me cynical, but could this possibly be a DNC stratagem designed to make the people vote for this dementia-ridden, poorly informed, embarrassing president?  Could someone have actually timed this proposal to surface after Trump’s record-breaking fundraiser bested Biden’s record-breaking fundraiser? . . . to try to eke out a couple of polling points?  C’mon, Democrats.  Get a middle-of-the-roader in there.  Realize Mr. Biden is no longer fit to serve.

OK, I can’t stop myself now.  (Actually, I just found these paragraphs that I’d written a month ago, and I don’t want to save them any longer.)

No, seriously, get rid of them both

Trump is offensive, if smart in some areas, and immoral and over-the-top, if not criminal.  Biden is offensive, if previously smart in some areas, and he has been derelict and corrupt, if not criminal.  He’s also a victim of dementia.  (It’s not an “age” problem; it’s a dementia problem.  [No, I’m not that kind of doctor, but I’ve seen enough now-familiar signs to know that he is not mentally well.])

No, seriously, get rid of them both.  Leave out the fringes, the front-runners, and the people who offend more than half of us, like Trump and Biden.  Bring on an election race that pits, say, Jim Manchin, Nikki Haley, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.  (Goodness, don’t allow Hillary or Michelle into the fray.)  And always, always remember that this world’s political business is temporary and not the real business of the Kingdom.

And finally, here’s a late insert, because I’m just that bad a subject of the King

Last night, I saw this for the first time:

I get that Trump can be very, very offensive, but I find it over the top to liken him to a sexually transmitted disease, as though Joe is not just as bad in other ways.  Biden-Harris merch is offered on the same website, and the “stop Donald” stuff is obviously geared to those who believe in Biden-Harris.  How can they believe Joe is a better option?  And if they honestly think Joe is competent now, and if they affirm the impact of fringe liberals on Democrat policy, do they not have a clue about dementia, and the very real possibility that Joe will be stopped in his tracks very soon by this awful disease?  (On the remote chance that I’m incorrect here, then something else is causing him to act incompetently, and that would impugn character and intelligence instead of attributing the concerns to disease.)  Then what?  I never thought “W” Bush’s Texan speech sounded presidential, and Trump’s and Biden’s sound far beneath the office, too.  But “President Harris”?  Really?  Can we imagine in a future president such pointless rambling and the inability to say anything important, or to say anything at all?  Kamala Harris is currently just as ridiculous as a leader as Biden is, and she’s not demented!  Kamala Harris is a non-starter.

This morning, April 11, I saw that Biden had gained 4 points in some poll.  Speaking transparently, first of all, I had a very negative reaction to that.  It makes me feel nauseous to think of what happens with four more years of the Democrat Party and the embarrassments of the current administration.  Then I realize anew that probably more people hate Trump and would take radical action if he won, including rioting.  (Of course those riots would be deemed allowable by the ruling party and DOJ, which is hypocrisy at its finest.)  And I don’t want any more unrest and violence.  But why should radical people win the day?  Why should the threat of Trump-haters overshadow the threat of Biden-Harris nonsense and incompetence?  It’s all so very sad.  I really wish sane minds in Washington (surely there are some) from both parties could meet and say, “We know this is bad.  Let’s agree not to have either of these characters, or anyone connected to them, on the national stage any more.”  Stop the madness.

No Trump.  No Biden.  No Harris.  No spouses or daughters or sons of former executives.  None of them.  So be it.

That would surely be a good thing.

But then other bozos would arise to take the bozos’ places.

So we’ll never get rid of this chaos.  Not while this planet revolves and rotates.

I can’t stop

When I read the item linked below, I had no idea who Marianne Williamson was, and I haven’t heard a word about her since, but she compared the current presidential campaign situation to “watching a car crash in slow motion.”  That sounds about right.  But then I read a little about her.  If Biden and Trump combine to effect a massive car crash playing out before our eyes, as Williamson suggested, well . . . then she seems like a UFO flying to a moon of Jupiter on peanut dust, which many are allergic to.  Spiritual advisor to Oprah?   Support for CRT and radical action on the climate issues?  No, thank you.

https://www.newsnationnow.com/politics/2024-election/marianne-williamson-unsuspending-presidential-campaign/

I still can’t stop

While it is no surprise that politicians are obstructing just about everything (see link below, about a sham process based on political clout and precedent, not on truth or logic), it is difficult to imagine how Mayorkas is being allowed to keep his job.  He should have been summarily dismissed by President Biden for embarrassing and endangering the southern states, and the whole nation.  He could have been a scapegoat so that President Biden could save face.  Isn’t that how other unscrupulous administrators work?

https://www.newsnationnow.com/politics/senate-set-to-sidestep-mayorkas-trial/

– bc, April 9 – April 11

Robert Kurka had very little training

Robert Kurka wrote the Good Soldier Schweik Suite in the 1950s.  This suite is a tremendously imaginative musical work, inspired by a satiric play.

