From Sand and Ash

by Amy Harmon

Rebellion was always my biggest ally, though sometimes I hated her. She looked like me and hurt like me, but she wouldn’t let me give up. And when fear took my reasons for fighting, rebellion gave them back.

My father told me once that we are on earth to learn. God wants us to receive everything that life was meant to teach. Then we take what we’ve learned, and it becomes our offering to God and to mankind. But we have to live in order to learn. And sometimes we have to fight in order to live.

I’ve never hated anyone before. Not a single soul. But I’m learning.

“How can you compromise with people who don’t want you to exist? They want us to disappear. I can’t adapt to death!”

“And what have you learned?” he asked, sounding like Father Sebastian. He smirked to soften the effect. “A great deal. But I haven’t learned the most important thing.” “No? And what would that be?” he asked. “Why do people hate us so much?”

They can humiliate us and dehumanize us. But they cannot take our thoughts. They cannot take our talents. They cannot take our knowledge, or our memories, or our minds. In music, there is no bondage. 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.

A rejected infant will often die, even if its basic needs are met. A rejected child will spend his whole life trying to please everyone else, and never please himself. A rejected woman will often cheat, just to feel desirable. A rejected man will rarely try again, no matter how lonely he is. A rejected people will convince themselves they deserve it, if only to make sense of a senseless world. I’m convinced there is nothing worse for the human heart than rejection,

“you only need the Torah and ten Jewish males to have a synagogue. The rest can be cobbled together. My father says it’s because Jews, as a people, have had little chance to settle. We are always on the move. The exodus never ends. We have been unable to make roots. So our roots are in our traditions, our families. Our children.”

When you love someone that completely, you will do anything for them. I feel that way about the church and about God.” He hesitated briefly and then, with a deep breath, said, “And I feel that way about you.”

Confession: I still love my country, even after what she has done.

“I would take it away from you if I could. I would take it with me. I would take your pain and bear it for you.” He would happily endure her sorrow if it meant she wouldn’t have to. “I know,” she said again, as if she truly believed him. “I know you would. But sadly, that is not how pain works, is it? We can cause pain, but we can so seldom cure it.”

The longer he remained on this earth, the more sure he was that mankind had no clue about God or heaven. Not when they used him as an excuse to kill, to punish, to discriminate. He loved God. He felt God’s love in return, but he felt no special claim to that love simply because he’d been raised a Catholic, simply because he was a priest.

“Some days it hurts too much to believe.” “It hurts more not to believe,” Eva whispered back, stroking his hair. “I’m starting to think God is the only reason any of us are still alive.”

“We are at war. War has a way of stripping us of perspective. War is about life and death, and it paints everything in shades of now or never. We do things we otherwise wouldn’t because never is so frightening and now, so comforting.

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.

“I just want, more than anything, to give you peace. To give you rest. To keep you safe.”

with nothing left but love itself, Angelo and Eva held on to each other, and found peace, rest, happiness, and safety. If only for a while.