Shall We Get Married?

                                                                           Thought

  I think we are just friends,

Friends share their deepest ideas.

  I begin to see through his lens.

Who do I dream about? He is.

 Shall we marry

Just because our hopes are one?

  Is there another heart I carry,

Anyone else to whom I run?

So, I was dating my friend Mark's roommate. But, his roommate was dating me on the rebound after a break-up with his fiancée. I confided in Mark about my doubts concerning that relationship. He was kind and understanding and we talked about everything together. Our talks about God, faith, and repentance were most helpful to me. I was learning to trust him with my deepest thoughts.

We happened to walk through the Fine Arts Center on campus one lovely late afternoon and stopped to see a sculpture exhibit by Trevor Southey. I was considering his work entitled "My Brother's Keeper",  looking at the two figure's entwined in mutual support.

I had a flash of insight.

I couldn't look at Mark as we walked back to my apartment in silence. I knew, and I knew he knew that 

we were eventually going to get married. It took weeks to talk about that revelation.

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The Philosophy Class On Self-Deception

Intent

  It isn’t always clear,

My motivation hides itself.

  I pursue my intent with fear,

Perhaps stash it on a shelf.

 

  It’s a self-deception

When I act one way

  Knowing I made a exception 

To keep the truth at bay.

Brigham Young University was both a shock and revelation. Whereas in high school I was in the top of my senior class, at the university I was just one of thousands going to classes and lost inside my own world. What should I study? Who should I be? Should I pursue my English major? Was I dedicated to literature and writing?

My friend, Mark, was auditing a higher level philosophy class by Dr. C. Terry Warner and it was rocking his boat. The class was about self-deception.

 

We talked about the class many times during the week and his concerns were rubbing off on me. Our discussions were started with stories about doing to others what we sense we shouldn't do and not doing what we sense we should.

*I finally broke off an engagement to a good man who I didn't really love but wanted to love because I liked having someone to date and I liked being admired.

* I changed my major from English to Early Childhood Education because I realized that being an articulate, intelligent person was someone I wanted others to think I was rather than finding a vocation that matched my gifts.

"Self-betrayal is a sort of moral compromise, a violation of our own personal sense of how we ought to be and what we ought to do."

My discussions with Mark were more than just tiny flashes of light. They were lightening bolts. I was changing inside and the change was a struggle. I look back now and see that my years at the university were actually giving me an education that helped me reach higher. It truly was a higher education and not just a training to get a job. I didn't get educated in classes alone, but in relationships with roommates, service at church, and being in an atmosphere of choosing God first. I wish my grandchildren might have an opportunity like mine. I feel inclined to think that higher education today is a training ground for socialist philosophy not learning to bring our hearts to hear what God intends us to be.

Dr Warner said, “The stream of self-help books and tapes is never ending. There’s a lot of people telling us what kind of beings we should be and what kind of life we should have together, what our morals should be, and what our habits should be. We can receive advice on how to assert ourselves or how to get along. But nobody is out there telling us how to bring our hearts in line so that doing these things is authentic."

You can find Dr. C Terry Warner's book "Bonds That Make Us Free, Healing our Relationships, Coming To Ourselves" at Amazon or other book sellers.

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Dare To Debate

    In high school I picked debate as an elective. I knew a bit about the whole culture of debating because my sister-in-law taught debate in a high school across town. She had invited me to some debate tournaments as an observer. I was attracted to the smart people I met in that arena. I wanted to be smart enough to win an argument in front of a judge.

   Luckily I was paired with a very intelligent girl named Beth. She read Time Magazine, US News and World Report, and The Congressional Record for fun. I skimmed them to find enough quotes to support the arguments we were currently using in competition. While I learned to speak persuasively, she provided the underlying structure of facts.

  Three years of high school debate provided many intellectual skills like outlining a subject to bring out the key components, understanding the logic of an argument, and thinking quickly in the moment. On the downside, debate forced me into defending two sides with equal prowess. I could speak with real resolve that Congress should prohibit unilateral military intervention into foreign countries and then the next hour make the opposite claim that military intervention needed to be available to The President to stabilize a government which presented a threat to the United States without Congressional approval.  

        Being able to argue both sides of an issue wasn't always a way to find truth.

   I had a glimmer of light testify to me that in reality I needed a way to actually know what was true. Rather than being able to argue about an issue simply to win I need to simplify to eliminate the unnecessary facts so that the necessary could rise to the surface and speak loud enough for me to hear.

Learning to debate provided me access to deeper learning but it also revealed a more important goal of finding a closer pathway to truth. 

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Learning To Serve Through Music

 My Bishop, our lay church pastor, arrived at my door. I was just 15 years old and not yet in high school. My mother invited him into our living room and he started the conversation by thanking me for the years I'd spent accompanying in the children's meetings. He told me that using my talent in service to our church community was very important. There were blessings attached. 

I wondered where he was headed. My mother was beaming because it made her so happy to hear that I was needed. Then she said very seriously, "She does need to practice more."

He explained that he had an idea that might encourage more of the "p" word. Would I please take on playing the organ in Sacrament Meeting, our worship service? What? 

No one seemed to understand that the organ was not just a different kind of piano!

