Love is a Good Thing

    “Dance children, dance to the beat, wanna be a hippy cause life is so sweet, well good morning hate…..”   Sheryl Crow/Love is a Good Thing

    I had something positive and inspirational I wanted to blog about today. It was going to be all about the music teacher training I attended last week-a weekend where I was surrounded by awesome energy and like-minded people.  These were kind, upbeat and encouraging people. These were people of all ages, gender, religion, and race coming together to make music and bring joy to children. People who gave me nothing but positive feedback and love, which I soaked myself in after years of being exposed to toxic, negative energy in some of my other work environments. I wanted to write about how I felt when my new supervisor brought me flowers from her garden as a “congratulations for getting through a grueling seminar and welcome to the Music Together family" gift.  This was going to be a blog post about that experience and how grateful and happy I felt, better than I have in years.   Then I heard about Charlottesville.  

     Every day it is something and every day I try to power through with hope and optimism.  Not today. I am tired of the hatred and bigotry that seem to be taking over this country. I want everyone to be like the people I met last weekend, I want everyone to love each other unconditionally, and I cannot fathom why it is that in this day and age people are still so horrible to each other.  A song keeps going through my mind (perhaps because I’ve spent the last week singing children’s songs)-it’s a song I learned in Sunday school about Jesus loving all the little children. “Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight, Jesus loves the little children of the world.” Granted, I am not a church going girl anymore, but that doesn’t mean I don’t believe in a benevolent, loving God, and from what I learned about Jesus when I was a child, well, he wasn’t someone who taught people to be racist and hateful and violent.  What happened in Virginia is despicable, and it was not Muslims or illegal immigrants or terrorists.  No, these people were white, and they were US citizens. What kind of country are we living in?  In the last year we have been dealing with so much ugliness and ignorance, and today it all unraveled just like millions of us knew it would.  

     I want to be happy and I want to believe the glass is half full and I want to be the fiercely living blogger I advertise on my Facebook page.  I want to teach my music students songs of love and hope, I want to be a smiling face they can look forward to seeing every week.  I want to do everything I can to keep from falling back into the abyss of despair I found myself in a few years ago.  What’s happening in our country is making it more and more difficult for me to stay positive.  I cannot, for the life of me, understand people who support and tolerate misogyny, racism, treason, and anything else that leads to violence.  I don’t want to be someone who gets on a pedestal and preaches politics, this is not the purpose of my blog. However, I can’t just stand by and complain about it either, I have to do something. I guess that something is using my first amendment rights to express what I’m feeling, and today I am feeling disgusted by the intolerance. I am also feeling a deep sense of fear. Most of all I am feeling sad.  I don’t know what the answer is.  All the hikes and yoga classes and friends and love and music can help me through my day to day life, but the big picture is pretty scary right now.  I read about a vigil I can attend in Denver tomorrow, but after what happened today (car plowing through the non-violent counter-protesters), I fear for my safety. I fear for everyone’s safety.  I fear for our country, and that is something I’ve never felt before.    

     I usually try to end my blog posts on a positive note, with something witty or wise, but tonight, I got nothin.  Except, maybe, that all of us who are outraged by what is happening are loving each other more fiercely than ever.  And, like Sheryl Crow wrote more than 20 years ago, “Love is a Good Thing”. I suggest giving that song a listen, it was written before 9/11, before Columbine and Sandy Hook, way before this current administration, and it's pretty astonishing that the things she wrote about ring true today more than ever. 

Peace, Love, and Namaste,

Sunnie