singing
Advice To My Son: Play, Rest, and Sing
My son just left for college a few weeks ago, and I mailed him a letter so he'd have something waiting for him in his mailbox when he got there. I won't print the whole letter here; most of it was just between the two of us, though if you need to know what I said, here's a summary: I already miss you, but because I love you, I'm glad to see you leaving home and becoming your own man. You make me proud.
These two paragraphs from the end of my letter to him are things I often say to my students, too, so I'm reproducing them here not only for my son, but for all my students, and for anyone else who might benefit from them:
Take time off every week. I mean that. It’s my favorite commandment: get some rest. College can be high-pressure and high-speed. Take a few hours every week, even a whole day, to decompress and not to try to get ahead. It’s like taking time to sharpen your tools; sharper tools cut better, and a rested mind will think better. To put it differently: take time to play every week. I think that John Dewey, Bronson Alcott, and Maria Montessori are all right when they affirm that some of the most important parts of our education are the parts in which we play. I’m not saying you should neglect your classes, of course! Do well in them, and give them serious attention. But then be sure to take time off so that you have time to enjoy life, to reflect on the bigger picture, and to be fully human.
Speaking of rest and restoration, I have to say something about music. You used to wake up singing, and still one of my favorite sounds in the world is the sound of your singing voice. My advice here is simple: make music. Make whatever music gives you joy, just keep making it. Sing or play or whatever, but I think a good life has got to have some songs in it. And dancing. Dancing is good. Rest, and joy, and music, and dancing. These are really good things, things worth having for their own sake. As I write these words I am praying something I have often prayed for you: that your life will be filled with these things.So there it is: Take time to rest each week. Some of our best learning happens when we play. Keep singing. And dance a little, too. Not much matters more than that.
I have no doubt he knows these things already. He's one of the most playful people I know, and his life is a musical one. I wrote these things as a reminder of what's already so good about his life.
It was so good, so very good to have him under my roof for nineteen years. And it's so good, so very, very good to see him going off to live under a roof of his own making. May that roof always be a shelter for rest, for play, and for many joyful songs.
Come Along, Inspector Jesus?
When my youngest son was still quite small, he loved the Advent hymn, “Come Thou Long Expected Jesus.” We think he loved it in part because he loved the movie “Inspector Gadget,” and he thought the words were “Come Along, Inspector Jesus.” (We had several such mis-hearings of hymns, it turns out. Another favorite was the second line of “Jesus, Lover of My Soul,” which my son heard not as “Let me to thy bosom fly” but “Let me chew thy apple pie.” I think of apple pie as a gift from God, so I have no problem with this.)
I’m not sure why, but this year I’ve been more conscious than ever of Advent. It seems that everywhere I go I hear Christmas music during Advent, which has been striking me like Christmas carols on the fourth of July - a confusion of holidays. Liturgical calendars have left a shadow-impression of themselves on cultural calendars, but much of their detail has been lost. Who celebrates Pentecost, for instance? Yet it used to be one of the most important of Christian holidays. Christmas and Easter are great gift-giving holidays, but Lent’s main appearance seems to be in Mardi Gras.
I don’t plan to be a curmudgeon about this, and lament that we’ve lost the “good old days” of piety and that today’s culture is somehow more degenerate than yesterday’s. I’m quite fond of today, actually. (It’s where I live, after all!) I don’t dislike being wished a “Merry Christmas” in Advent any more than I disliked hearing my son sing “Come along, Inspector Jesus!” (And no, I don’t mind being wished “Happy Holidays” either. Anyone who wants to wish me well on any given day is always welcome to do so!)
But I do think that it’s worth revisiting old ideas to see if we’ve “mis-heard” them. For myself, it has been a delight to be in Advent this year. When I’ve heard Christmas carols (as early as November!) I’ve tried to think of Advent hymns instead. The result has been that I’ve been nurturing the pleasure of expectation and anticipation, and, now that Christmas is upon us, singing those Christmas hymns is going to be a real treat.
However you celebrate these days, whether you distinguish Advent from Christmas and Epiphany, or celebrate Christmas from Hallowe’en to Mardi Gras, or if you just finished celebrating Hanukkah, or are enjoying some other holiday, I wish you all the best that holiday has to offer. And if you celebrate no holy-days, but are only having some time off, I wish you good rest in that. And for all of us, I wish us good hearing, joy in mis-hearings, and better ears to hear in the future.