A Cord of Seven Strands: Chapter Eighteen

Jonathan's Corner (Search & Sitemap) > A Library of Free Online Books to Read > Novels > A Cord of Seven Strands > Chapter Eighteen
Skip Back Previous 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 Next Skip Forward
Printer-Friendly Version

Ellamae smiled at the familiar knock on the door. "Come in, Sunny," she said.

Sunny bounced in. "Teacher, teacher, I've been waiting to play for you." She jumped up on the piano bench.

"Go ahead and play," Ellamae said, looking with wonder on this little child.

Sunny began to play, and Ellamae listened with a shock. She had not taught the girl about different keys yet — other than C and the pentatonic key of the black keys, which were plenty to start with — and the child was confidently playing music in G minor. It sounded vaguely like Bach, at very least a set of variations on the theme of his little fugue — and then Ellamae realized what she was listening to. Ellamae was listening to a fugue in one voice.

She realized with a start that the music had shifted to the key of E minor, and was growing fuller, richer, deeper. Many different threads were introduced, developed, and then integrated. The music rose to a crescendo and then came to a sudden and startling conclusion. There was silence.

"Do you like it?" Sunny said, a bashful smile on her face.

"Yes, I like it very much. Did it take you all week to compose?"

"I didn't compose it, Ellamae. I improvised it."

"Sunny, how would you like to take a walk?"

"A walk? Where?"

"To go visit my friend Sarah. I'll leave your mother a note, and not charge for this lesson. I'm going to look for my friend Amos, and I may not be back for a while. I love the keyboard, but I'd like to spend these last moments doing something else. Will you come with me?"

"I would love to!"

Ellamae wrote out a note, and taped it to the door of the lesson room, and then said, "C'mon, Sunny. Take my hand."

As they walked out, Sunny turned her face up to the light, and said, "The sunlight is warm today!"

Ellamae said, "It is. Perhaps feeling sunlight is better than looking at sunlight. What did you do this past week?"

Sunny said, "I don't know."

"Yes, you do," replied Ellamae.

"I got to ride a horse bareback with my Mom. That was fun. The horse was hot, and I could feel him breathing in and out, and I could feel the wind kissing my face."

"Is wind a mystery to you?"

"What do you mean?"

"Sighted people find wind to be confusing; we can see what it does, like blow leaves around, but we can't see the wind itself. Jesus said that the Holy Spirit is like wind that way."

"I don't find wind confusing. I feel it, and hear it, and hear what it does. It's like a friend, moving around me and hugging me. Is that like the Spirit? I don't find God to be confusing; he's like a friend, or a warm bowl of soup, or... I don't know what else to say, but he isn't confusing."

Ellamae pondered these words. Perhaps later the child would know the side of God that is wild and mysterious — or was everything so wild and mysterious to her that she made her peace with them, and was not frightened at the wild mystery of God? This was a voice that could call God 'Daddy', and be completely unafraid.

"Is that like the Spirit?" Sunny repeated. "Is that like the Spirit, Teacher?"

"I don't know. I'm not a theologian. I think it is, but in a different way than Jesus meant. Maybe wind is different to blind people and sighted people. I wonder what else is—"

"What's a theo-lo-, a the-, a the-o-loge-yun?" Sunny interrupted.

"A theologian is someone who devotes his life to studying the nature of God, and faith, and hope, and love. A theologian is somebody who reads the Bible and learns deep lessons from it."

"Why aren't you a theo-logian? I think you're a theologian. I'm a theologian. Today I learned that God loves me. That's a deep lesson. I think everybody should be a theologian."

"Yes, but a theologian is somebody who does that in a special way, and is more qualified—wait, that isn't right, a theologian is—" Ellamae paused, and closed her eyes. "I don't know. I don't know what makes a theologian. Maybe you and I are theologians. I don't know."

"But I thought grown-ups knew everything!"

"Nononononononononono!" Ellamae said. "Grown-ups don't know everything. Here's a story I was told when I was a little girl like you in Sunday school.

"An Indian and a white man were standing together on a beach. The white man took a stick, and made a small circle in the sand. He said, 'This is what the Indian knows.'

