So this is one of my favorite pictures to stumble across in the past year. It’s kind of self-explanatory and kind of awesome.
Because what would make a soldier, one who’s obviously on some kind of mission or assignment, loaded to the teeth, stop to play piano?
This weekend at Highland, I shared one of my favorite Dietrich Bonhoeffer quotes. It was after he had stood up to Hitler and been thrown in prison. He was awaiting execution and writing letters. And in one of them this is what he wrote:
God wants us to love him eternally with our whole hearts -not to such a way as to injure or weaken our earthly love, but to provide a kind of cantus firmus to which the other melodies of life provide the counterpoint. One of the themes…is earthly affection…It’s a good thing that the (Song of Songs) is in the Bible, in face of all those who believe that the restraint of passion is Christian…Where the cantus firmus is clear and plain, the counterpoint can be developed to its limits…Only a polyphony of this kind can give life a wholeness and at the same time assure us that nothing calamitous can happen as long as the cantus firmus is kept going…Rely on the cantus firmus.
In the days of Gregorian chant, the Cantus Firmus was the bass line, the center, and all the parts could be added onto that. These parts could adapt and shift as long as the Cantus Firmus, the solid song, this enduring melody, remained stable.
Christians talk about a Christian world view or a Christian philosophy or Christian narrative, and all those things are decent enough ways of talking about the Jesus story, but I have fallen in love with this one. The Cantus Firmus, the song of God, echoing through the ages.
And who has ears to hear it just might surprise you. It might be the gluttons and drunkards, or prostitutes or prodigal sons.
Or sometimes it’s soldiers playing a piano in a field.
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