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For many, the name Vince Lombardi (1913-1970) brings to mind the very successful coach of the NFL Green Bay Packers – whose tenure with the Packers included wins in the first two Super Bowl games – 1966 and 1967.  Lombardi is also well remembered for saying “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.”  As I have studied for this series of posts I also have discovered that he apparently frequently remarked “Practice does not make perfect.  Only perfect practice makes perfect.”

In my reading and preparation I also discovered the following which reminded me of my earlier years as a student of the piano – from an article by Annie Murphy Paul:

In an article titled “It’s Not How Much: It’s How,” published in the Journal of Research in Music Education in 2009, University of Texas-Austin professor Robert Duke and his colleagues videotaped advanced piano students as they practiced a difficult passage from a Shostakovich concerto, then ranked the participants by the quality of their ultimate performance.  The researchers found no relationship between excellence of performance and how many times the students had practiced the piece or how long they spent practicing.  Rather, “the most notable differences between the practice sessions of the top-ranked pianists and the remaining participants,” Duke and his coauthors wrote, “are related to their handling of errors.”

The best pianists, they determined, addressed their mistakes immediately.  They identified the precise location and source of each error, then rehearsed that part again and again until it was corrected.  Only then would the best students proceed to the rest of the piece.  “It was not the case that the top-ranked pianists made fewer errors at the beginning of their practice sessions than did the other pianists,” Duke notes.  “But, when errors occurred, the top-ranked pianists seemed much better able to correct them in ways that precluded their recurrence.”

Without deliberate practice, even the most talented individuals will reach a plateau and stay there.  For most of us, that’s just fine.  But don’t delude yourself that you’ll see much improvement unless you’re ready to tackle your mistakes as well as your successes. http://ideas.time.com/2012/01/25/the-myth-of-practice-makes-perfect/

This reminded me again of one very important element of my mother’s insistence on my beginning my piano practice each day by participating in the practice of sight reading.  The practice I was doing was much more important than I ever could have imagined at the time – a practice done by many before me – and – thanks to my mother, the practice was done in a manner that led to regular and constant improvement in my craft and my training.

I strongly believe that this concept is very important and it will be the springboard for coming posts as we continue to move toward understanding how we learn – it is much more than repetition and it is much more than memorization of cognitive facts and information.

Please – join in the conversation!

The reality of “practice makes perfect” is much more than human willpower.  It involves real scientific data and discovery.

An article in Psychology Today* offers a good place to begin to grasp an understanding of the science of “practice makes perfect” – an article well worth reading. This article tells the story of a young tennis player growing up in Montana who learned both tennis and life from his father:

“Although being a state tennis champion is technically what got my father a college scholarship, that ‘trophy’ is secondary to everything else that he learned on the tennis court that stuck with him for the rest of his life.  His brain was rewired through his daily workouts.  He was able to transfer his ‘eye for the ball’ into ‘focus’ and remain intellectually sharper than the rest.  His daily tennis practice gave him the physicality, dexterity, and stamina to be a world-class surgeon.

My father wanted me to be the next Björn Borg.  I put a lot of pressure on myself to succeed from a very young age.  I wanted my father to be proud of me and I worked very hard on the tennis court.  When I was growing up, tennis was our only real alone time and we played every Sunday.  His coaching was based on an understanding that muscle memory is stored in a part of your brain called the “cerebellum” (Latin: little brain).  My dad’s mantra to me as a kid was: ‘Carve the grooves into the cerebellum, Chris.  Think about hammering and forging your muscle memory with every stroke.’  The cerebellum is the #1 reason that practice makes perfect.”