"Then he made a big circle around the small circle, and said, 'This is what the white man knows.'

"The Indian took the stick, and made a really, really, really big circle around both of the other two circles, and said, 'This is what neither the Indian nor the white man knows.'"

They were walking along a primitive road, and Ellamae bent over, saying, "Give me your finger. Point with it." She drew a small circle along the dirt, and said, "This is what children know."

Then she drew a larger circle, overlapping with the former circle, but not engulfing it. "This is what grown-ups know. Grown-ups know more than children know, but we also forget a lot of things as we grow up, and some of them are important. So grown-ups know more than children, but children still know some pretty big things that grown-ups don't."

Then she walked around in an immense circle, dragging Sunny's fingertip through the sandy dirt. "This is what neither children nor grown-ups know, but only God knows. Do you see?"

Sunny's face wrinkled in concentration. "Yes. So you want to tell me the things I ask, but you don't know them."

"Yes," Ellamae said, continuing to walk along.

"What do children know that grown-ups don't?" asked Sunny.

Ellamae took a long time to answer. "You know how sometimes I say something, and you ask me a question, and I change what I said? That's because you brought up something I forgot, like singing being like dancing. There are other things. Jesus said to become like a little child to enter; children know how to believe, and how — 'honest' is close, but not quite the right word. When a little boy says, 'I love you,' he means it. Children know how to imagine and make-believe, and how to play. Most adults have forgotten how to play, though a few remember (maybe by taking time to play, maybe by making work into play). That is sad most of all. This life is preparing us for Heaven, and what we do in Heaven will not be work or rest, but play. You live more in Heaven than most grown-ups."

Sunny listened eagerly. "But you remembered."

"Yes, but not easily. And not all of it. I am lucky to have friends who know how to play."

By this time they had reached Sarah's house, and Sarah saw them and came out to greet them. They sat down on a log, with Sunny in the middle.

"Teacher tells me that you're tickulish," Sunny said.

"Maybe I am and maybe I'm not," Sarah said.

Sunny poked Sarah in the side. Sarah squeaked.

"Sarah is not a Squeaky-Toy," Sarah said, sitting up and looking very dignified (and forgetting that Sunny was blind).

Sunny poked Sarah in the side. Sarah squeaked.

"Sarah is not a Squeaky-Toy," Sarah reiterated.

Sunny poked Sarah in the side. Sarah squeaked.

Sarah grabbed Sunny's hands. "I hear you like music."

"Yes, I like it a lot. I especially like to play piano. What's your name?"

"Sarah."

"I love you, Sarah-Squeak."

"Thank you, Sunny." She paused, debated whether or not to say "It's 'Sarah', not 'Sarah-Squeak'," and continued, "What do you think of when you play music?"

"Music stuff. Do you play music?"

"No, but I paint. Painting is kind of like music."

"What do you do when you paint?"

"Well, I take all sorts of different colors, and I use differing amounts to make different forms and shapes, and when I am done people can see through my painting what I was thinking of, if I do it well."

"I take different notes, and I use differing amounts to make different melodies, and when I am done people can hear through my music what I was thinking of, if I do it well. Yep, painting is like music."

Sarah pondered the painting of rainbow colors she had been working on. "You know, I'd like for you to do something with me sometime. I'd like for you to improvise a song for me, maybe record it so I can hear it a few times, and I'll see if I can translate it into a painting."

"What about words? Can you translate it into words?"

"I can't translate music into words. I don't know if anyone can. But maybe, if I tried hard enough and had God's blessing, I could translate it into a painting of color. Hmm, that gives me an idea of music for the deaf." She turned to Ellamae. "What about a video where each instrument or voice was a region of the screen, and the color went around the color wheel circle as the notes go around, and the light became more intense as you went up an octave? And they became bigger and smaller as the notes became louder and softer?"

"I'd like to see that. Music for the deaf," Ellamae said.

"Miss Sarah, please hold your arm out and pull up your shirt sleeve," Sunny said."

Sarah, curious, did as the child asked.

Sunny placed her fingers on Sarah's bare arm, and started to play it as if it were a piano keyboard. "That is music for people who can't hear," she said.

Sarah and Ellamae nodded.

Read more...

Top