4 Points vs. 6 Points: A Battle of Stars

      “Mama's love had always been the kind that acted itself out with soup pot and sewing basket. But now that these things were taken away, the love seemed as whole as before. She sat in her chair at the window and loved us. She loved the people she saw in the street-- and beyond: her love took in the city, the land of Holland, the world. And so I learned that love is larger than the walls which shut it in. ”
      ―Corrie Ten Boom, The Hiding Place

 

 

        After I read The Hiding Place this summer I was forever changed. I was wrought to tears from words on a page. I was so moved because they were real. Someone lived them out--someone endured them with a fearless heart. They were not just lines, once I read them they were living in my mind, and I had no way to deny them anymore. Humanity has always sat in anguish because of the Holocaust. I am no exception. I often sway back and forth wondering what I would have done. Would I have been strong enough to act as Corrie did? I sit eyes on the ground knowing I would never have been so strong. My mother kept telling me to read this book, but I avoided it knowing the grief I would face reading such hell on a page. Yet it is true that hope erupts from songs of heartache, not simply "hopeful" songs. For all the pain, the lives lost, and every time throughout history that lives have been destroyed--I believe there is a song. Or in this case songs...

       Penny and Sparrow's current album, Ten Boom is a radiant tribute to the family that changed the lives of many Jews. You can almost imagine it playing as a soundtrack through the lives of the family with the watch repair shop below. The Beje could have been alight with these gentle melodies. Though not every song is directly connected you can feel the fibers of every sorrow within the instrumentals and voices. "La Reyna" is my personal favorite and a perfect image of the life we leave behind when harder things show up in life. It is the hope and intention of our lives as we move towards the future. Yet sometimes we have no other way to live except to battle the obstacles before us. Sometimes though that battle is gray--it reminds us that we are living. This album captures that in every way just as Corrie did in the pages of The Hiding Place. Sometimes we are forced to endure and in that we are allowed the chance to find beauty again.

 

"Life could get hard, I could lose my job.

Safety is not promised for me.

If everything crumbles I have to pull through.

And I know it's no guarantee." 

-"La Reyna"  by: Penny & Sparrow