The Song Needs Each One of Us (A Piano Parable)

 

There is a song in my heart. One I am meant to play. But it comes out all wrong when I sit down in front of those black and white keys. My left hand is weak and rusty from nearly 20 years of practicing every once in a very great while. The song should be very playable. It’s not complicated.

After practicing a bit, the left hand starts to find its rhythm. The right hand can sing the melody when it is working on its own.

When I try to put them together, they forget everything they know.

The left hand stumbles. The right hand too. They forgot how to work together. They are out of practice.

Even so, my heart sings on. It needs the song. And the song needs both of my hands.

The song sings true in my heart, compelling me to sit down and practice again.

So I sit down. I practice. One hand at a time. Putting them together and slowing way down. Allowing my hands to remember how to work together.

The song needs both of my hands.

/ / /

“Compassion: that sometimes fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside another’s skin and for knowing that there can never really be peace and joy for any until there is peace and joy for all.” –Frederick Buechner

“Compassion is the keen awareness of the interdependence of all things.” –Thomas Merton

/ / /

We need each other.

This suburban mom needs the city mom and the rural mom.

This white woman needs the African American woman, the Latina woman, the Asian woman, the Native American woman.

This American needs the Mexican, the Ugandan, the Italian, the Indonesian.

Liberal needs conservative.

Religious needs the agnostic.

We need each other.

How?

How do I need each person?

I don’t know exactly. I don’t think I’m there yet. But I think within the answer to that question lies the key to our salvation on earth.

/ / /

The song needs each one of us.

 

 

(Also if you want to listen the song I want to play on my piano, you can check it out here. It’s pretty.)