Robert was a man.  
Robert lived a long time ago.  
Robert was very creative.

See Robert write.  
See Robert write music.  
Robert had very little training.  
Where are Robert's teachers?

Robert Kurka knew a lot about sound and orchestration, but not enough in the case of horns.  He needed some teachers.  You see, large swaths of the three horn parts in the Suite aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on.  They are just that bad.  To be fair, the Horn 1 part is pretty well conceived (and also challenging).  The other two parts should have been written for low brass, not middle brass!  In some passages, it’s really silly to try to play the musical material you know he meant to sound different.  It does not work for the horn.  Robert only had a partial understanding of horn range and really hadn’t a clue what stopped horn was all about.

When I was working to assign parts for this piece and two others, I broached the stopped-horn issue with our gentleman conductor, and he was initially open to my recommendation (which was to eliminate the stopping in some sections), but he ultimately wanted us to try the parts as written.  In real life, however, the horn players I was working with all registered their opinions, which agreed with my initial one.  Gradually, during the two rehearsals, the stopped notes began to be played normally, i.e., without stopped technique.

See Robert turn over in his grave.
See Robert come to understand that he didn't know enough about stopped horn.

The nature and range of certain passages in the Horn 2 and Horn 3 parts show that these parts should have been for bass trombone, perhaps with cup mute.

I had learned about the Good Soldier Schweik Suite while a grad student and had found it intriguing.  I had once planned to program it, but that was aborted.  I have a copy of the score, which I studied in some detail during the last three weeks.   Our conductor’s tempos and knowledge of the music were exemplary.  The performance, I think, was entertaining and mostly well done.  I enjoyed playing the performance, but I did not enjoy the two rehearsals.  Why? Because it took so much out of our section, and out of my brain, to try to level out the issues with the horn parts.  If I were ever to program this piece, I would rewrite the second and third horn parts for other instruments.

See Robert look quizzical.  He doesn't have  any  say  in  the  matter.

 

 

 

 

This is a horn part that should have been a bass trombone part:

The rest of the concert, by the way, was an absolute pleasure.  I’m indebted to two of the other horn players for making it enjoyable and warm, to the music director who programmed the pieces, and more, to the God who created sound that could be musical.  I’ve never had opportunity to play the Strauss op. 7 or the Dvorak Op. 44, but I’ve studied and conducted them both, so I knew them pretty well.  Those pieces are glistening gems of chamber literature, and of music overall.

TT: Grossman is gruff, Cole is bold; Klavan is satirical, and there’s always Covid fallout

Dr. Miriam Grossman recently addressed a Heritage Foundation gathering near the U.N.:

Dr. Grossman pulled no punches.  She called out the lack of medical evidence for benefits of “gender-affirming care,” and detailed the irreversible damages of breast binding and puberty blockers on adolescent growth, chronic pain, brain development, bone health, sexual function, fertility, and mental health.

. . .

She concluded her remarks with a scathing rebuke of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) for its shameless promotion of medical experimentation on children—and its complete disregard for ethics, evidence, and informed consent.– Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, Do No Harm Medicine

From Chloe Cole, gender detransitioner and patient advocate at Do No Harm:

“This afternoon I had the opportunity to directly address Disney’s shareholders regarding their discriminatory and hypocritical practices against detransitioners like myself. I wanted to make sure Disney heard it loud and clear—we won’t be ignored or dismissed.

And it worked. My phone—and my social media mentions—have been blowing up all evening full of messages of support (and of course, the detractors and trolls are there too).

 . .

Please check out the message below – I’m off to take our message to the students of East Tennessee State University tomorrow!

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Now for the Klavan material.  If you’re unfamiliar with Andrew Klavan, get ready.  A best-selling author, he is also a brash, articulate hoot.  I don’t really care for his verbiage around some things associated with Christianity, but he is now an unabashed believer in the “risen Lord” and a duly harsh critic of the President, whom he refers to as a “venal houseplant.”  Unless you’re a fringe liberal, a lunatic (I repeat myself), or a bit uptight (which I understand all too well), the opening monologue is horribly funny.  Listen to the first 3’40” of this if you are up for some on-point, cutting sarcasm.

