Peace, friendship, and civility

Hello, there, Kraig and Jeff and Paul and everyone.

Please let me briefly say that while I agree with remarks made that we
cannot know what is happening with Brian McLaren, or whoever else may
have posted certain recent messages, what I can do is to share a few
very important things:

(1) Brian McLaren has been a most generous, helpful, and encouraging
friend to me;

(2) He has shown me great respect as a musician and theorist, taking
an active interest in my views and experiments, and urging me to
make contributions in practice and theory alike;

(3) He has made immense contributions to our art; last night, as
often, I read his "History of Microtonality" with great pleasure, and
I intend to do the same after posting this.

Here I should add that I could say similar things about Kraig Grady,
Daniel Wolf, Paul Erlich, and others.

Whoever may have posted the messages of concern, I would myself urge
that we act as a nonviolent community, rejecting the behavior but
recognizing the humanity of the person or persons responsible. Above
all, I feel it vital from a viewpoint of peace and communal
self-preservation that we not lower ourselves to the same level and
let such incidents set the tone for our forums.

Personally I would say that if Brian McLaren himself were involved --
and that is now open to question -- my main emotions would be
compassion and concern for a valued friend.

Of course, as a friend, I would urge him and everyone else, myself
included, to choose words carefully in addressing our precious
colleagues in this community; to debate ideas while respecting our
collocutors, and even our opponents of the moment; and to let
mutual friendship be the ground for our discourse with its varying
degrees of consonance and dissonance.

My own view is that while affirming the humanity of all, our community
should cultivate a certain nonviolent discipline so that we can
respond to unpleasantness without either falling into it ourselves, or
needlessly encouraging it. The problem might be analogous to one of
isolating such behavior at a public meeting or vigil.

If we can affirm our common focus on a center of compassion and
creativity, then we can radiate that compassion to all who come into
contact with our community, while nonviolently defending our standards
of civility and refusing to cooperate with any potentially harmful
behavior.

Peace to all, with much beautiful music in many tunings,

Margo Schulter
mschulter@...

Margo,

As always, your voice... well, it is so very humbling. I am thankful
that this is the last thing I'll read today.

Blessings,
Jon

Hello, there, everyone, and I'd like to thank Robert Walker for a most
compassionate and thoughtful post about providing friendship and
support networks to those of our friends and community members who may
have problems keeping mental or emotional balance -- which means all
of us, to one degree or another.

It isn't a question of substituting for a doctor, but rather a
question of being a friend and neighbor, of caring for our own and
ultimately for ourselves. A circle of support can be a kind of social
immune system, providing something for which no medical or other
professional treatment (with or without drugs) can be a substitute.

To put it another way: abandonment may be the most dangerous
consequence of these problems, and for this, friendship is the best
remedy, however other problems are best addressed. To be a friend is
not to attempt the practice of medicine, it is to be a friend --
although the healing effects can be as profound as that of any medical
treatment.

Many traditional societies, often with minimal technological
resources, set a high example by embracing and even sacramentalizing
the "different," the "contrary," offering a place for all.

As you have so ably pointed out, Robert, a network of friends or
"circle of support" can share the very real challenges and stresses of
coping from day to day along with the person having problems.

This does not mean overlooking the genuinely hurtful or destructive
behavior which can occur, nor ignoring the needs of those who may have
been harmed by it. Rather it can mean a process of active
reconciliation, making everyone more whole.

One lesson of these "strange days" is that there may be unhealed
wounds and not-so-constructive rivalries in our tuning community, some
going back for years. Can the events of the last days and weeks
possibly lead to some real healing and mutual recognition?

The basic idea of a "circle of friends" can be lifesaving to people in
our community, and maybe a "circle of reconciliation" where some of
the bitter differences could be mediated in a setting of trust and
goodwill would be one positive development for us all.

Breaking the cycle of emotional pain, sometimes approaching emotional
violence, can be a difficult process; maybe these last weeks have
revealed some of the exposed fault lines. While we cannot make for
others the decision to mediate, resolve, restore, forgive, and go in
peace on our sometimes shared and sometimes divergent paths, we can
maybe provide some encouragement and facilitation for these
processes.

Possibly interested elders as it were of our community, people who
have given decades of creativity and effort to our art, could play a
special role in such a forum or process.

This isn't necessarily to propose a new forum, tuning_peace, and maybe
the best peacemaking can be done mostly behind the scenes, in private
e-mail or through more personal forms of contact. Also, realistically,
in some situations the goal might be not "passionate friendship" but
simply "live and let live," with people agreeing to go their separate
ways but without the kind of emotional tension maybe not so unfamiliar
to us in these eventful days.

Anyway, thanks, Robert, for one of the most wise and compassionate
posts I have seen in this forum. As Barbara Deming once wrote, "We are
all part of one another," and we need each other's support.

Most appreciatively, in peace and love,

Margo Schulter
mschulter@...