People of Hope

HAT.GAMECHANGER

Today, I made my second-ever game-changing speech to a student.  This is a scary, big, amazing responsibility we have as professional vocalists in the teaching scene.  Telling a young human that they could really truly make it as an artist is a huge statement.  I was ever in this limbo between fear of encouraging them and it messing them up, or fear of keeping silent and messing them up.  Staying on the path of truth is eerily narrow sometimes, and it requires some finesse and tender loving care.  The student I spoke with inspires me to no end.  He works incredibly hard on his songs, and has a powerful instrument at age 12.  (AH! I can't even believe he's a pre-teen!!!)  The best-worst part is, he has those longing sad eyes of someone that (a) doesn't think highly enough of his craft and (b) may not actually be fully passionate about the craft.

Surely enough, after my beautiful 2-minute speech full of flowery sparkles, he went on to say he just wanted to be a lawyer and keep singing as a hobby.  *puh* so deflating and so wanting.  Well, at least I showed him how far the path could go.  I also mentioned the path would be long and winding, and more than just less taken, just totally barren.  (Being an artist is lonely!)  Seed planted. Let's water that sucker and see if we get a mega smart lawyer-bass-artist out of this sprout.

Taking a moment to give a heaping pile of appreciation to Dr. Cameron Lee!  Jon and I attended an excellent marriage seminar, and loved hearing from this scholar/psychologist/blogger/author/justplaincooldude.
Check out his blog: Squinting Through the Fog

The seminar focused on identifying the cause of conflict, which is rooted in instinctual responses to threatening or caring environments.  To be the best reflection of God's idea of good, we need to learn how to seek peace with compassionate listening.  Even though I am yet to be married, it was incredibly insightful to have a combined academic, biblical, and theological viewpoint on relationship as a whole.  We ended up talking for a few hours afterwards just to clarify and apply what we had learned to our relationship.  It was time worth spent and a definite highlight to the weekend!

Some of my favorite quotes from seminar:

"Listening is not that simple, but it's also not that hard."

"I should take the humble stance and have compassion for peace."

"We are here to demonstrate what it looks like to be people of hope."