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| Somebody to Love |
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(Please email questions or repsonses July 11, 2010 Deuteronomy 6: 1-9; Leviticus 19: 1-2, 15-18; Luke 10: 25-37 May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you, O God, who sent your word to live among us. Amen. Nathaniel Ayers is an incredibly talented musician. He came from tough circumstances in a gritty neighborhood in Cleveland, but his teachers quickly saw that his abilities with string base and other instruments far exceeded those of most young people. Nathaniel found himself at the Julliard School of Music in New York City, the pinnacle of training for serious musicians. Steve Lopez is an incredibly talented journalist. He has written prize-winning columns on both coasts - for the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Los Angeles Times. He has written three novels. He was at the pinnacle of his profession when his life took a new direction. Nathaniel Ayers is African-American, conscious of a world where race often affects the way people relate to you. Steve Lopez is from a family whose ancestors arrived a couple of generations ago from Spain and from Italy, yet he knows how quickly angry readers who make assumptions about his last name tell him to “go back to Mexico.” They were strangers to one another, sharing talent, sharing a knowledge of being stereotyped, but not thinking they really shared much with each other. Yet they each had a sense something was missing in their lives. The beginning of this song by the rock group Queen captures a little bit of that. Here are the words of the verse: Each morning I get up I die a little Can barely stand on my feet. Take a look in the mirror and cry Lord, what you’re doing to me. I spent all my years believing you But I just can’t get no relief, Lord! Somebody find me somebody to love. Nathaniel needed somebody to love … and somebody to love him. He had been mugged along the way by mental illness, robbed of his talent, driven from Juilliard, left living on the streets of Los Angeles. He would have understood how that man left lying along the road to Jericho felt in our Gospel story today. Steve needed somebody to love as well. His life was much better off by most measures of society – good job, loving wife, cute two-year old daughter, nice house. But there was also an interior emptiness. He was chasing deadlines for columns, not really ever getting to know people, not ever volunteering to serve others. “I don’t know if I’ve ever been a very good friend to anyone,” Steve wrote. “I’m too busy moving from one city and one job to another, loyal to the rhythms of a column-writing schedule that serves as my metronome.” Some of you might be thinking that the story of these two men sounds familiar. Steve Lopez told their story in the 2008 book The Soloist and then last year, it came out as a movie starring Jamie Fox as Nathaniel and Robert Downey Jr. as Steve. The Madison organization known as Porchlight has organized community reads and viewing sessions around The Soloist this year. The relationship between Steve and Nathaniel started as a chance encounter on the streets. The book opens with these lines by Steve: “I’m on foot in downtown Los Angeles, hustling back to the office with another deadline looming. That’s when I see him. He’s dressed in rags on a busy downtown street corner, playing Beethoven on a battered violin that looks like it’s been pulled from a dumpster.” Steve sees potential for a column in this street musician playing near a statue of Beethoven. Later, when he learns that Nathaniel had attended Julliard, he’s sure there’s a good column material here. What he doesn’t see is how they are about to change each other’s lives. Lots of people had walked past Nathaniel. Some may have noticed his music. They mostly did not want to talk with him. Here he was, standing next to a shopping cart filled with all of his belongings. Clearly homeless. He had written Stevie Wonder’s name on his violin with a felt-tip pen and his edginess suggests he is not mentally doing very well. Better to just keep on walking. The religious leaders in Jesus story knew how to keep on walking. Poor man by the side of the road, penniless, disheveled. Better not to get involved. Besides, they were kind of busy. Maybe they had deadlines to meet as well. For Jesus, the story of the Good Samaritan was the story of one who was an outcast emerging as the hero of the story. Jews did not much like Samaritans, nor vice versa. Yet this Samaritan noticed a fellow human being in trouble and stopped to help. It took Steve Lopez longer to get around to the helping part. At first, he just saw Nathaniel as good fodder for his column. But the more he got to know Nathaniel, the more a relationship began to build. And the more he got to know Nathaniel, the more the frustrations grew in his life. Anyone who has struggled with mental illness – whether it was your own or that of a family member or friend, whether you have had to deal with it directly or have heard about it from others – you know the frustrations