[Dialogue] A Story

[Marilyn R Crocker]

Thanks, Priscilla.  The 'cello has been my instrument off and on since
1954, a lugubriously mournful, yet excruciatingly and tantalizingly
hope-filled expression of the string family -- so appropriate for your
Story.  Having read your entry I'm moved to set up the music stand, 
rosin up my bow and play, and play, and play.....

Marilyn

Marilyn R. Crocker, Ed.D.
Crocker & Associates, Inc.
123 Sanborn Road
West Newfield, ME 04095
Tel. & FAX: (207) 793-3711


On Tue, 15 Feb 2005 14:34:44 -0600 "Priscilla H. Wilson"
<pwilson at teamtechinc.com> writes:
> On Sunday afternoon, our choir, brass, organ and bells participated 
> in 
> a hymn festival with the congregation, "Called to Sing the Song of 
> Hope." The hour hymn fest ended with our pastor reading the story I 
> 
> have printed below, "the Cellist of Sarajevo." It was very 
> moving...and 
> was followed by a cello solo. I am just sending it because I wanted 
> to 
> share it with my friends and colleagues.
> Priscilla
> 
> A hundred yards away lived a 37-year-old man named Vedran Smailovic. 
> 
> Before the war he had been the principal cellist of the Sarajevo 
> Opera 
> Company--a distinguished and civilized job, no doubt. When he saw 
> the 
> massacre outside his window, he was pushed beyond his capacity to 
> endure anymore. Driven by his anguish, he decided he had to take 
> action, and so he did the only thing he could do. He made music. 
> Every 
> day there after, at 4 p.m. precisely, Mr. Smailovic would put on his 
> 
> full formal concert attire, and walk out of his apartment into the 
> midst of the battle raging around him. He would place a little 
> campstool in the middle of the bomb-craters, and play a concert to 
> the 
> abandoned streets, while bombs dropped and bullets flew all around 
> him. 
> Day after day he made his unimaginably courageous stand for human 
> dignity, for civilization, for compassion, and for peace. As though 
> 
> protected by a divine shield, he was never hurt, though his darkest 
> 
> hour came when, taking a little walk to stretch his legs, his cello 
> was 
> shelled and destroyed where he had been sitting.
> 
>         He played
.It was just music
>                 But in that music declared that warfare--
>                 No matter what virtues war wears as a costume--
>                 Warfare cannot win;
> It was music that sang
>                 inhumanity will not destroy that which is human,
>                 That which is truly alive.
>         Day after day after day
> He played his cello in the crater.  (22 days for the 22 deaths)
> It was just music.
> But it was prayer,
> And it was hope,
> And it was a sign that
> Hope is stronger than fear.
> And good is stronger than evil,
> And life is stronger than death,
> And no act of inhumanity can completely destroy
> The God-given gift of being human.
> I don’t know what melody he played.
>         But I’m sure it was the same melody sung by the hungry in 
> line for 
> soup.
>         I’m sure it was the same song sung by children praying for 
> the end of 
> war.
>         I’m sure it was the same hummed in Jerusalem and in 
> Ramallah, in Sudan 
> and countless other places.
>         I’m sure it is the same that leaps from our hearts as we 
> seek to lift 
> up that which is human.
> 
>   It was 4:00 so Vedran Smailovic played the cello.
> It was just music.
> 
> *****************************
> Priscilla Wilson