A Nigerian woman, a physician at a teaching hospital in the United States, attended a Gordon MacDonald lecture. After, she approached Gordon, to offer kind words of affirmation. She introduced herself using an American name.

"If I may ask," Gordon inquired, "what's your African name?"

The woman pronounced her name, several syllables long, with a musical sound to it.

"And what does your name mean?" Gordon asked.

She answered, "It means 'Child who takes the anger away.'"

When he inquired about it's origin, she told him the story.

"My parents had been forbidden by their parents to marry. But they loved each other so much that they defied the family opinions and married anyway. For several years they were ostracized from both their families. Then my mother became pregnant with me. After my birth, and when the grandparents held me in their arms for the first time, the walls of hostility came down. I became the one who swept the anger away. And that's the name my mother and father gave me."

Garrison Keillor once reflected on the church of his youth: "We had a surplus of scholars, and a deficit of peacemakers." I would argue that is a ratio, which needs to be reworked. Or maybe this story is more personal than that. Because the bottom line is that I would like to be known as a person who sweeps anger away. Being a reconciler sounds like a pretty good way to live.  

I resonate with the Nigerian doctor's story because I know about anger and it's power. It can be like acid, corroding the heart. Anger can find a home in the shape of sadness or brokenness or despair or hopelessness. The bottom line is that we give in to anger because we are afraid, and we feel out of control.

"And unto us, a child is born."

The child who takes the anger away.

And the walls of hostility came down.   

So here's my question:  

what would happen if we lived as if that were true?

On a June day in 1944, two weeks after D-Day, a few miles from the bloody shores of Omaha Beach, members of the 404th Fighter Group worked to carve an airstrip out of the Normandy countryside. Their efforts cost the lives of 28 Army engineers at the hands of the German snipers who persisted and fought after the D-Day battle. Most were located and captured or killed. One lone sniper still remained in the nighttime distance.

Back at the airstrip, Capt. Jack Tueller took out his trumpet. He'd used it on many a starlit night to entertain the men of the 404th. His commander told him, "Not tonight. I know your trumpet makes the most glorious sound, but with the sniper still out there, you will put us in harms way."

In Tueller's own words, "I thought to myself, that German sniper is as lonely and scared as I am. How can I stop him from firing? So I played the German love song, 'Lili Marleen,' (made famous in the late '30s by Marlene Dietrich, the famous German actress). And I wailed that trumpet over those apple orchards of Normandy. And he didn't fire."

The next morning, the military police approached Tueller to tell him they had a German prisoner on the beach who kept asking, "Who played that trumpet last night?"

Tueller describes the moment, "I grabbed my trumpet and went down to the beach. There was a 19-year-old German boy, scared and lonesome. He was dressed like a French peasant to cloak his role as a sniper. And, crying, he said, 'I couldn't fire because I thought of my fianc�. I thought of my mother and father. My role is finished.'"

"He stuck out his hand, and I shook the hand of the enemy," Tueller said. "[But] he was no enemy, because music had soothed the savage beast."

Yes, every one of us is afraid at times. Who knows all the reasons. But when it happens we revert to a zero sum view of the world. We believe that resources--including compassion, mercy, kindness, forgiveness and generosity--are finite. We believe that life is short and you get what you can. And if I don't know you, you are my enemy... or at the very least, someone to be mistrusted.

I love Tueller's story because music unlocks mercy... and who knows, maybe even the possibility for healing.  

And the walls of hostility came down.

I continue to find great solace in the story that took place after the tragic bombing in the town of Omagh, Northern Ireland (in 1998 twenty-nine people died as a result of the attack and approximately 220 people were injured; the attack was described by the BBC as "Northern Ireland's worst single terrorist atrocity" and by the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, as an "appalling act of savagery and evil"). After the attack, Daryl Simpson created a choir of Catholic and Protestant teenagers, to use music as a way to begin the healing. ("Love Rescue Me" is a U2 song sung by The Omagh Community Youth Choir.)

Love rescue me 

Come forth and speak to me

Raise me up and don't let me fall

No man is my enemy

My own hands imprison me

Love rescue me

I think about the little things; the profound determination to play a trumpet into the night air--or to light just one candle with song--that really do make all the difference.   

More often than not, Tion Medon's counsel to Obi wan kanobi on Utapau (for Star Wars aficionados) is right on. "There is no war here unless you brought it with you."

What I am learning is this: Perhaps the very people I exclude, are the ones who carry the light--the candle--that will allow me to see. That will allow me to see the Grace of God. And the expansive reach of God's acceptance. To every single one of us.  

Those who hurt, are angry and have nothing left to give,  

they are my meeting place with God.  Dorothy Day  

And the walls of hostility came down. 

It's been a quiet day here on Vashon Island. Thankfully. We had storms earlier in the week. Power outages and more trees down. But today is calm, clear and sunny. A reprieve and always welcome here, especially in winter. Mt. Rainer reflects the sunlight, as if porcelain, dazzling in imperial majesty. It's presence a steadfast assurance, comforting against the southeastern sky.

NOTE: Capt. Tueller went on to fight in the Korean and Vietnam wars, and served in the Pentagon during the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Cold War. He retired in 1966 as a colonel, having earned the Distinguished Flying Cross, almost two dozen air medals and two Legions of Merit, the nation's highest peacetime award.