The Band Director's Mini Lessons About Life: Volume 1: Five Parables on Life's Performance Cycle

Who thought that cleaning your band instrument would have deep spiritual significance? Donald Lee draws on decades as both a band director and a religion teacher to create modern-day parables from the classroom. People of any religious persuasion – or none – will be delighted and inspired by how these band room vignettes shine a spiritual light on everyday experiences. Short enough to read in the bathroom yet deep enough to ponder for days, The Band Director’s Lessons About Life fills a glaring void in the spiritual publishing landscape.Instead of looking for lost sheep or casting wheat seeds on rocky ground, Donald draws spiritual lessons out of tuning the flute section and dealing with the kid who skipped the concert. Every little event has a spiritual dimension – a terrible performance, a broken clarinet, hallway bullying, cell phones, test anxiety, even the ugly band uniforms. Everyone who’s attended school will recognize the characters, chuckle at their misadventures, and maybe even learn something about themselves.In this highly abridged eBook, The Band Director’s mini Lessons About Life, Donald has selected five parables to give readers a glimpse of the larger book. If you enjoy these stories, be sure to buy a copy of the full book: The Band Director’s Lessons About Life – Volume 1: Fifty Parables on Life’s Performance Cycle.The book uses the performance cycle in a band program as a metaphor for our cycle of spiritual growth in life. There are four parts to the book, the four parts of "life's performance cycle": preparation, practice, performance, reflection & redirection. There's a brief introduction to each section, then the following parables:1. I Can Only Teach You What You Want to Learn - about deciding your own direction in life, and setting your own goals.2. I Can't Play That - about believing in yourself as a prerequisite for practicing new skills.3. We Have to Perform - about how our life's performance is not an option. We are here already. We might as well perform our best.4. The Concert Debrief - about learning from our performances, even when they are terrible.5. Where Do You Go From Here? - about continually moving forward in life - on our spiritual journey - at every age.