What Lasts

Time waits for no one and flows past us like a rushing river. I look back on my sixty four years and wonder where all the decades went: my dysfunctional childhood, my agonizing youth, my blindly adventurous twenties, my blessed partnership, parent sharing and empty nest revitalization with my partner. This winter seems darker as I try to decipher what positive elements of our human existence outlast and endure the ever widening chasm of humanity's leap towards the earth's destruction. I don't mean to sound bleak, but perhaps the past months' cold, wet gloom has seeped inside my bones and gnawed away at the usual warmth of my heart.

But rather than swim in this frigidity of my mind, I decided to attend a series of seminars at the university. It was during one such seminar on how to listen to the music of J.S. Bach that I found a thawing, and a brighter light. The musicologist professor and cellist is originally from Belgium and has the European pedagogical gift of knowing five languages and being his subject area's walking encyclopedia. Every Saturday morning, I sat in the front row and soaked him in. For, in addition to the musical and academic knowledge he was imparting, what was really going on for me was beyond music theory and history; it was my answer to what rises to the top of our human existential cream and what has lasted and will last past our mortality.

On one of these Saturday mornings, as we were about to study Bach's organ music, several students started asking questions about the properties and origin of the instrument itself. Surprisingly, the organ, even though one of the most complicated instruments, has a long, influential history going all the way back to the time of the Greeks. It predates the piano by centuries. The professor's eyes glistened and his face glowed as he proceeded to expound upon what I gathered was one of his favorite topics. After showing us a series of slides from a recent tour of original and restored 16th/17th century organs in Germany, he mentioned how Bach had repaired and tuned many European organs; that these Bach-tuned and German/Dutch-made organs have thrived for centuries. As he described a Brombaugh organ residing at Eugene's Central Lutheran Church, I intuited these instruments and their music were tangible evidence of lasting human value.

Organs were originally built by monks, and it wasn't until the 15th century that organ building became a profession. John Brombaugh, a noted American organ builder, was commissioned by the Eugene's Central Lutheran congregation to build their organ back in 1973. The organ's entire construction took place in Brombaugh's Germantown, Ohio shop, taking him and his twelve assistants over a year (15,000 hours) to build. What impressed me, from the myriad facts the professor presented, was that the white oak used for the organ's main pipes and casings had to be aged for eighty years. Quality preservation and longevity requires patience! The renowned, recently deceased, organist Gustav Lionhardt stated that the Central Lutheran Church organ is the finest on this continent, and barring a bombing, would easily endure to 2500.

What else, besides the countless faces of music, popped up on my journey to find what will outlast our too-short lives? I am a home teacher working with school district students who for one reason or another cannot attend public school. During a recent home session, the student's mother and I got to talking about family memories and history. She quickly thumbed through a nearby bookcase and brought over to the dining table an album with some ancestral photos taken over fifty years ago. These black and white photos told of proud working class farmers, ranchers and loggers from Oregon's back country. They were (of circumstance and necessity) simple folk who put in a solid day's work, and held family in the highest of esteem.

Studying these photos, I thought about how this city family had chosen the same values as their ancestors: They had built a chicken coop in their backyard, had small raised vegetable beds on the side of their front driveway, baked from scratch, and put their children first. I enjoy working with the teenager from this “urban farm family” even though the family's conservative faith ultimately contradicts my own belief in equality for same-sex couples and families. Staring at the faded photos, I knew that beyond our individual bias is a core connection of similarity that lasts.

Every day, I walk into homes from all socioeconomic strata and from a wide range of faiths, and what will always be important is this connection to family and love. What ultimately lasts is being here on this earth at this time and trying to carve out whatever meaning and beauty we humans can.

After our intense discussion on the origins of the organ and J.S. Bach's prominent place in the survival of organ music, the professor noted: “Nothing has replaced the instrument of the human ears.” This statement pushed me into an even deeper revery. What was he talking about? That music could never have been a possibility without the ears hearing the notes, hearing the rhythms and beats? Also, my inner English major ruminated, without words and written language, the notes might not have made it to the page to be preserved for generations to come. Is it language that lasts? But isn't love and family an intangible feeling that doesn't have to use words? But I fear I am getting caught up in a spiral and if I follow its twists and turns, then I will lose my way. My present clarity is this: what lasts is the need for humans to create both that which concretely endures, like music and musical instruments, and that which is intangible and hard to concretely confine, such as love and family. This love, this sharing, this creation of music, art, literature is what I hope will counterbalance our often-times horrendous, violent deteriorating humanscape.

© 2012