Lee Hoffman carries a rich ancestral legacy of music with roots that tap into a rare blend of southern gospel, classical, and contemporary singer-songwriter styles. At the heart of all of Lee's music is genuine emotional expression for the purpose of healing, connection, transformation, and wholeness. Starting with piano lessons at age five, Lee sang with her family in churches and nursing homes, and began voice lessons at age sixteen. She majored in voice performance, earning a Bachelor of Music from California State University, Sacramento, and a Master of Music from Webster University in St. Louis, Missouri. Lee completed all coursework, two of three required recitals, and passed the Music Theory Qualifying Exam in the doctoral program at the University of Cincinnati, College-Conservatory of Music. She subsequently earned a Master of Science in Education-Counseling degree at the University of Dayton. A university professor for twenty-five years, Lee is an expert facilitator of developmental process, gifted with a special ability to deeply listen, and to connect others with their own insight and wisdom. Whether teaching or performing, Lee's intention is "to create space for trust that allows people to risk encountering and expressing their truth and to become full and whole human beings." Born in Boulder, Colorado in 1962, Lee grew up in California - Azusa (southern CA) until the age of seven, and then Fair Oaks (northern CA) until the age of twenty-three. As recipient of the Charanjit Rangi Leadership Award for Faculty Professional Excellence, Lee delivered a keynote address at the Dean’s Awards Ceremony, College of Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences at Central State University. Entitled "The Dilemma of Excellence," her speech captures the essence of what drives her life and her music: ***** "Let’s talk about the Dilemma of Excellence. Keep these definitions in mind: A dilemma: 'a situation requiring a choice between equally undesirable alternatives.' Excellence: 'to attain beyond the range or capacity of; to transcend; to rise above.' Ocean waves gave me my first real life experience of the dilemma of excellence. For the first seven and a half years of my life, my family lived in southern California. Even after we moved to northern California, we often returned to Orange County to visit my grandparents. We would go to the beach – usually Newport, Huntington, or Balboa. My mom would spread a blanket on the sand, and I would head down to the water. This was back in the sixties and seventies when parents let their children test themselves against forces of nature without a bicycle helmet, knee pads, or even sunscreen. I don’t remember considering whether or not to leave the blanket, or my mother. I just remember being drawn to the waves. I don’t remember the first time I felt a wave lift me up, and set me down gently; I do remember plenty of other times that I floated without a care in the swell and fall of gentle waves. And, naturally, I remember when waves would carry me up, and either throw me down, face first, into the sandy bottom, or toss my entire body around like I was in the agitating cycle of a washing machine. Most clearly, I remember diving under wave after wave, timing each dive so that the wave wouldn’t crush me. Usually, that worked pretty well. The dilemma came when I would dive under a wave, and come up on the other side only to see a gargantu-normous wave building just too far away for me to dive under it. In that moment of dilemma, my choices were: A. Try to run through thigh-deep water and shifting sand toward the wave, maybe not make it in time to dive, and get clobbered? B. Try to run away from the wave, heaving against the sucking tidal outflow, and maybe get clobbered anyway? I knew I had to try to get beyond the range of the wave, but my choices meant taking equally undesirable risks. Clearly, I had to spring into action, no matter what. The excellence I learned from playing in ocean waves isn’t the kind of excellence defined by standardized tests. I was never graded for playing in the ocean. But the ocean did test me. The ocean taught me to love and respect it – to have a healthy fear of it. The ocean taught me about me, about where I stop and the ocean begins, about where the ocean stops and I begin, about how the ocean and I are one in the same. The ocean had the power to exact a final consequence, and my guardian angels must have been total surfer dudes for all of the times I tested that power. The excellence I learned from the ocean was an excellence of playful spontaneity, of physicality, of timing, of judgment, of sheer joy, of cold terror, and of bonding with an infinite force within and beyond myself. I came to understand at a cellular level that I had to go beyond, transcend, exceed my fear, and dive beneath the salty breakers or roll with the punches. One way or another, I just had to. So I did. And here I stand. Still have sand in places I won’t mention…. Now, let’s turn to an African story called 'The Lizard in the Fire' from a book by renowned storyteller, author, and scholar of mythology, anthropology, and