One of Detroit’s hidden treasures in the 80’s and 90’s was the Graystone International Jazz Museum. It fought an uphill battle finding ways for old Black jazz musicians to get gigs and grants here and there to keep them and their music alive. The organization was named after a long demolished ballroom in Detroit where in the segregated 30’s Black musicians could play for White folks six days a week, but where on one night a week, (“Nig_ _r Night”, they told me with a smiling wink) Black folk were allowed to enter Graystone Ballroom as patrons, you see, as regular folk, to listen and dance to their own musicians. And so the Graystone Ballroom meant something to these now aging Black musicians; they wanted to keep its memory alive with a little museum and a big band, The Graystone Orchestra. In my job at University of Detroit Mercy, I was able to arrange for them to use our Student Union ballroom for their weekly practices and monthly concerts, in barter for free admission to our students and staff. And so the Graystone musicians loved me. Dr. Beans Bowles was the Director and conductor of the Orchestra; whenever he would see me, he’d give me a big hug, then with his hands still on my sides would move his head back to be able to look into my eyes, and he’d say the words that were the title of a great old song: “I love you madly.”
Maybe that’s why years later I would be so deeply struck when I discovered that French quote. There was something great about being loved madly by this sweet old Black musician. But if we carry inside ourselves the spirit of a God whose love is mad (walking on water and crucifixion and rising from the dead and such) it can be more than a little scary. Maybe that’s why we sedate God. For fear that the madness of that unbridled, uncontrollable love that might otherwise have its way with us, maybe we keep God locked in the tabernacle of our belief, where we can worship him, or maybe just wonder about him, but certainly not get carried away, used as a pawn of his mad love.
I believe that compassion is God’s “get out of jail” card, the wrecking ball that breaks through our heart’s tabernacle. When we are with a person who is suffering, God’s mad love pushes against the defenses of our fear and sensibility and moderation and logic. If we dare to look into their faces and see the anguish there, this god of our worship and wonder becomes the god of our love, and shows on our face, and transfigures us. And that suffering person, whether stranger or spouse, sees our softening face and the doors of their own prison of fear and despair are opened, and the God of their hope breaks free, and their face is similarly transfigured. For that moment of encounter, each sees the humanity of the other in its full brightness. As in Chapter nine of Luke’s Good Story, the moment of transfiguration can change us forever, draw us into a relationship that is divine madness, which is in fact nothing more than the freedom of human love. Truly human love is fed not by the poor pond of our will, but by the running spring of spirit, as endless as the mystery in the face of this person that we see.
On Easter morning three weeks from now the French will post their handbills celebrating the mad love of a stone rolled away, a dead God risen. But all along this Lenten way to that morning, we have this invitation to be transfigured by compassion, to be and see the face of God.
Tomorrow: Thomas Merton's Bag Lady
Monday: a word about will from Death row
FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Your comments are helpful, and will be used to improve this blog.