The sound died away immediately and that required legato fingering which I didn't have to do when I used the sustain pedal on the piano. There was also an entire keyboard for the feet. I felt a fear rise up but I pushed that down and replaced it with satisfaction that I was needed. 

I said yes.

Ah, the optimism of youth. I was rudely pulled from this positive mindset when the first Sunday I forced the congregation to endure one mistake after another. The organ is not as forgiving as the piano. A mistake on the piano could be slurred together with the sustain pedal but the organ just announced blatantly that I was on the wrong key. WRONG KEY!!!

We endured and persevered together, those kind saints and I, and the tiny flash of light I had during many hours of being alone at the church, practicing, was that God loves the child who willingly serves. I have been serving at the organ for decades.

I did not really learn to play properly until I went off to college and there had some "real" organ lessons.

 My teacher had a pipe organ in her house. I wondered sometimes what her neighbors thought. She was eclectic and demanding. She drilled the stop names into our heads. The 16 foot gambe was a string sound that came through a 16 foot pipe, the 8 foot flute was sonorous and smooth, the 2 foot piccolo was piercing and these together, with others, created a symphony of sound. 

So, what were the lifelong blessings?

*I learned to collaborate with the congregation and invite the spirit of God into our meetings

*I learned to follow the conductor

*I learned the words to most of the hymns

*I learned to trust that my feet below on the keyboard would follow the path

*I was early to the meetings

Did I sense the day that I received the call that this instrument would provide weekly worship for me all my life?

I had a flash, just a flash of insight.

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The Ninth Grade Speech Class

 

  My palms are sweating.

The rhythm of my heart increasing. 

   There’s no forgetting, 

The memory of speaking, unceasing. 

  Ninth grade speech class,

It is now my turn to speak.

  Fragile as glass,

I have never felt so weak.

    In ninth grade I chose speech as my elective. We met in the choir room so there were four rows of graduating tiers. I think we had desks, the kind with the movable desk top. Mrs. Johnson had blonde hair, pulled back in a fence twist. She often wore sweater sets in pastel colors. She was soft-spoken, kind, yet unrelenting when it came to meeting deadlines. Each Thursday and Friday we gave speeches. It took two days to hear each student. I felt impressed with her objective to enable us all to communicate better. Speaking in front was scary but I believed Mrs. Johnson when she explained that if we followed an outline our abilities would evolve.

• Present a catchy introduction and tell what you are going to say
• Make your first point
• Give an example
• Make your second point
• Give another example
• Summarize what you said.

We learned about persuasive speeches, how-to-speeches, story telling, and speeches to inspire. 

There was a definite flash of light in this semester of learning. I still use the basic outline whenever I speak in front of a group. There was one other point I still remember to this day.

Consider your audience. How can you communicate best in this situation?

Math learning comes and goes, science facts change, but communication is always a challenge and requires skills in speaking and writing.

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The Piano

     Sometime around my eighth birthday my parents invested in a piano. 

Before that my brother's accordion, which he brought from Germany, accompanied all our singing at home. The upright piano was a refurbished model which had a mirror installed above the piano music stand. I was privileged to receive piano lessons. My brothers would have enjoyed music lessons but war time Germany made that impossible. When I started lessons with Mrs. Rasmussen, who lived around the block from us, I had no idea how vital the piano and the skill of playing the piano would be in my life. I had a small flash of light when I accompanied my family for the first time during our Christmas Eve singing. I remember feeling useful and important because I could read and play the Christmas songs.

I was a mercurial pianist. Sometimes I loved it and sometimes I noodled away the minutes doing nothing.   I had a good ear and a flair for improvisation which my teacher painstakingly tempered with diligent note reading practice. She would often say, "That's a lovely invention  but it's not what the composer wrote." 

I give my mother full credit for any success I achieved because she insisted I practice and she sat in the living room listening. That made a huge difference. When she listened, without judgement or correction, I practiced more attentively.

All of my shenanigans and insights at the piano were like shafts of light foreshadowing the future when I would repeat these sayings to my own piano students.

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My Third Grade Teacher

                               

                                       Mrs. McConahay was my third grade teacher. 

Our classroom was located on the second floor of Sumner School, an old building with large windows, two short blocks from my house. I walked home everyday during our lunch break.

Spelling was difficult for me.

The reason was perhaps due to the German reading lessons I received from my mother before school. She was determined to help me read and write in my mother tongue. German words seemed to be much easier to spell and pronounce. There weren't so many silent letters.

Each week we received a list of 12 new words in school. We wrote the words on the lined paper in our tall spelling folders. We also recited the spelling aloud in class. Then Mrs. McConahay gave us a so called trick to memorize the correct spelling. On the day of receiving the new list she invited us to go over each word in our heads before we fell asleep. She explained that we would remember the words and their spelling the next day and longer if we did the trick that night. It worked. My spelling difficulty improved. 

This "trick" was a shaft of light that would stay with me forever.

The trick is simply the importance of recall. When we remember or recall a new learning within 24 hours the information is stored in long term memory.

Today I teach this trick to my piano students. I tell them about Mrs. McConahay and my spelling challenges. I invite them to play through their new pieces on the evening of their piano lesson and assure them that they will remember all we talked about in our lesson if they do this simple task of recall. 

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