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Continued Covid Fallout and Fraud

Imagine you are in 2021, and you know an honorable physician.  You ask him his opinion on the vaccines, and he has read the CDC material, so he tells you it is “safe and effective” and recommends it.  The trouble is, he has not yet learned how corrupt the enterprise was.  He naturally trusted authorities he had come to trust over years, but they were wrong.  Not only wrong.  They were intentionally covering up facts in order to push an unnecessary, harmful medicine.  Pharma, government, the media, tech giants such as Facebook and Google, and more colluded and played the people as dupes.  Sometime that year, I spoke with a P.A. that I see every other year or so, and she was sensing already that public trust in her profession was declining.  Dr. Prasad succinctly describes the current result of the last few years of mess:

Trust in science is in free fall.  It is particularly low among conservatives.  If you ask me:  loss of trust is well earned, as the pandemic revealed that scientists suppressed legitimate debate, and the major policy positions— school closure, masking, vaccine mandates—were all ineffective or worse. 

https://www.drvinayprasad.com/p/unhelpful-inflammatory-jama-network

And cover-ups in Big Pharma?  Nah, never!  This is a recently broken story:

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/03/must-watch-unpublished-project-veritas-recording-reveals-pfizer/

Ruth: genealogical and personal

I knew but one of my great-grandmothers—Flossie Brady Casey.  When she came to live with my dad’s family, he and his brother were relatively young.  They got the back bedroom, which was not original to the house and was unheated, while Grandma Flossie got the middle bedroom.

Grandma Flossie was sedentary and relatively quiet during the years I knew her, but I’m confident that she loved her grandsons and the rest of her family.  To us kids, she seemed mostly to sit in an old chair during the days (probably 20 years or so) until she couldn’t sit any more, and she was eventually moved to the Oakdale Nursing Home up in Judsonia, where she was visited daily for several years by her daughter-in-law—my grandmother, Ruth.

Now let’s rewind a little more than 3,000 years.  On the map shown here is the approximate path of the biblical Ruth, who was originally of Moab.  She became the great-grandmother of King David, who was about the 26-greats-grandfather of Jesus.

Today, there are horrific things going on in the “fertile crescent,” and I do not downplay the complexity or the terror experienced by millions.  However, in the grand scheme, I think what occurred with this Ruth, around the Dead Sea, before the time of Israel’s kings, is more significant.  It became a forever thing, and that’s why I’m thinking about it.

The ancient Ruth loved her mother-in-law Naomi, which is why she stayed with her, trekking to the Bethlehem area and remaining there.  And Ruth became the great-grandmother of King David.

Naomi (untimely death of husband) || Ruth & Boaz ⇒ Obed ⇒ Jesse ⇒ David

My grandmother Ruth also loved her mother-in law Flossie, which is why she stayed with her, caring for her in the home and then visiting her in the nursing home daily for years.  And this Ruth became the great-grandmother of Jedd.

Flossie (untimely death of husband ||  Ruth & Max ⇒ Gerald ⇒ Brian ⇒ Jedd

Jedd Garrett Casey was so named for these reasons:

• The longer form, “Jedidiah,” was an alternate name for Solomon.  The name means “beloved of Yahweh.”
• Garrett is a form of the name “Gerald” (my father)

Jedd is the only male Casey of his generation.  (His two male cousins are Jackson Neil Floyd and Ryan Bruce Finnie, approximately 5 and .5 years older, respectively.)  I like that Jedd will carry my last name, but that sentiment pales in comparison to whether he will continue to loyally live out his developing faith in Yahweh.  Yahweh is the God his great-grandmother Ruth served, and the same God who impressed the ancient Ruth enough to stay alongside Naomi, traveling to Bethlehem, where she met and married Naomi’s relative Boaz.

And the rest is history.  Significant, redemptive history!  On my other blog, Subjects of the Kingdom,” I’ve written more about the theological and kingdom-related significance of the story of Ruth et al.

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Postscript:  My longtime friend Greg Fay has written a full-length, Broadway-style musical based on the story of Ruth.  I am proud to have played a small, advisory role in that work, about 20 years ago.  The most significant thing I did was to use my knowledge of harmony, notation, and Sibelius software to notate and arrange the songs.  This was a long-term project, joyfully carried out over a period of approximately a year, but Greg is the only creative mastermind behind what became Sweet Dreams:  The Biblical Story of Naomi and Ruth.  It is a shame that only portions have ever been performed publicly.