free to be

"I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve. But I was outside the Bagdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his eyes.
After that I liked jazz music.
Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way.
I used to not like God because God didn't resolve. But that was before any of this happened." David Miller, Blue like Jazz

I remember the first time I went to see a broadway play. In was Christmastime in Chicago. The streets were blanketed with snow and Christmas lights winked at us as far as our eyes could see. I was probably about 10 years old and although I understood very little about the play we were about to see, it was mesmerizing in every way.
When it was over, I remember walking out of the theater, bundled up in my coat. A solo saxophone player stood at the street corner with his hat on the ground. He was playing Christmas carrols, seemingly oblivious to the cold. A few people stood in a street corner and listened. As he played, taxi's raced by, people scurried here and there and big, heavy snowflakes danced from the sky.

I remember, even then, that there were other people on the streets that night. Figures in the periphery; faces I could never have identified in a line up because I intentionally stared at the ground. I took quick peeks at them every now and then to satisfy my curiousity, but there was 'us', and then there was 'them'. I was buffered in my warm coat and I had just enjoyed a play I would never forget. While most of us walked purposefully to a destination--in our case, a warm hotel room, these statues in our periphery, stood in one place; hands out-stretched.

"Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way."

That night in Chicago, I was exposed to an art of music and dance that over time, would weave it's way into my being. I learned that some people cry at broadway plays, and some people listen with their eyes closed; their love of music pulsing through their very souls. That night I watched a man lose himself in the notes he played from his solo performance on a busy street corner.
His song gives melody to the memory of that night.

Have you ever watched someone love with that same kind of abandon? Those who stop to connect with the people who rest in the street shadows, palms outstretched? Not superficial love-the kind that puts quarters into upturned hands while rushing by, but real love. The kind that sees and acts. listens and sacrifices.
There's a difference.
Every now and then I get a glimpse of love like that and it stops me in my tracks.

I, too, used to think God didn't resolve. Actually, I still have my days. But I listened once as a man came into my classroom and told his story about life on the streets. He had wisdom in those eyes that no one used to see. He was accustomed to being the blur in the periphery of passerby's and he felt dead inside. But someone loved him differently. One day someone stopped and listened and took his hand. It changed his story and led to the greatest love story ever.
Redemptive love.

If I could open up the pages of the Bible and lose myself in the chapters, we'd see love like that. Over and over again. Love that makes you want to close your eyes and breathe it in. Love that lives in us and through us.
We're called to love like that.

"Someone pointed out to me
that a pebble and a diamond
are alike to the blind man.

maybe I've been fingering
diamonds all this time,
without ever realizing it.
-steven james, Story