From Sand and Ash

by Amy Harmon

Music is a door, and the soul escapes through the melody. Even if it’s only for a few minutes. And everyone who listens is freed. Everyone who listens is elevated.

The war had hurt Florence—aged the ageless city—and her head was bowed with long-suffering, like a widowed bride.

“Make me know your ways, O Lord. Teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation. For you, I wait all the day.”

“The more I see, the harder it is to believe in God. What kind of priest can I be if I don’t believe in God anymore?” he confessed, his voice thick. “Some days it hurts too much to believe.”

Life is like a long note; it persists without variance, without wavering. There is no cessation in sound or pause in tempo. It continues on, and we must master it or it will master us.

“Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me. Then I will teach transgressors your ways, so that sinners will turn back to you.”

“Life is hard. What an understatement! Hard is too mild a word for the trouble we’ve seen. Life is hell shot with just enough heaven to make the pains of hope all the sharper. Life is impossible. Ugly. Agonizing. Inexplicable. Torture.”

Sand and ash. The ingredients of glass. Such beauty created from nothing. It had been something Babbo had marveled about and something she’d never understood. From sand and ash, rebirth. From sand and ash, new life. With every song and with every prayer, with every small rebellion, Eva felt reborn, renewed, and she vowed to press on. She vowed to push back, to make glass from the ashes, and that courage was a victory in itself.

Fear is strange. It settles on chests and seeps through skin, through layers of tissue, muscle, and bone, and collects in a soul-size black hole, sucking the joy out of life, the pleasure, the beauty. But not the hope. Somehow, the hope is the only thing resistant to the fear, and it is that hope that makes the next breath possible, the next step, the next tiny act of rebellion, even if that rebellion is simply staying alive.

It is one thing to kill someone. It is another to degrade and humiliate, to strip away a person’s dignity like stripping away flesh. One made a man a murderer. The other made him a monster.

Our immortality comes through our children and their children. Through our roots and our branches. The family is immortality.

And strangely enough, I find myself convinced that God loves his children—all his children—that he loves me, and that he provides moments of light and transcendence amid the constant trial.

This war isn’t about two equal but opposing forces who disagree. This war is about right and wrong, good and evil. And evil must be stopped. It will be stopped.

but I wonder sometimes what would have happened if everyone without a choice had made a choice anyway. If we all chose not to participate. Not to be bullied. Not to take up arms. Not to persecute. What would happen then?”