It was one of those very large family reunions, where you likely don't recognize half the people, and spend a good deal of your time trying to avoid the pugnacious uncle whose name you've tried to forget. In the midst of the festivities and beehive of activity, a five-year-old boy wanders and mingles. Sitting alone on a bench is one of the clan's matriarchs, a 90-year-old woman. The boy didn't know this woman, so walked right up close and stared into her deeply lined, wrinkled face and cloudy blue eyes. After some time he asked, "If you're so old how come you're not dead?"

She laughed, and replied, "Well, young man, you'll have to believe me that I've thought about it. Many times. But every time I get ready to just go in to my room and lie down and die, somebody asks for a sandwich. And I get up and go make it for them. After awhile you realize that there are a lot of hungry people and many sandwiches to be made. I guess with making sandwiches I just haven't had time to die."

I love this story. Makes me smile every time. And gives me hope. And if you change the verb, it applies to any one of us. "Ready to... quit or give up or give in or fold or break." Even if we don't wish it.  

Living with pain lately, I know that the journey we dance is a fragile existence. But the problem is not our brokenness. The problem is that surrendering or concession can become our default narrative, and determines the storyline of our days. For whatever reason, we cannot hear a greater truth.     

In 1942, the Nazis were actively and forcefully rounding up Jews in France. In the picturesque farming village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon (in southern France), Reformed Church minister Andre Trocme inspired an entire village to change lives. And, as it turns out, the world in which we live.

Each of the citizens of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon voluntarily risked their lives to hide Jews--in homes, on farms, and in public buildings; Jews who were being rounded up by the Nazi SS for shipment to the death camps. (It is said that there was not a single home in the village that did not shelter a Jewish family.) Le Chambon-sur-Lignon became known as the "City of Refuge."

Whenever Nazi patrols searched the village, the Jews were sent, surreptitiously, out into the woodland countryside. One of the villagers recalled, "As soon as the soldiers left, we would go into the forest and sing a song. When they heard that song, the Jews knew it was safe to come home."

It is estimated that as many as five thousand lives were saved--many given passage to Switzerland. One reason for this display of compassion? These French villagers were descendants from the persecuted Protestant Huguenots. Their own history of persecution connected them to the plight of the Jewish people hiding in their homes.
Perhaps that is true, I do not know.
I only know that for whatever reason, the villagers choose love.
And the rest, well, the rest is history.

Two things about this story struck me.
One, the extraordinary power of compassion (and the courage to practice compassion in a world that measures and weighs and judges).
Two, the power of love and music to bring each and every one of us, home. Home, the place where we are given value and love and dignity.

What song did the villagers sing?
What kind of music represented freedom and well-being and love and home?
Or maybe it's not that important. The song, I mean. Although, it is certainly our knee-jerk reaction to figure it out. But maybe, just maybe, the song is compassion. Plain and simple. Kind of like making sandwiches.

Whatever it is, the song brings people out of hiding, out of unease and out of fear. The song invites courage and renewal and resilience.

And that, well, that is music worth singing. And it is the music of Grace.

Or in the case of our 90-year-old matriarch, it is the music to remind us that there are always sandwiches to be made.

We have buried the music in the need to be right.
We have buried the music in the need to win.

When a woman in a certain African tribe knows she is pregnant, she goes out into the wilderness to pray and listen until she hears the song of the child she bears. This tribe recognizes that every soul has its own vibration, expressing its unique flavor and purpose. Then the mother to be teaches the song to the other members of the tribe.
The tribe sings the song to the child at birth.
They sing when the child becomes an adolescent, when the adult is married, and at the time of parting and death.

But there is one other occasion when the villagers sing this song. If at any time during his (or her) life, the person causes suffering to another member of the tribe, they gather in a circle and set him in the center. They sing the song, to remind him not of the wrong done, but of his own beauty and potential. When a child loses the way, it is love and not punishment that brings the lost one home.

I cannot tell you your song. But I can tell you this: you have one.
Count on it.
And if you sit still, you may hear it. Really.
It is the "song" that reminds us we are beautiful, when we feel ugly.
It is the song that tells us we are whole, when we feel broken.
It is the song that gives the power to the 90-year-old sandwich maker in each one of us, on those days we feel done in.

The rain has been persistent all day. Yes, it is Seattle. But we're still not ready for this. So it is an inside day. Tea with a shot of Jameson.  There is a late afternoon sun-break, and the chair on the back patio beckons. I choose the chair. From the sound system Dougie MacLean's This love will carry fills the late afternoon air. Off to the east as if poured from the clouds, a rainbow touches the earth. Go figure.