In last Friday’s pseudo blog post of bullet points, I mentioned that my middle child, who I shall call Nini, and who is ten years old, won two spelling bees and was going on to district.  I may have inadvertently impressed a couple of people by that.  But I’m sorry to say that I misspoke, being a spelling bee novice and all.  She wasn’t yet going to District.  She won her class bee, and then a school wide bee (one of four finalists) and was going on to a city wide bee to compete with older kids at the middle school, a field of ten in total, from which only one could emerge to go to district. 

That competition was yesterday and she came in second.

The winner was a class act, a seventh grader, and about a foot taller than Nini (who is short for her age, so looked even younger, and more remarkable for her spelling prowess).  The winner had previously come in second when she was in fifth grade, and waited amid all of the congratulations they were both receiving for an opportunity to tell Nini what a good speller she was.  I also managed to read her lips while the contest was still going on saying, “good job” to Nini after a particularly tough word (it might have been synthesizer – but I’m not sure).

I have to say, I, myself, was surprised and impressed by my daughter, both with the ease in which she seemed to be able to visualize the words in her head, and with the words she actually knew how to spell.  Nini did better than I would have done, for sure, and didn’t go down easy.  When it was only the final two, there must have been six rounds without a mistake (enough to lose count).  Then Nini got the word subterranean.  S-U-B-T-E-R-R-A-I-N and then she paused.  She knew, I’m sure, that she had gone astray, but you can’t correct yourself in these things.  A-N.. she mumbled.  And then she paused for what seemed an eternity.  She could have just said, “ok, nevermind”, which was what I was, sort of, waiting for her to do, but she didn’t.  She went on:  A-N-E-R-A-N-E-A-N? Subterranean? (or something that seemed like that).  The word probably had twice as many letters as it was supposed to have. 

The MC smiled.  “No that’s incorrect,” he said. 

Under the rules in play, her opponent had to correctly spell subterranean, which she did, then spell another word, the “championship” word, which she did, and then it was all over.  Nini was declared the last standing of her elementary school, and the undisputed elementary school champ, and was lavished, through her own tears, (“oh so close”), praise upon praise by everyone from old teachers, to new teachers, her own sister, her parents of course, and the winner and the winners parents and grandparents. 

But she was robbed. 

Yes, well, no, she did misspell a word, and her opponent didn’t, but I mulled it over in the morning hours, while laying in bed listening to the neighbors car run, outside my bedroom window – they crank it every morning at about 5:30 and let it run for about a half hour before they drive it away - and it occurred to me that something was amiss. 

For if Nini, who went first, wasn’t the first to misspell a word, she would have been required, also, to correctly spell her opponents missed word, and then spell a championship word, but she would have already spelled a word correctly in that round, because she went first.  An extra word over what her opponent was required to spell. 

I’m not sure how the rules read (I’m actually trying to get a copy, only as an academic exercise – it’s too late anyway), but I think her opponent should have had to complete the round with a new word, before being asked to correctly spell Nini’s missed word, and only after that, go on to the final one person round, for the championship. 

ROBBED I SAY!

Oh well, there’s always next year (and the year after that and the year after that for a fifth grader).

I’ve recently begun a new approach to drumming.  Whereas I was exclusively practicing along with music, I’ve started now exclusively practicing without music. 

My thinking is that if you can sound good all by yourself, only then will you be contributing to a group rather than letting the group carry you (or die trying).  What I’ve noticed is that when I sit in at Twain’s and especially at the rehearsals for my small group (now a quartet – we landed a piano player – YAY!), the mistakes are obvious.  But now, when I happen upon a lick I want to work on (which often happens by accident), I can practice it as long as I have the strength and patience, I can change the tempo if I need to, take it slow, try it fast, not beholden to the tempo in my headphones, or the start of a new song.  And I can hear myself better, without confusing myself with the drummer on the track (damn I’m good – I sound just like Philly Joe Jones – I might have previously thought.  That IS Philly Joe Jones, stupid).

Yes, I’ve discovered that I suck worse than I realized, but the truth is the best medicine.  I find myself forced to be more precise.  I find myself working on stick technique more (as opposed to just keeping time), I find myself working the kinds of beats that I need for my band, rather than what I listen to most, and I find myself working my muscles, forearms and whatever the leg equivalent is to forearms (warweasel?) until they hurt.  Makes me wonder what I’ve been doing this past year that I never worked my drumming muscles until they hurt.  That’s become an ancillary goal of mine, to hurt my muscles.  It comes surprisingly fast.  Hopefully this new approach will develop some stamina too.  How else do you strengthen them?  DUH.  Don’t know why I hadn’t really thought of that before.  It also dawned on me that I never sweat when I play drums.  The best musicians end up completely soaked, don’t they?  Drumming has not served as that intensive an exercise for me, but I would love to get there. 

