I don’t intend to say too much more about myself on this web site, keeping my focus instead on the business world, but you asked so nicely as you clicked the “Me” menu…
I live in Florida, married to the same wonderful woman for a nice long time. She’s a piano teacher, and her web site is http://www.bethmorrispiano.com. We have one daughter, who is married with two children and lives in California.
If you haven’t figured it out from the statement above, I am not Fr. Jonathan Morris who frequently appears on Fox News. 🙂
I value my faith on God, and I develop and express that faith as a Christian. With that said, I grieve that our religious labels are often interpreted, and worse, wielded, to divide people. I am convinced that our differing religions and doctrines are insignificant compared to the love that God has for every one of us.
When I was a child, I adored airplanes and wanted to be a pilot.
When I was a teenager, I was convinced I was going to be a musician.
An amazing sequence of events led to me being enrolled at Georgia Tech, where I became convinced I was going to be a technologist.
After a few more surprising events, I found myself managing a team that urgently looked for someone to lead them in solving the technology and business problems that accosted them every day. Those first several years, I learned mostly from my mistakes, and I made enough mistakes to learn rapidly. In the years since, several outstanding mentors have helped me, I have read some wonderful wisdom in books, and my employers have invested in my leadership talents. I’m still making mistakes, and I’m still learning.
While I continue in my role as a business leader, I am so privileged to have outlets of expression for that college student’s technology interests and that high school student’s music. Maybe one day I might even get to fly…
For more about my professional career, check out my LinkedIn page: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathancmorris/
NEXT:
When I was growing up, I just knew I was going to be a musician. My favorite activity in elementary school was playing trumpet in the band. In my high school years, I started directing choirs at church and writing arrangements for choirs and instrumentalists. I’d even decided I was going to attend Stetson University and major in music composition!
God had other ideas, as God often does. After a circuitous path, I wound up at Georgia Tech for my senior year in high school. It was and is a great engineering and technology university, but I couldn’t understand why God would take me away from my music education.
God answered my questions that February. I was walking around the back side of the library when God stopped me to tell me, “You’re going to graduate from Georgia Tech with a degree in Computer Science.”
“That’s a nice idea, God, and the computer course I am taking is fun, but I’m supposed to be a composer and a church musician.”
“No, Jon, you’re going to study computers and make that your career.”
“But God, I can’t waste my musical talent by going into computers.”
“I gave you those talents, and I will use those talents at the time I choose.”
So I did graduate from Georgia Tech, and I did get a job installing and supporting computers for a major computer company. I sang in the choir at church, and, thank you God, I even married the church organist!
One June Sunday, the music director at our church complained that the theme of the Independence Day service really needed the choir to sing “America the Beautiful,” but there wasn’t an arrangement of that hymn in the library. I felt a spiritual slap to the back of my head and before I knew it, I’d volunteered to write one and have it ready for the Wednesday choir rehearsal.
That Monday evening, I sat down at the piano at the church with staff paper, pencils, and a big eraser, and started to compose. I didn’t get far. By the second line of the first verse, I was already thinking how I wasn’t ready for this, then I felt a spiritual nudge to keep going. A few measures later, I got a bit more emphatic in my protests: “This isn’t working — I can’t do this.”
Then came that slap to the back of my head again: “Well, you could if you’d take the tenor note down to the fifth of the chord so the alto part would have a place to go.”
Oh! Yeah, that worked well, at least for another measure or two.
“This just isn’t working.”
“Well, of course it isn’t working. Your bass part is wandering off the root of the chord. Go back a measure and redo the bass, then the rest of it will work.”
We continued that argument for another two hours or so, and we finished that arrangement of “America the Beautiful.” It was good enough for the choir to use, but just barely. My emotions were all over the place — God had used me, God had co-written a piece of music with me, but what we had written wasn’t nearly good enough to send to a publisher. How could God have written a bad arrangement?
A few more nudges, a few more wandering paths, and I found myself enrolled for one class one hour a week at what is now Georgia Perimeter College to study Music Composition. “Now,” God explained, “I am ready to use your musical talent.” For eight years, I worked my day job with computers and used my lunch break one day a week to study music composition one-on-one with Dr. Tommy Joe Anderson. Those were magnificent time of learning, of expanding my musical horizons, and of exploring new ways to express my art.
My musical “career” has continued much the same way — never a direct path, never in the way I thought it would go, but always with rich blessings and challenges that force me to grow my faith and my skills.
May you find blessings as well in how God leads you!