HUSH,
THERE'S BALM IN GILEAD
Today I received as a gift, Volume 5 of the HUSH Collection. It features the Trinity College Choir. This HUSH collection of music is intended to soothe and calm children (and their parents) during medical procedures. As a bonus, the proceeds of the CD sales support the work of the Childrens’ Hospitals around Australia. A Scotch parent, Dr Catherine Crock, a physician who works with children with cancer at the Royal Children’s Hospital is behind this award-winning project. Actually, the first four volumes are in the CD player in my car. They provide the calmest approach to engaging peak hour traffic!
As I listened to the music I thought about a song which features in a DVD we use while exploring relationships in Year 10 Christian Ed – The Spitfire Grill. This is a Lee David Zlotoff movie with the tag line ‘Into a town without a future comes a girl with a past.’ The town is Gilead, Maine, and the girl is Percy Talbot (Alison Elliot), newly released from prison, seeking a fresh start. This triple-award-winning film presents valuable insights into a diverse range of relationships highlighting inimical and beneficial attitudes. The song featured at the film’s denouement is the African American spiritual, Balm in Gilead, based on Jeremiah 8:22: Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is there no healing for the wound of my people?
Perhaps unsurprisingly, there are several towns called Gilead in the USA. Another is in Iowa where Marilynne Robinson's set her highly acclaimed novel Gilead’which won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and more recently the 2006 Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion. Having listened to this gentle and sanguine author on NPR I now want to read her book!
Two other true stories about which I am reading at the moment relate to issues of stress at a macro level in Africa. One is House of Stone by UK journalist Christina Lamb and the other is An Ordinary Man by Paul Rusesabagina. Both are extraordinary books dealing with social malignancies. Supporters of the Kapumfi Project would find the insights of both books enlightening, and sense the wonderful preventative potential of a good school.
House of Stone is about Zimbabwe’s catastrophic decline as productive farms are reduced to wasteland. We were privileged to have a Zimbabwean speak to us recently. Nozi Khanda is a blind black Zimbabwean graduate of Melbourne University. She spoke about ‘overcoming fear’. I was proud of how well the boys listened to her. They gave her a terrific ovation.
An Ordinary Man is the voice of sanity from a maelstrom of malignancy. It is Paul Rusesabagina’s first-hand account of how he saved the lives of 1,256 people in his Kigali Hotel during the Rawandan genocide. His story first featured in the movie Hotel Rawanda and is as gripping and grotesque as it is wonderful. In such a world one wonders, how can we encourage our children to face the future with hope and confidence?
Every mother’s assurance, ‘Hush, everything will be alright’ could easily be taken as massively deceptive. Except that the eye of faith discerns that the ancient prophet was right. There is a balm in Gilead! Jesus, the very embodiment of Israel’s hope, is the good physician. To learn more about HUSH go to www.hush.org.au http://www.hush.org.au/ or contact Dr Catherine Crock directly on 0425 762 350, meantime; stay calm.
Yours on behalf of the good physician(s),
Graham Bradbeer
CHAPLAIN
Graham Bradbeer
|