Already this new approach is paying off, though I have a long way to go.  At rehearsal yesterday our fearless leader pulled out a funky tune that is a bit of a drum feature, and I think two weeks ago I wouldn’t have been able to handle it, but this week, I had an easier time – not faultless – but decent, from a first rehearsal perspective.  And now I have a reason to practice something specific, another thing to motivate me, to work towards (and a solo!)

In my family, we have varied views on God.  My father was born and raised Jewish, but at a time when Jews were more "rational", if you will allow me that, and less truly religious.  Judiasm, then, seemed more dominanted by a sense of culture and nationality (even before Israel), though his mother always said prayers at our holiday gatherings, and remained, to her death, a believer in God.  Of my grandfather’s views I'm unsure, which suggests to me he wasn't particularly religious.  My father was less so than either of them, and was further disenfranchised from religion by the opposition he experienced over his decision to marry a non-Jew.

One thing he was told by a Rabbi was that if he married my mother, his kids wouldn't be buried in the family plot (I'm still broken up about that).

My mother was raised in a mixed Christian heritage.  Her mother was Catholic and from Germany.  Her father was Anglican, being of English descent (Scottish too, I should mention, as it's not the same thing).  They had their own reasons for disenchantment, when the church they attended during WWII refused to allow my grandmother to attend because she was of German heritage.  But she remained deeply religious her whole life, and unlike almost every other Christian I’ve ever met, would attend whichever church she found herself nearest, take from it what she agreed with, and leave at the church that which she did not (her own words to me). 

But my parents, a mixed heritage union as it was, fermenting during the 60s, raised us without religion.  We did not go to church, or synagogue.  We celebrated Christmas, Easter, Chanukah and Rosh Hashanah as more or less secular holidays at the respective grandparent’s homes (my sister once described us as half Jewish, half Christmas), got together en masse only on Thanksgiving (sometimes birthdays), my favorite holiday which I saw then and still see as secular.  They raised us, or me at least, as agnostics.  I say this because though my father calls himself an atheist, when I asked him, as a child, about God, he told me that some people believe one thing, and some another and left it at that.  I don’t know what he told my siblings, but that’s how I remember being guided in my beliefs.  As a parent now myself, I have been asked more than once, by people here in the south, ignorant of the results of child rearing without Christ, let along God, how my children would turn out without such a foundation for morality, and I always reply that they'll turn out like their dad, moral, but like everyone, with the inherent potential to be different than their parents. 

For, in the end, we siblings, are also varied in our beliefs.  My sister, who as befits her beliefs married a teacher of science, calls herself an atheist.  I’m not exactly sure about my brothers, in truth, but from conversations I have had with them over the years, I think them agnostic at least.  I, personally, have been through the gamut of atheism, then agnosticism, but have, to date, found myself closer to Deism, the religion of many of the US of As founders. 

Though I would like to put a label on what I am, and even to consider myself bonded with these great men and women, Deism does not fit me exactly either.  Like Deism I believe in afterlife and the spirit.  I believe that we can observe God in nature, and I am, like Deists consider themselves, monotheistic (more so than Christians I would opine).  I also, like Deists, do not believe we should strip away reason for a faith in something that makes no sense to us.  Nor do I believe in "miracles" that break the laws of nature.  And though I don’t require proof for my beliefs, I do require the absence of proof to the contrary and the theories I hypothesize must at least be consistent with evidence, personal or otherwise.

But I differ from Deists in that I don’t believe God is outside ourselves, a creator who set the world in motion and then stepped aside.  I see us as a part of the All, define God, even, as a mathematical summation of everything.  I believe that, as part of It, we probably, must have somehow, created ourselves, and true to form, should feel obligated in our journey to continue to do so.  I believe that we can tap into a collective wisdom that can influence us, and through us, the world around us.  In this way, unlike Deists, I believe that God can have a continuing influence.

Some might say that this definition of God is more like a congress of Men, or conversely that it demonstrates the conceit to think of us all as divine. Yup to both.  But it is not Atheism, nor is it Agnosticism, so what else can I call it, but God?

I first decided to give up atheism when I accepted that you can’t really prove something doesn’t exist.  I decided to give up agnosticism because I realized that there was some mystery to life itself that warranted the daring of consideration, rather than the resignation of having no opinion (everyone's entitled to my opinion, especially me).  And I can best defend my reasons for believing in afterlife (the essense of a spiritual or religious belief, I think), simply:

That I consider it more probably that I should continue to exist after this particular life, than that I should ever have existed at all.  And since it is self-evident that I do exist, why not accept the possibility, at least, of something I find less improbable than that.

How do you define God, and what are your reasons for either believing in "it" or not?