that become part of life in navigating these very choppy waters. It’s not that mental illness is so unfamiliar to us these days. About one in 17 Americans lives with a serious mental illness. But just because they are common does not make us any more comfortable with them. I was talking with Steve Schooler, the director of Porchlight this week. He’ll be joining us the last Sunday in September to share some of his insights into issues of homelessness and mental health in Madison. As we chatted, he noted that when Porchlight launched a recent fundraising campaign, their consultants advised them not to talk about mental illness. That turns off people, they said. Better just to talk about homelessness. So there was Nathaniel, playing the violin on the street corner in Los Angeles, just about as oblivious to the people walking by him as they were oblivious to him. Until Steve Lopez stopped by and began to listen not just to the music, but to Nathaniel’s story. Of course, Nathaniel’s story did not come out in straight lines. Steve had to do a lot of reporting to nail down what the facts were. The facts matched the story that Nathaniel was telling. He just could not tell his story in a way that immediately made sense. Except the part that he loved music, that he loved Beethoven. There were moments of triumph in this story. Over time, because of the columns he wrote about Nathaniel, Steve helped Nathaniel get in to hear the Los Angeles Symphony, first at rehearsals, then at concerts. One day, Steve heard that the great cellist Yo-Yo Ma and pianist Emmanuel Axe would be performing in LA. Yo-Yo Ma and Nathaniel were at Juilliard at the same time. And so with help from friends at the symphony, Steve arranged for Nathaniel not only to attend the concert, but to meet Ma afterwards. So imagine that moment of joy as you listen to just about 30 seconds of Beethoven’s Sonata in D Major for cello and piano, played by Yo-Yo Ma and Emmanuel Axe just as they did that night a few years ago as a homeless, mentally ill musician from the streets sat in the audience. Play music After the concert, Steve and Nathaniel waited in a dressing room for Yo-Yo Ma. When the cellist came in, Nathaniel said bashfully, “You’re an amazing player.” Ma asks him, “Did you like it? I know you like Beethoven.” Nathaniel tells Ma he remembers him from Juilliard and talks about performances he heard Ma give there so many years ago. Ma put his arm around Nathaniel. “I want to tell you what it means to meet you,” the world-famous cellist said to the homeless man who had played a two-stringed violin beneath a status of Beethoven on a Los Angeles street. “To meet someone who really, really loves music. We’re brothers.” And then Ma handed Nathaniel his cello and invited him to play it. “Go ahead,” Ma encouraged him, as he left to greet other admirers. And so for a few moments, Nathaniel Ayers played Yo-Yo Ma’s cello. But not every moment in this story was one of triumph. Again, if you are familiar with serious mental illness, you know there are steps forward and then steps backward. Just when Steve thought he had helped organize some of the things to help Nathaniel create a more stable future, Nathaniel turned on him, yelling in a rage. “I don’t ever, ever, ever want to see you back here again,” he screamed at Steve. “Do you hear me? If I ever see your face again, it will be the last time.” A very shaken Steve walked out. “I’ve tried for months to help this man and I’ve accomplished nothing,” Steve writes in the book. In the movie, Steve walks away in total frustration. “I’m done trying. I resign. I resign from everything.” And then he encounters the man who runs the place where Nathaniel is staying, the place Steve helped him get so he would no longer have to sleep on the streets. “You’re never going to cure Nathaniel,” the man tells Steve. “Just be his friend. Just show up.” That’s what the Samaritan did in the Gospel story today. He showed up. He noticed someone in trouble. He got him a place to stay. And then remember what he said as he was leaving? He said he would stop in again on his way back. Few of us here have the professional skills to rescue someone suffering from mental illness. But we all have the capacity to do what the Good Samaritan did on that road to Jericho, to do what Steve Lopez did on that street in Los Angeles. We can reach out as one human being to another, offering what help we can, but mostly recognizing our common humanity and sharing a bit of ourselves as we hear their story. “Just be his friend. Just show up.” Nathaniel not only needed someone to love him. He needed someone he could care about as well. Steve not only needed someone to love him. He needed someone he could care about as well. The same is true for me, for you. So as we move into the time of prayer when we share the joys and concerns we have for those we love listen to a bit more of that song from Queen. The version I’m using is by the cast of the hit TV show Glee, so for those of you who are Gleeks, you might recognize some of the voices. Let the words carry us. Find me somebody to love, find me somebody to love … |