Sadly, the same science that teaches that “practice makes perfect” in learning desired skills is also the science that leads to an understanding of the process of abuse and addiction.  This will be the focus of several coming posts, but let us open the door for consideration by turning to one of my favorite and most read volumes, Addiction and Grace** by Dr. Gerald May:

“We human beings are the most adaptable creatures in God’s creation.  Our adaptability has allowed us to dominate the world.  But our very capacity to create new normalities for ourselves also makes us vulnerable to countless attachments.  As every attachment forms, a new normality is born.  With each new normality, addiction exists.” (78)

I offer one more important bit of reading to conclude this post and move us toward future days and weeks.  This is from another book that everyone should have and read – often, The Spirituality of Imperfection: Storytelling and the Search for Meaning*** by Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham:

“The ‘language of recovery’ that is storytelling involves not dogma or commandment, not things to be done or truths to be believed, not theory, conjecture, argument, analysis, or explanation, but a way of conversation shared by those who accept and identify with their own imperfection.  Following the tradition of Western spirituality, Alcoholics Anonymous aims to convery experience rather than to ‘teach’ concepts.  Always truthful to experience, the language of recovery makes it possible to see – and thus to understand – reality differently.  And it is in this different vision that spirituality begins.” (160)

The journey continues – please join the conversation.

*http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-athletes-way/201110/no-1-reason-practice-makes-perfect

**http://www.amazon.com/Addiction-Grace-Spirituality-Healing-Addictions/dp/0061122432/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1341840391&sr=8-1&keywords=addiction+and+grace

***http://www.amazon.com/Spirituality-Imperfection-Storytelling-Search-Meaning/dp/0553371320/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1341841369&sr=1-1&keywords=spirituality+of+imperfection+storytelling+and+the+search+for+meaning

One recent volume that is important reading for people interested in this matter is Teaching and Christian Practices: Reshaping Faith and Learning, edited by David I. Smith and James K. A. Smith*.  The Foreword for this volume was written by Craig Dykstra and Dorothy C. Bass.  This post provides a place to begin our consideration by offering some brief sections from that Foreword that will serve as a springboard for coming posts and discussions.

This book is intended for people who “believe that college classes can be communities of learning where knowledge of self, others, and the world is sought in response to God’s call and the world’s need . . . human beings become who we are in large part through embodied participation in shared activities sustained by traditioned communities and oriented toward specific goods . . . practices help to create social spaces that have a certain character, spaces graced by regard for human beings as embodied imaginative members of God’s beloved creation . . . Christian practices make not only students but also teachers vulnerable to unpredictable encounters with God and other.”

*http://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Christian-Practices-Reshaping-Learning/dp/0802866859/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1341582113&sr=8-1&keywords=teaching+and+christian+practices

It is difficult to even begin to imagine how many times my mother said, “Practice makes perfect!” to me during my younger years.  Generally these words were said in relation to the development of my skills as I was learning to play the piano.

My association with the piano has included most of my life.  I was born in Bunch, Oklahoma in the parsonage next door to the white frame church where my grandparents served as Methodist missionaries for the surrounding community of Native Americans in the Cookson Hills along the banks of the Sallisaw Creek – where I was later baptized by my grandfather.  My mother played the piano for worship services and the congregation did not offer a nursery so very early in my life my seat in worship was beside my mother on the piano bench.  Legend reports that at some point I reached up and joined her in the playing.  I am told that it was during the playing of “Silent Night” although the only people who could verify the truth of that story have all already joined the heavenly chorus of saints gone before.

My “formal” music training began when i was five years old.  My mother, who taught many piano students over the years, always made certain that I had a teacher who was not my mother.  The first was Sister Gabriel, a diminutive Benedictine sister, who always rewarded me with treats she had saved for me from her dining room meals.  During the summer following my fifth grade year we moved to Augusta, Kansas where I continued my studies with Edwina Parker.  Her presence in our little town was clearly a loving act of God – a blessing beyond the comprehension of any of us.

Mrs. Parker was my primary teacher from the beginning of my sixth grade year until I began my undergraduate education.  It was very important to her that I learn the technical tools – scales, arpeggios, etc. – that were part of traditional training for the repertoire of the classical master composers.  However, it was equally important to her that I receive training to “play by ear” and learn to utilize chord symbols and the notation need to play in jazz and pop idioms.  I also was blessed by a wonderful band instructor as I also began my study of the trumpet.  Mr. Hendrickson also believed in a balanced education of preparation for both traditional and jazz pop styles.