psychology, Michael Meade, called 'The Water of Life: Initiation and the Tempering of the Soul.' // A father told his son, 'If you ever sleep with a woman, you will die.' Then the father made his son grow up hidden in the forest. One day a young woman came into the forest. She saw the son, now a young man himself. When he saw her, she said, 'You live so alone. I’ll come each day to visit you.' The young man said, 'My father told me I would die if I ever sleep with a woman, as if a sword would go through my heart.' The young woman said, 'In that case, I’ll not come again, for it is not my wish that you should die.' The young man said, 'No. Please come again. I beg of you, please come anyway!' The young woman said, 'Good, then. I will come back, and if you die, maybe you will come to life again.' The next day the young woman came again. The young man and woman slept together. What happened? The young man died; he died. Just as the father said, the young man died. What did the father do? What did the mother do? They wept. What did the young woman do? She ran deep into the forest to the old hunter of the woods and told the hunter the whole story. The hunter said, 'Why, that is no problem. All we need is a lizard and a fire.' The hunter went to get a lizard. The young man was brought to the village. Wood was gathered and piled high. The fire was lit. The people of the village all gathered round. When the flames were great, the lizard was set in the fire. The hunter said, 'Now, here is the situation we are in: If the lizard burns on the funeral pyre, the young man will stay dead. But if someone pulls the lizard from the fire, the young man will return to life again.' The father tried to pull the lizard from the fire, but the flames were huge and hot, and he was driven back. The mother went forward, but she, too, was driven back by the raging flames. The young woman? She jumped right into the center of the fire, pulled out the lizard, and brought it back alive. The young man? Well, of course, he sprang to life. The hunter said, 'Now, here is the situation: The young man is alive again. He must do something. If he kills the lizard, his mother will die. But if he doesn’t kill the lizard, the young woman will die.' Kill the lizard, and the young man and woman will live. But the mother will die. Don’t kill the lizard, and the mother and son will live on, but the young woman will die. The question is this: What would you do?' // Hmm. What would you do? You have faced dilemmas in your own life that seem impossible to bear, impossible to solve. And yet, here you are, with sand in places you won't mention! How does a person face impossible dilemmas and still achieve excellence? Parker J. Palmer, author of one of my favorite books, 'A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward An Undivided Life,' refers to the impossible dilemma as a tragic gap. He says that 'standing in the tragic gap' is a way of learning 'to hold the tension between the reality of [the present] moment and the possibility that something better might emerge.' The young man in the story of the 'Lizard and the Fire' certainly faced a tragic gap. The undesirable alternatives he had to choose between – death of his mother or death of the young woman – might tear him apart, causing him to suffer a kind of inner violence. Palmer says, 'Violence of every shape and form has its roots in the divided life, in that fault line within us that cracks open and becomes a divide between us.' What Palmer means by the term 'violence' is 'any way we have of violating the identity and integrity of [one's self or] another person.' So, I understand that violence is born within me when I violate my own identity and integrity. Alternatively, I can learn a way of living that deeply respects my own identity and integrity. In so doing, my life is no longer sabotaged by the fault lines within me. I am able to experience being a whole person, and I am able to connect my here and now to the future I envision. So, we are all here today because we have successfully faced impossible dilemmas, tragic gaps. Maybe we knew consciously what we were doing. Maybe our survival instincts motivated us to just keep holding on through the tension of the impossible dilemma. Maybe we prayed. A lot. Either way, we are here. A dilemma has the power to ignite our inspiration, innovation, and innate wisdom. When we stand consciously and intentionally in that dilemma, we transcend the limits of the identity others may try to force upon us, and we take ownership of the identity others may try to take away from us; we rise above anything and anyone that would seem to diminish the greatness that is our birthright. Excellence has movement - it's a form of transportation. Excellence calls us to redefine comfort so that for a while it seems like we’ll never be comfortable again…until we are. Excellence creates life dilemmas that are as powerful, and seem, at times, as terrifying as a 200 foot tall ocean wave. Excellence allows us to be more truly ourselves. What more could we want by the time we’ve lived our entire lives than to know, and to have become, exactly who we are?"