Shepherd II
Picture Vedan Smailovic in a tuxedo as he walks, with his cello, past pockmarked buildings and edifices violently raped by mortars. He is spurred on by 22 lives blown up, and each day he bears their unknown faces in his heart, stringing his cello for each of them — each day dedicated to men, women and children scythed on a day hope was a piece of bread.
He sits on a pile of rubble, straddles his instrument, and shuts himself off from the world. He pays no heed to flying bullets from sniper rifles and mortars descending from the surrounding hills of Sarajevo. The music he plays, Albinoni-Giazotto’s Adagio, erupts from f-holes to tend to wounded spaces…
Before this, Sarajevo was a quiet city closed in by hills, and virtually unknown to the world. A man once remarked that the hills were the borders of the universe. People rarely emigrated but things did. The world regarded Sarajevo as a man at full throttle regards a faint crack on a wall.
While bullets sought expression in warm bodies, his music did the reverse. It groped for cold spaces, for cold hearts, for answers to the gash on humanity where a bomb had signed off.
Maybe he had occasional doubts about his act; maybe he felt like an ant stamping on armored tank to get at the enemy. But his music became a woven tapestry of hope, with the rich colors of faith, courage and passion.
Smailovic became a shepherd in a wilderness of raging bitterness. His music on the wings of bravery hovered over, not just the tragedy of 22 people, but millions railroaded by grief.
He makes me lie down in green pastures…
This verse has a known route. It is a pathway roughly paved with the aching spines of the burdened, the weary feet of the restless, eyes deprived of the right to tears, souls made septic by blood-soaked clothes and bodies.
We scream no matter how hard we try.
Thing is this piece of verse is like a bruised, desiccated fruit in the pantry of our minds. We come in and sup on other succulent items, anything sensual that would loosen the hold of pain and discomfort.
Think of green pasture, what do you see? I, for one, think of grasses so, so green that they dye my dreams when my eyes close. It is an idyllic setting with sheep fluffy as clouds and white as Santa’s synthetic beard.
The earth is not all-together green. When viewed from outer space, it wears the ash-blue shawl of atmospheric gases with brownish necks of rocks jutting from blue-collared oceans. And if you zoom in on the Palestinian countryside, you’ll see tufts of grass scattered across hills and plains. The brownish soil is not totally consumed by green and the sheep are not fluffy white.
It is easy to romanticize life when not immersed in the thick of things. Life is a baseball pitcher that throws a curveball at us. When we are assailed by curveballs, it is “natural” for such verses to be forgotten, rusty anchors buried in sea beds.
The heart of the good shepherd is battered, heavy chain, firmly linked to a ship and secured to anchors in sea beds. Though the seas of life rage, and we encounter salty sprays that suggest a fevered point of view, an awful sense of place, the reality is the unmoored vessel on which we stand. Though the earth veers off-course from Eden, there is a harvest of inspiring stories from dirt.
He leads me besides still waters…
Green pastures. Still waters.
The human experience is far from these ideal settings. It is a war zone, a giant Philistine raging before a composed David…
Philistine. The philistine of today is painted as a person averse to artistic pursuits and intellectual advancement. In this scenario, he is against passionate strivings and heroic deeds; his self-inflated presence belittles memories of the legendary Exodus. He is an old dog mired in flea habits that suck out the passions, drying up the senses, fracturing the lenses by which we anticipate and interpret beauty.
At some point in our lives, we’ve been philistines holed up in bricks and mortars of our own making.
To surrender is to clamber over these brick walls, to be led.
Being led is to anticipate, to want for a guide, a greater presence. The presence of the shepherd is principal to the pathway. The pathway is typically unknown, rocky, sandy, with little or no tuft of grass; but it is progressive, slowly revealing the rhythms of grace. Grace like music whose lyrics become distinct as we draw nigh. Grace like still waters whose waves are fine enough to mirror brightness and her wardrobe of colors.
Grace is the melodious voice of the shepherd calling out for his lost sheep in the wilderness. His staff is strong and relentless, tap-tapping codes of lovingkindness our way as he looks for his sheep. The wind of the Spirit bears these morse codes, drifting it our way, searching for wounded spaces, for cold hearts.
Know this, our hearts will never become strangers to suffering as long as we draw breath. Questions will continually attend our place and purpose on earth, but they evidence the want for a greater presence. It is the thirsty who croaks about the sweetness of water. As long as there is life, there is pain, but it is a ballast for hope.
Hope is green pasture sourcing nutrient from the unseen. We lie down in hope, leaning on the hidden, the mammoth body of ice beneath the raging waters, the music that defies the headstrong bullet, peace resting on a pillow in the midst of a Galilean storm.
Peace is revolutionary, but it comes at a price. It is nutrient for the mind, a renewed mind. Renewing the mind is no seesaw game; rather, it is the carpenter’s saw that sees to it that we, like wood, are put to good use. And being put to good use means that we are to play key roles in translating the nearness of his presence to the here-ness of his presence.
In a biological sense, the condition for conception is stillness, absolute trust in the process leading to birth. Jesus, the good shepherd, calls us to a place of rest to experience the economy of peace. His nearness creates the demand, and his manifest presence, the supply.
In 1939, George VI, England’s monarch, concluded his Christmas Day broadcast saying: And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year, “Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.” He replied, “Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.”
