Being Fully Human
“A voice is a human gift; it should be cherished and used, to utter fully human speech as possible.”
I have worked a lifetime to attempt being fully human and probably will until the day I die. I find the more I like it here and get attached to my body, the harder it is to accept mortality. Ha!
As a child and teen I found it much harder to actually live in my body and would probably have more readily given it up. But then I suppose there are aging elements that might make me change my mind. Stay tuned!
In 2016 I was invited by an Episcopal priest to join a Jungian analyst and the director of a national racial healing center into conversation and teaching about what it means to be fully human in the context of our own vocations, in my case - singing jazz, improvisation.
As you can imagine, rich discussion and programming ensued. It continues to work in me, meditating on the ways this is so.
As a human, as a singer, breath is certainly the first focus of just merely being alive, that which animates the soul. For it is soul which I most long to express, and for me that comes through the voice, which certainly requires a working body. Stephen Sondheim’s song Being Alive remains a mantra, with all of life’s tugs and pulls. Can I be fully alive and human while inhabiting this frame? Loving and receptive to being loved, warts and all?
These past few pandemic years have brought me closer to the bone. With tours canceled and performance and retreat doors shuttered, I was astonished to quickly find new communities and channels within which to work and find meaning. Ah - the rivulets and tributaries of rivers that already existed. Tapping into deep wells, and deeper waters that I wrote about last month. That’s what we all do to survive. That’s how jazz was even born - by humans calling on their own indomitable spirits to literally create a new art form from which to even exist. An art form now celebrated around the world.
Bare bones to Full Flesh. Ashes to Phoenix. Death to Resurrection.
Being Alive. Singing Our Bones Alive. Being Fully Human.
Whatever you do, do it fully. Give it your best shot. Loving, giving, breathing, singing…or whatever animates your soul ~ be human.
“The glory of God is a human being fully alive.”