When I was five I started playing the piano. I gave up on it in early teen years. My major achievement was playing the Moon Sonata. I still remember the slow progress I made in learning to play it and the sheer delight in hearing myself play the sounds of a beloved piece of music. My mom loved to lay on the living room couch and listen to me practice. I got to a point where it became automatic, I didn't have to search for the keys, it flowed through the fingers - it had become a part of me. When I think of melody I compare it with story - story told in minor or major keys, in its complexity reflecting a certain reality, mood, frame. The way I tell a story like a groove that gets deeper and deeper ingrained and finally becomes me. I am my story and my story makes me.
I have been thinking of this interaction for many years now. I worked for a year with people in transitional housing in Chicago. It was rewarding work with men and women trying to change old patterns and take a chance at making something new. Several of them were from the African-American community. I noticed the different spirit and lightness in which they held themselves in tough situations. One of them in particular struck me with his story. He had lost his father to a violent death, gone to the funerals of relatives killed in intercity violence and himself had been in jail for selling drugs. He wanted to change his life, to be a different man and father. What I noticed was the open manner and sincerity in him. The way he would answer to a question: "How is your day?" "Thank God I have all I need. Thank God, I am alive and it is a good day. And how are you, are you well, are your kids well?" The ability to see outside misery and sadness and to be thankful, to be caring for others. I am amazed at the resilience and bubbling life I have witnessed in the close friends and acquaintances of his community. They have weaved the sweet melody of sadness and joy in a powerful distinct voice.
We too have amazing music. The music of the ages that we have inherited has the quality of haunting sound unlike any other - it is otherworldly. Next to it today we play the chalga that is a mix of Oriental beat, trashy vulgar language and almost naked women.
But this is just a surface observation. What I am more concerned about is the overall melody of our stories. My story - the negativity I have absorbed and keep spitting out in the way I see, internalize and express reality. There is so much negativity - in myself, in my friends, in the newspapers, in the public spaces, in the interactions, in the government. I pick up random conversations from last weeks - the young people leaving, the education sinking down, the corruption in government, the backstabbing in the churches, the health reform bringing nothing, the old left without enough money to live on, the kids with disability still treated with disdain, the ethnic tensions rising... The list is going on and on and on. What are we powerless about and what could we change? If slavery and discrimination in America brought out such beauty are we up to the challenge to bring beauty out of ashes in our home?
I think there is a holy space outside and inside us that needs to be searched for and held to with all our might. If a person reaches out for the quiet of God small miracles happen.
We traveled back home from the Black Sea yesterday. I had come to the conclusion that we are a lazy nation waiting for the mercy of others to solve our problems. Not so in Trakia - a geographical region in East Bulgaria. Ten years ago we went the same rout - there were few scattered fields of crop and land going through its Sabbath - not touched by human hand or cared for. This time the view gladded us. It was a sunny day and the passing visions were spectacular.
There were miles and miles of golden wheat ready for the holy harvest. It made me think of Yovkov and Elin Pelin and their emblematic stories of harvest, summer and singing women. In Karnobat region stretched way back to the distant hills orderly green vines that would produce the sweet wine of autumn. The yellow faces of the sunflowers followed their mother sun making the land smile. Small orchards of peaches, nectarines, apples and pears greeted us. Along the roads a green wall of old walnut trees stretched for many miles.
It is the season of the linden trees, with open windows their subtle tea perfume could be felt in the air with the smell of warm earth. Their small flowers inhabited by fairies.
This land - it is not forgotten. Someone had lovingly tilted it and watered it. It is a beloved land of hardworking people who wake up at dawn and stay late nights to give it a drink. Their small villages were tidy and clean. The little gardens full with summer flowers and vegetables. The houses many times left unpainted for the lack of money, red brick showing the ware and tare of time, stamped with poverty.
It sang the sweet melody of labor, land, community and hope.
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