Last Sunday I was sitting in a church among my Karen community. I was there because my friend Bo Shi’s dad was playing a harmonica solo and he had invited me to be there for this moment. He was speaking before he played and the church was filled with laughter. My dad would have done the same. Laughter softens the heart from the hardness that life brings. He was telling stories. My dad would have done the same. Our stories are where we find connection to others. And he was playing his “thro der.” (harmonica) Actually, he played a chromonica.
My daddy played the chromonica as well. The difference is a tiny button on the side that allows you to play more than just the standard scale. It gives you the ability to “bend” the sound to make more notes. A harmonica doesn’t have this. My dad lost a good harmonica in our house fire when I was in my teens. Afterwards, he wanted to replace it with a really expensive chromonica. My mom decided she was going to save up for one to give him as a gift. This is what she did. She would listen for the longings of our hearts and then she would figure out a way to meet them on our missionary budget.
I remember the Christmas he opened that beautiful gift and started to play. His heart was full and the room absorbed the joy from the music. We loved to hear him play because it meant that he was feeling the need to fill the room with beauty. Sometimes it was a lilting dance tune. Other times it meant that there was a sorrow or a silence that needed to be filled.
There was a night at my house in Georgia that knew that kind of silence. It was shortly after my mom had passed into glory and my dad was visiting me. My life had changed over the past few months. God was calling me into a new work among the Karen and Chin people of Burma (Myanmar). Dad didn’t fully understand my new life and was concerned for me. There was an undertow of racism in the heart of a man who normally loved all people, but whose heart had been touched by our war with Japan and it tainted how he saw all Asian people. It was understandable. Our history and culture can define us a little too deeply if we let it.
That night I wanted him to just meet and spend time with some of my new friends so he wouldn’t be so worried. I invited my “sister’s” family over for supper. What I didn’t count on was her dropping off her parents and leaving to go run a couple of errands. They had just arrived in America and we didn’t have a whole sentence full of words that we could speak in either language, Tedim or English! So there we sat for the next thirty minutes in silence. Dad, somewhat unwilling to know them. Them, unable to cross the barriers between them. And then I heard a familiar request from my Dad. “Go get my harmonica.”
It was in the next few moments that the miracles took place. He started to play an old familiar hymn to fill the room. And my friend’s mom started to sing in her language. They had found their common ground. He looked at her. She looked at him. And the walls came down.
This afternoon, Bo Shi’s dad gave me a gift. Memories of my dad. Beautiful memories. And tears to wash away a little of the loss that I feel when I think of him. Sometimes a harmonica is all you need to cross the wall between here to there.