The Power of Music

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It has always intrigued me how the human brain stores memories. When I least expect it, something that I haven’t thought about in years, will pop into my mind as I encounter a certain smell or sound.  It’s as if I’m transported back in time again re-living the long forgotten memory.  Often these snapshots into the past will make me smile but at times they bring tears if the memory is bittersweet.
This morning as I drove in to work, I had such a memory moment.  On the radio, a song played that I hadn’t heard in some time. It began…”Seeking Him as a precious jewel, Lord to give up I’d be a fool, You are my all in all…”  Suddenly, I was transported back to Haiti in the year 2000.  I’m working in a make shift clinic set up in one of the many villages we visited on that medical mission trip.  Over our lunch break, 2 of our interpreters began to sing.  Diony, the young man who translated Creole for me that week, was one of the singers.  They sang several songs familiar to us: old hymns mixed with newer Christian music.  A few of us from the US joined in. At the time, I had never heard the song, “You Are My All in All.”  The boys taught us this tune and it has stuck with me since as one of my favorites.
Another time on this same trip to Haiti, music became a channel for prayer.  As we were traveling to our work site, our bus was caught in a traffic jam in Port-au-Prince.  This was no great surprise, since navigating our way out of the city was a daily challenge.  On this occasion though, we were surprised by what had stopped us.  Along the street came a large parade of people being lead by a sort of marching band.  There were school children dressed in their uniforms walking in a group behind them plus many other assorted people.  Then we saw why they were there blocking the streets.  Being carried high on the shoulders of several men, were two small caskets side by side.  They were just large enough to hold a child the age of the school children we saw in the procession.  Our hearts went out to them.  We didn’t know their story but we could see before us a funeral for 2 young children being carried on through the streets.  Everyone on the bus was speechless.  Then moved by the Spirit, one of the pastors who accompanied us to our work sites, started to sing.  He sang familiar hymns of promise and hope in the midst of great loss.  We all joined in, Haitians and Americans together, to honor the lost children that we didn’t even know.  It was a beautiful, sacred moment. Our songs were prayers lifted to heaven.
Much later, in 2011 when I returned to Haiti, we visited the burial site of thousands of Haitians killed in the earthquake of 2010.  The place was an old stone quarry.  Something had to be done quickly with the huge number of dead in the aftermath of the earthquake.  They were placed in the quarry and covered in a mass grave.  Today there are hundreds of black crosses to mark the spot.  The wife of one of our drivers is buried there.  She was a nurse and was still at work when the force of the earthquake hit. She never made it home.  Her husband is left with 4 children to raise on his own.  He works for the Double Harvest mission and is able to support them better than most families who lost loved ones. The sight of black crosses scattered across that bleak and deserted place, haunts me still.
I learned two things from these experiences.  The power of music and the devastation of death, know no cultural bounds.  Even in a country that has known as much loss as Haiti, the people mourn as we do and celebrate life as we do.  It is the human condition. We are often so separated from people who are different than ourselves, that we don’t ever grasp these truths.  We must step across cultural boundaries, whether in the US or abroad, to fully experience this.  In this way, when tragedy strikes in another part of our world, we are not numb to it.
When I first heard about the earthquake in Haiti, my thoughts and prayers went out to those dear people I met during our mission there.  These were my friends, not unknown faces far away.  I may never know what happened to many of them that fateful day but I was able to find Diony on Facebook.  I’m not sure where he was when the earthquake occurred but I know that he is alive and well.  He ended up going to the US to study and now owns his own computer business. This was truly an answer to prayer.
Often I wonder how much good I do when I travel to a foreign country on a medical mission or to a homeless shelter in downtown Indianapolis.  Wouldn’t it be better to just send money to groups that are already there helping? My small effort seems to be a drop in the massive bucket that is poverty.  But I’ve found that if nothing else happens, there occurs a touching of souls between myself and the people I meet. A sense of understanding of each other transpires that cannot be acquired in any other way than to simply “be” with people different from myself yet in so many ways just the same. I don’t want to see tragedies in other parts of the world as just another news story.  I want my heart to ache as Jesus’ heart aches for each of us when losses occur. My faith assures me that someday each of us will join hands with humanity as the brothers and sisters that we truly are and sing together a new song for eternity.

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