Uptown Pilgrimage

The Universe knows me so well. It understood that the only way in which I would heed a call would be if I were to find myself surrounded by at least a hundred pianos, varying in age and uniqueness, pianos which had felt the hands of thousands of musicians before myself, pianos through which music had been born.

My boyfriend at the time and I had begun our warm summer day wandering through a dusty piano store in the heart of Toulouse France. I had run my hands over at least twenty pianos before settling in at a pretty Zimmerman to play an entire song. As I finished, a lovely, middle aged, fair skinned yet youthfully freckled woman started chatting at me in rapid excited french. Ten minutes later, she cheerily waved us on as we drove off out of Toulouse and pointed our car towards her home where we would meet her husband Michel.

Michel, with his endearing smile and eccentric Beethoven-esque grey hair, met us at his beautiful Chateau de Pompignan,a stunning home built in the mid 1700s surrounded by acres of lush historical gardens. (Gardens which Michel is currently fighting bitterly to keep as high speed rail has chosen to build a track directly through the heart of his property..but that is another story..)

As beautiful as the château de Pompignan was, it was merely a backdrop for Michel's passion and life's work of collecting and repairing pianos. We walked through room after room crammed with stunning pianos at all levels of disrepair, age, and beauty. Pianos with peeling paint lined with gold leaf, pianos whose tops opened like butterfly wings, pianos with incredibly detailed carvings, pianos in their own suitcases etc.. I played a piano from 1794! Michel, in his excitement, had taken on enough work to keep him busy into the next thousand years.

Towards the end of our visit, Michel led us into a dark quiet chapel with light filtering in though colorful stained glass windows. At the front of the chapel, next to a large double keyboard Bechstein, was a door to a tiny circular room. Within the smaller room, the bare stone walls were carved with multiple symbols of the stonemasons and the signs of Saint James. As my hand reached up to touch the tiny scallop shell carving, I realized that my feet were already standing on the pilgrims path.

According to legend, the body of St James, a disciple of Jesus, had washed up, covered in scallop shells, on a beach in northwestern Spain in the 9th century. For nearly 1100 years, pilgrims have walked hundreds of miles across Europe from their own doorstep the the feet of Saint James, crossing front lines, enduring hunger and physical aches, danger and fear, simply out of faith and hope. Pilgrims have synched their footsteps to the countless who had walked before and the countless who would follow in order to become closer attuned to the beauty of the surrounding universe.

Since fitting my hand over the cool stone carving a few years back outside of Toulouse, I now see scallop shells everywhere. As a result I have recently made the decision to heed the call and walk the way of Saint James this summer. However, my pilgrimage does not merely start in Southern France, but rather here in America, in Chicago, in Uptown, in me. So, in order to help prepare for thirty plus consecutive days of walking through southern France and Northern Spain, I will begin my pilgrimage at home, walking Uptown..seeing beauty not just in the exotic and far away, but here at home.

Thailand 

Mexico City

Uptown

West Coast

Southern France

Uptown

Madeline Island WI

Uptown

Mexico City

Lourdes FR

Peru

Uptown

Toulouse FR

Barcelona

Uptown

Mexico City 

Uptown

Uptown

Toulouse FR

Your next door Neighbor

"I want you to be concerned about your next door neighbor. 
Do you know your next door neighbor?" 

-Mother Teresa

There is a man who lines up at every meal. He looks to be about forty years old, has a slight build, dark hair and beautiful naturally kohl lined eyes.  He is shy, very rarely meeting my eyes, and at each meal he quietly asks in a slightly accented voice, whether the meat is pork. Upon receiving an affirmative answer, he passes on the meat and asks if he can have more of whatever else there may be.  I would like to know his story.

There is a thirty something, skinny, black man with eyes perpetually full of infection who, despite his compromised vision, is always sure to tell you that you look beautiful and that you have made his day. He makes my day.

There is Ed, with his tattoos and dangling earring, who efficiently rules the kitchen, employing astonishing amounts of flexibility and creativity in the face of varying supplies. There are the two little blond boys with their cowlicks and cherub smiles. Their lovely blue eyed mother who is slightly younger than I am and is always happy to talk about her boys, tells me that they are doing well in kindergarten. There is Jesus, another cook with stories filling out the lines on his face. He tells me that the first three years of marriage are the hardest and assures me with a wry smile that he should know as he has been married for twenty two years now. 

There are the gruff old men who line up again and again for seconds, thirds, fourths, etc.  There is the beautiful tall and thin black woman who is potentially a beautiful black man. There is the laid off teacher from Lawndale who, having nothing else to do until she finds her next job, has worked her way through half the shelters in the city, spending a week volunteering at each.  After hearing Jesus' advice on marriage, she said with a laugh, that she wouldn't marry until a man can prove himself faithful. And since a man could never do that, she would simply never marry..  There is another kitchen worker who looks terrifying at a height comfortably topping six feet and a few hundred pounds to match. But his gentle soul will stand with can opener in hand until case after case of canned green beans have been opened.  And there are a couple hundred more people yet to be mentioned.

There is nothing to set us all apart.. only circumstance and whatever other contrived misguided ideas our minds might come up with.  Despite color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, we are all the same and want the same things.. food, health, home, love and a better life for our children.  We simply want to be whole.   

Where I find that my own words fail to be enough, 

I defer to those who have gone before...

"Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared."

Buddha

"Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work." 

Mother Teresa

A man once asked the Prophet what was the best thing in Islam, and the latter replied, "It is to feed the hungry and to give the greeting of peace both to those one knows and to those one does not know." Hadith of Bukhari

“The more we come out and do good to others, the more our hearts will be purified, and God will be in them.”

Swami Vivekananda

(and to the 99%..don't forget!)

"Even the rich are hungry for love, for being cared for, for being wanted, for having someone to call their own." 

Mother Teresa

“Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.” 

Rumi

Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.'  This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' Matthew 22:37-39

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." 

Martin Luther King Jr.

"I want both of us to start singing like two 

Travelling minstrels

About this extraordinary existence 

We share,

As if 

You, I and God were all married 

and living in 

A tiny 

Room."

Hafiz

The Call..

The Response!!!

Thanks to my awesome students and fellow Tower Chorale singers, This is the second carload of men's clothes to go to Cornerstone Community Outreach!!!! 

You all ROCK!!

...though I did steal someone's blue shirt for myself...