If you were present for our Community Sing with Melanie DeMore on Saturday, you might have sensed that Melanie’s leadership was very intentional. 

I noticed how some things were important for her to stop and fix. The point wasn’t about musical excellence, and yet it was important for us to be as accurate as possible in some things so that our experience was as close as possible to Melanie’s intentions for us. 

Other things were less important. Some songs were absolutely perfect with people singing all varieties of harmonies. Sometimes the rhythm could be a little sloppy. Or maybe I mean personalized. We could have very personalized rhythms and pitches.

Melanie was demonstrating very intentional boundaries. She knew what she wanted to allow and what she wanted to create with us. And she wasn’t afraid to establish and reinforce those boundaries. That may be because she trusted the end result, but I imagine she also deeply trusted her own vision for what we accomplished with our time together.

What we accomplished was less about learning music and singing well, although that was an ingredient. In the way we approached our musicking, we were invited to be intentional. We were invited to pay attention to the emotions involved in our being together. We were invited to tend the connections of interdependence with one another and the wider world. We were invited to listen deeply, even as we contributed our own voices. We were invited to open space for vulnerability and healing.

I’m not sure how well we would have engaged with that spiritual work if we had focused exclusively on musical accuracy. Yet musical accuracy had a place in the experience. And Melanie understood the mixology. She understood the boundaries she wanted to invite, and she was confident about where they were permeable and where they needed to be well-defined. 

In other words, the space was curated for meaningful spiritual work. 

I wonder why we worry so much about the boundaries of our spaces. Why do we worry so much about gently but firmly reminding one another of covenantal promises? Maybe we’re afraid that someone will say something mean back to us. Or challenge us in a way we aren’t prepared for. Or cut us off because we have too many rules for how we can be present with one another.

I suppose any of those things are possible. But what if we approached our community (our families, our workplaces, our social groups) as curated spaces? What if we began from a place of connection with our inner wisdom, clarified what we most deeply want for those people in that context, and then oriented our behavior toward that vision? 

This is not bossing people around or manipulating others to get what we want. Other people still will do what other people decide to do. But what if we took appropriate responsibility for our contribution in the spaces where we live and work and connect with others? What would we create and invite as intentional curators of our boundaries and behavior?

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