My mother also continued to be a significant presence in my formative process as a pianist.  She contributed two significant practices to my training.

First, she made sure that daily practice was an important part of my life – often to my dismay at the time.  One afternoon when I arrived home after school I announced that it was my plan to be a professional tennis player. My mother, without any hesitation, responded that would be fine and that I could play as much tennis as my heart desired provided that I completed my daily piano practice first.

Her other plan made a very significant and meaningful contribution to my training and future success.  She realized the importance of having the ability to sight read music – especially for someone who would later be involved as an accompanist and an audition pianist.  So, at her direction, I began my daily practice by playing through ten musical selections that I had never studied – often had never seen.  The selections ranged from hymns to solo piano teaching repertoire to almost anything that might be available at the time.  This practice routine helped develop a sight reading foundation that was very beneficial to my later career in professional musical theatre and as an accompanist.  My ability to proficiently sight read provided numerous possibilities for career opportunities that otherwise would not have been available to me.

Practice – even not being aware of the potential benefits at the time – built a working knowledge that provided enormous benefits and opportunities for my career as an active musician.  My mother understood the good

It is time for the vacation to come to an end and to return to the writing of posts for this blog.  I very much appreciated the time away – but – I am more than anxious to begin again!  I hope you will join in the conversation.

I have recently been encouraged by our Senior Pastor to pursue consideration of learning what we believe and who we are by means of the practices we follow.  My learning about this has been enriched by conversations and by reading a number of wonderful books that open the door of creativity for further consideration, thinking, and writing.

An important turning point in this journey has been Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation* by Dr. James K. A. Smith at Calvin College in Michigan.  In the introductory portion of his book he poses this question: “What if education wasn’t first and foremost about what we know, but about what we love?” (18)  Just a few sentences later he writes: “Based on the alternative model I will sketch in this book, how we think about distinctly Christian education would not be primarily a matter of sorting out which Christian ideas to drop into eager and willing mind-receptacles; rather, it would become a matter of thinking about how a Christian education shapes us, forms us, molds us to be a certain kind of people whose hearts and passions and desires are aimed at the kingdom of God.” (18)

The remainder of Dr. Smith’s book more than lives up to his introductory promises.  I would suggest without hesitation that this is a book that should be required reading for anyone who has an interest in understanding discipleship and helping to form a Christian people.

For the next several weeks – likely the next several months – I will be continuing to explore these matters as I work to design a learning practice that points people toward living life in a manner intended by the Creator by participating in practices that form our beliefs and help us understand who we are and Whose we are!

In the next post, I will begin by telling a story of how much of my own life was shaped by participating in a daily practice that my mother insisted that I follow for a number of years.  It was a practice that I did not want to follow, but, clearly, it was one where I can only say that my mother knew best, because it made possible some of the career opportunities that have been the most meaningful in my adult life.

All of this will be better if many of you decide to join in the conversation, telling your stories and revealing your learned insights as we continue the journey together as a community of disciples!

It is good to be back!  Grace and peace

*http://www.amazon.com/Desiring-Kingdom-Worldview-Formation-Liturgies/dp/0801035775/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1341244066&sr=8-1&keywords=smith+desiring+the+kingdom

This post is to let everyone know that I am taking a break from writing for a couple of months.  Earlier today I saw a post by a colleague who mentioned that he was taking the next couple of months off to work on the writing of his book – and – I thought to myself – that sounds like a wonderful idea!

The book that I want to complete is closely related to this blog.  The planned title is Human Beings Anonymous.  The original working title was Living as Mustard Seeds in Cracked Clay Pots, but somehow when the other title emerged I knew that is was right for me!

