Requiem for Compassion

A Translation from a beautiful Brahms Motet entitled  

Warum ist Licht gegeben (Why Is Light Given):

Why has light been given to the weary of soul,
And life to the troubled hearts? Why?
They who wait for death, and it doesn’t come;
They who dig for it even out of secret places;
Those who almost rejoice and are happy
That they achieve the grave. Why?
And to the man whose way is hidden,
And from whom God himself has been concealed?
Why?

Let us lift up our hearts, together with our hands, to God in heaven.

Behold, we value them as blessed who have endured.
You have heard of the patience of Job,
And the Lord’s conclusion you have seen:
For the Lord is merciful and has compassion!

About two months ago I went to San Francisco. During the visit, I got to see my mom, which was an enormously cathartic experience. I also got to hear an incredible concert put on by the San Francisco Symphony. The program began with some of Brahms' organ preludes and concluded with his requiem. In the middle of the preludes and requiem was his Motet Op. 74, No. 1. I sat there in Davies Symphony Hall feeling instantly alone as the choir first uttered the German word for Why (Warum). I felt cold and held back tears obsessing over the sound of that one word.

Why?

It has been more than a year since my last blog entry. In that time, I have finished grad school, returned to Michigan, begun teaching music and performing it. I'm living the dream that I set into action many years ago. My everyday life, I'm grateful to say, is one where I wake up with freedom to do what I please, enlighten young minds, and make beautiful music. I live.

While I live with the most clarity I've ever had in my life, the world surrounding me devolves into a blurrier place each day.

Warum?

When I hear the first line of Brahm's motet, I think of this country. Our country. It's the iteration of why over and over again that really grips me. At first, and deceptively, Warum sounds bright and promising and wonderful and of great dreams to come. I think of the American Dream. My dream. I think of the life I live everyday. All that is good and possible. But always, the chords that sound afterwords fill me with a deep grief, as Brahms asks, Why again. Perhaps it's the bad that I choose to see where it concerns our country.

Still, I cannot stop asking why to the things I see happening.

Where it concerns race, many Americans are at odds with one another. No doubt it is because of our shared difficulties to navigate our differences. Yet what I continue to wonder is why we rush to judgment and point fingers rather than asking productive questions and extending understanding. If everyone is standing on moral high grounds, are we not again staring each other in the face as equals?

No one is listening.

Why?

There are severe problems in moving forward as a country when laypeople and political pundits alike respond to black deaths by police officers with "what about black on black crime?" I've been asked this questions by countless friends and peers initially wanting to respond, "What about it?" Usually I am more constructive and today I'll stick with that avenue of responding.

Most murders of White Americans (83% of them in 2013) are committed by other White Americans. Black on Black murders surpass our White counterparts' crimes by 7%. To me, I see that murder is an issue, and narrowly a racial one. Equating the deaths committed amongst a category of civilians to deaths between law enforcements and civilians is wrong and disingenuous. Police officers are charged with the responsibility of making split second decisions in order to protect people. It is a hard responsibility, yes. But it is not a handicap. It is simple: for those who have the honor of upholding the law, the standard is higher, as it should be.

I want to be completely open. Mistrust, in my experience, is a legitimate feeling; myself, my family members, friends, and mentors have all experienced varying degrees of foolishness that have caused us to mistrust agents of the law.

Still, us Black Americans are no less responsible for removing productive element of understanding from what could otherwise be a meaningful dialogue. 

There are severe problems in moving forward as a country when Black communities rely on their own versions of rules and regulations to govern themselves. The silence on crime that is rampant in Black communities across this nation is a deafening one. Where has our blindness, deafness, and willful ignorance gotten us? Our children's bodies lie still in premature graves. We fear the places we should feel the safest as we live in the de facto prisons of our homes and neighborhoods. Our silence, and in many cases misplaced priorities, have afforded us nothing but destruction. And moreover, we have been insulated at times from the compassion and protection that the law is meant to show us, as a result of what our culture typifies to others, whether fairly or not.

Let us lift up our hearts together...

 

Can we all acknowledge our ignorance (willful or unintended) and release our collective pride? Let us lift up our hearts together, rather not to ask why but to ask how. How can we heal together and understand one another? We do not have to be seduced into extreme narratives concerning each other and our differences in vocation, in class, nor in race.

For we have here no continuing city,
but we seek the future.

I don't speak German. Were it not for the translations, the text in Brahms' motet were words I would not have otherwise truly understood. It was the sound and spirit of those words, however, to which I was initially listening. That human utterance gave meaning to a word that apart from that performance would have been vague and possibly meaningless. But I listened. I listened first even though I did not understand.

Are you listening?