This book comes from my personal experience of working with people – people who know that they have an addiction and are in the journey of recovery – and – people who do not believe that they have any addiction and cannot imagine why they might need to consider living life with the guidance of The Twelve Steps.  When I started to get that response I immediately knew that it was time to begin the book.

I have already taught the material to people a couple of time and hope to convene another session of gatherings here in Austin in the fall.

More later – this blog will return in August – in the meantime – grace and peace to all!!

This post will offer an intermission in our current discussion – one well worth taking!

From Barbara Brown Taylor’s When God is Silent*

Sometimes I think we do all the talking because we are afraid God won’t.  Or, conversely, that God will.  Either way, staying preoccupied with our own words seems a safer bet than opening ourselves up either to God’s silence or God’s speech, both of which have the power to undo us.  In our own age, I believe God’s silence is more threatening, perhaps because it is the more frequently experienced of the two.  Very few people come to see me because they want to discuss something God said to them last night.  The large majority come because they cannot get God to say anything at all.  They have asked as sincerely as they know how for answers, for guidance, for peace, but they are still missing those things.  They want me to tell them what they have done wrong.  They have heard me talk about God on Sundays and they hope they can make use of my connections.  Perhaps I know a special technique they can try – or better yet – perhaps I can lend my own weight to the cause, adding the poundage of my prayers to theirs in an effort to force some sound from God.

Their wish to hear God speak is not unfounded.  The Bible they read portrays a God who not only speaks but who also acts.  Right there on the page, the faithful receive what they ask for: children, manna, land, health.  By implication, those who do not receive are not faithful.  They are not right with God.  If they were, God would speak to them.  “For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened” (Luke 11:10).

This is the condemnation that hangs over the silence of God, as if that silence could mean only one thing.  Meanwhile, scripture is full of silences, both human and divine, that mean not one but many different things. (51-52)

*http://www.amazon.com/Silent-Lyman-Beecher-Lectures-Preaching/dp/1561011576/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1335971292&sr=8-1

Karl Barth – born in 1886 – died in 1968 – and – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – born in 1756 – died in 1791.

At first it may seem that this is really a strange pair – one a theologian, composer of words, and the other a composer of music.  It is reported that Barth began each day by listening to the music of Mozart before resuming work on the writing of his monumental Church Dogmatics. 

During my years in seminary I became very fascinated in gaining a better understanding of the relationship between these two giants.  Often I found myself reading, re-reading, and again re-reading a section from the Church Dogmatics and still wondering what the author desired to communicate.  Then one day in class our professor said something like just keep reading – you will find that Barth keeps returning to the same ideas.  The proverbial light finally started to dawn for me.

Barth and Mozart both often wrote in a type of formal construction known to musicians as “sonata-allegro form” – a formal construction made popular by 18th century composers most often providing the structure for the opening movement of a piano sonata, a symphony, or a string quartet.  Overly simplified – this form begins with a section where the main ideas – or themes – generally two of them – are articulated.  This section is known as the exposition.

The exposition is followed by a section known as the development.  Like the body paragraphs of an essay, the development expands on the themes introduced in the exposition. The development section represents the most creative and unstable section of the work. The development section uses material from the first two themes in many different keys as well as in many different styles. The development section sounds somewhat improvised as the composer uses the thematic material from the exposition to invent new ideas. (http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/fall05/lubarsky/function.html)

The last of the three major sections is the recapitulation where the two main themes – or ideas – are articulated yet another time.

I discovered that Barth seems to most often write in a verbal sonata-allegro formal structure, and when his words seem to go around in circles, or go in multiple directions either in sequence or at the same time, or are offered in fragments or with extended explanation Barth is simply articulating his development section.

Many people find the development section of a work by Mozart to seem fragmented or improvisatory, but if a person continues to listen you always return to a recapitulation of the main themes – and so it is with Barth.  Perhaps that is why Barth needed his daily “fix” of Mozart’s organizations of musical sounds to prepare for his own work with the writing of the Church Dogmatics.

So what – you most likely are asking.  Well that will be the focus of the next post.  Please keep reading and join the conversation.

Grace and peace

This post may seem like a diversion – but – it is not – as I will attempt to explain in my next post.

The following is from an address delivered by Karl Barth in the Music Hall in Basel in 1936:

As performer and composer, Mozart always had something to say, and he said it.  But we should not complicate and spoil the impact of his works by burdening them with those doctrines and ideologies which critics think they have discovered in them but which are in fact an imposition.  There is in Mozart no “moral to the story,” either mundance or sublime.  He certainly consulted closely with the librettists for his operas, but not at all to arrive at some agreed upon profound meaning!  We must take to heart what he wrote to his father in 1782: “In an opera the poetry must absolutely be the obedient daughter of the music!” . . . If we judge from his letters, the fact is simply – whether we like it or not – that he was never directly or specifically affected by nature around him, or by the history, literature, philosophy, and politics of his time.  With regard to these he had no special conclusions and theories to present and proclaim.  I fear he did not read very much; he certainly never speculated or lectured.  There is no Mozartean metaphysics.  In the realms of nature and spirit, he sought for and found only the opportunities, materials, and tasks for his music.  With God, the world, himself, heaven and earth, life – and, above all, death – every present before his eyes, in his hearing, and in his heart, he was a profoundly un-problematical and thus a free man:  a freedom, so it seems, given to him – indeed commanded and therefore exemplary for him. (31-33*)

Until next time . . .

*http://www.amazon.com/Wolfgang-Amadeus-Mozart-Karl-Barth/dp/1592444369/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1335729158&sr=8-1

Another book that I would recommend for everyone to read is Transforming Our Days: Spirituality, Community and Liturgy in a Technological Culture by Richard R. Gaillardetz*.

Early in his book, Gaillardetz writes of the work of Albert Borgmann who speaks of the differences of Technological Devices and Focal Things.  Gaillardetz writes:

Borgmann asks us to consider the role of the fireplace or wood-burning stove in a premodern home.  The family frequently gathers around the firplace as a localized source of heat for important discussion and family entertainment.  The fireplace must be tended regularly.  To do so one must master a set of skills: knowing which kinds of wood burn best and how to properly start and stoke the fire.  These skills and practices inevitably bring one into contact with the larger world of nature (retrieving and chopping the wood) and with other persons.  They are skills that must be passed on from one person to another.  When it is the sole heat source in the home, the fireplace also creates the rhythm for the life of the home.  The need for its regular maintenance determines family chores, the timing of meals, the gathering of family and friends.

The fireplace or wood-burning stove is a typical example of what Borgmann calls a “focal thing.”  Typical “focal things” are inseparable from the particular context in which they are encountered.  While they produce a desired good (in this case, heat), they do so only within the context of a complex world of “manifold engagement” – a multitextured, multi-layered web of relationships with the larger world – in which other goods, often overlooked, are also experienced.  The wood-burning stove does produce heat, the principal desired good, but it also offers subtler goods derived from the way in which it gathers the household, demands engagement with the larger world, and so forth. (19-20)

By contrast, a comparison is then made with the central heating system – a technological device which provides the same commodity as the wood-burning stove, namely, heat, but without intruding into our lives or placing demands on our time. (21)  Like the focal thing, the modern “device” does offer us vital goods and services, but it does so in a manner that separates the device from the commodity produced.  In fact, that device functions best when it goes completely unnoticed, receding into the background.  One of the central characteristics of a device is its concealment. (22)

When goods are reduced to commodities and procured for enjoyment in ways that do not demand or even allow for real engagement with our world, the paradoxical result is a decreased capacity for enjoyment. (26)

The next few posts will continue to explore how technological devices have impoverished our lives in ways that focal practices would not allow.  I believe that all of this has to do with being called by God to be effective not just efficient.

Grace and peace

*http://www.amazon.com/Transforming-Our-Days-Spirituality-Technological/dp/0824518446/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1335472028&sr=8-3