Holly Near introduces one of her songs with a story from the siege of Sarajevo. She said “a cellist went out into the public square and began performing. Someone from the media asked him why he was playing cello while they were bombing. He replied “why are they bombing while I am playing cello?
His public cello performance probably increased the chances of him becoming a target. Conventional thought would call this crazy. “Why are they bombing,” turns the question around. Why do we question the performer? Why do we not question those bombing and killing the people of Sarajevo. His words remind us how quickly humans sometimes accept the norm of waging war.
News of the Sarajevo cellist spread around the world. He became a symbol of courage, hope and importance of striving to maintain humanity amidst violence. Today’s service is an encouragement, a plea, a challenge for each of us to find forms of creative expression that resist oppression, to remember and practice this kind of madness, to find ways to bring the goodness of our humanity into a world where chaos, violence and oppression abide.
The realm of the spirit often determines outcomes. I would have this service be a catalyst for brainstorming and heartstorming that takes us into the stream of limitless possibilities. How shall we resist oppression? How shall we keep our hope and vitality alive in the face of forces that count on us rolling over in conforming obedience?
Today we invoke the genius, the ways and means of the trickster, the wise fool, and of madness as a strategic means to a political end, and as a way to remember, exercise, engage and activate a unity of divine and human spirit. Well-crafted strategies and creative leaps of faith are both valuable. We can lean into our faith in goodness and beauty for its own sake and in service of the Great Mystery that is life. Our tradition invites us to seek the divine, become aware of the life force, to claim it and allow vitality to flow through us connecting and making us aware of something greater than ourselves.
This is what Vedran Smailovic did. Smailovic was the principal cellist of the Sarajevo Orchestra when the Bosnia war began in 1992. In seeking to learn more about Vedran Smailovic and exactly what he did, I spent hours reading online about the Bosnia War.
Although understanding of the history and complexity of the war is not a prerequisite to appreciate what Vedran Smailovic did, I will share of some things re that war because they are relevant to what we are seeing today.
The Bosnia War included some of the greatest atrocities since WWII. I’ve learned that such violence doesn’t emerge out of nowhere, and failure to address it often leads to its continuance or repeated reemergence.
At the time of the war Bosnia and Herzegovina were a republic of Yugoslavia with a multiethnic population—44% Bosniak (Muslim), 33% Serb (Eastern Orthodox), and 17% Croat (Catholic). Bosnia seceded from Yugoslavia. European Community (now EU) and then the US recognized Bosnia’s independence.
The Serbs took to the hills surrounding Sarajevo bringing with them armaments stockpiled, sent from Serbia and began a siege of the city. They blockaded the city, which lead to severe shortages of food, water, and medical supplies. They began a brutal siege destroying the city and killing of thousands including civilians. Medics trying to treat the fallen became victims of the snipers. It became the longest siege in Europe since WWII. The war spread throughout the country. Two million were displaced, over 100,00 killed. In the town of Srebrenica 20000 civilians were displaced and 7800 Bosniaks were massacred and buried in mass graves.
Relevant prewar history: All the ethnic groups in former Yugoslavia have the same ethnic origin. The ethnic identities arose from the different religious traditions; Bosniaks were Sunni Muslims, Serbs were Eastern Orthodox Christian and Croats were Catholic. Religion was repressed by the Communists and religious attendance remains low. However nationalism has solidified these separate identities.
In 1995 UN Peacekeepers failed to protect these Bosnian Moslems. Nearly 8000 were massacred and put in mass graves. In recent years, Bosnian Serb leader Dodik and other have begun a campaign of denial of what were well document war crimes. Dodik is a Russia backed Christian Nationalist accused of exploiting and encouraging the rise of ethnic tensions.
Now with these salient bits of information, let’s go back to the Sarajevo siege. Understand that the population of the city was subjected to years of intense terrorism. Snipers picked off civilians. Grenades thrown into public buildings. In 1992 people were in line for bread from one of the city’s remaining bakeries. Serbs bombed the bakery, killed 22 civilians and injured over 100 others.
This was when Vedran Smailovic chose a response that was heard around the world. He took his cello to the bombed-out ruins and played Albinoni’s Adagio in G Minor. He performed this adagio in its entirety every day for 22 days to honor those who had been killed.
Try to imagine what effect his 22 days of performance may have had on the people of Sarajevo! His was not an intellectual argument. It was not a sermon or a persuasive speech. It was a gift of solace, calm and solidarity. It was an assertion of human dignity, of survival, of decency. There can be no doubt that it touched and inspired his fellow citizens.
Several musicians have written scores and songs crediting Smailovic as their inspiration. Stephen Galloway wrote a novel “The Cellist of Sarajevo” inspired by Smailovic.
Others have followed his example more directly
Karim Wasfi is the main conductor of the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra. He wrote and dedicated “Baghdad Melancholy,” to the fallen souls and everyone who is facing terror.” In 2015 a terrorist attacks in his neighborhood claimed nine lives. Wasfi went to the bomb site the next morning to play his piece. He said he wanted to send a “strong message of peace” and most importantly to “create beauty, civilization and refinement.”
More recently Musician Denys Karachevtsev plays Bach’s “Cello Suite No. 5 in C Minor” in front of a damaged building in Kharkiv, Ukraine, in hopes of raising money to restore the city.
Reflecting on the importance of the creative response, Holly Near said that we never know what our actions will lead to. She reflected that long before there was “the underground railroad” there were enslaved Africans who set out in the middle of the night probably with little more than determination. They knew they were in danger of being caught, beaten or murdered. They had no way of knowing they were the beginning of a movement.
Perhaps the connection to April Fools is unclear. Probably this sermon can’t reach the same mirthful plane of past April Fools sermons. Hopefully some of the other elements of the service delivered a little bit of the whimsy that lifts spirits to a higher plane. Sometimes it is a victory simply to find a moment’s reprieve for things that torment us.
The poet Hafiz wrote:
I sometimes forget that I was created for Joy.
My mind is too busy.
My heart is too heavy for me to remember that I have been called
To dance the sacred dance of life.
I was created to smile, to love, to be lifted up
And to lift others up.
O’ Sacred One, untangle my feet from all that ensnares.
Free my soul that we might dance
And that our dancing might be contagious.
Sometime one laugh rolls off of another. Sometimes our spirits seem to float over green pastures or rest by still waters. Sometimes dancing is contagious. Other times we find no motivation to get on the dance floor. Still other times, we fake it til we make it.
Some moments require us to conjure idols of mirth, our personal jester gurus. Sometimes if we are determined to bring some creative response forward, we need to pump the handle many times before the water of creativity flows.
I believe that we have all been there. So, I implore us to learn to celebrate and give credit for the littlest upwelling of creativity and mirth when it comes to us.
We don’t know where it will all go. We CAN ask ourselves: “Am I taking myself in a good direction right now?” When our best work doesn’t seem possible, we can give thanks for any little thing that comes to us.
Most of you know that in preparation for each service, I reach out to solicit input. Although I do not use the vast majority of readings, songs, or stories that are sent to me, I have cultivated a grateful response trusting that each contribution brings me one step closer to the final product.
Similarly, every time we are even attempting to come up with some creative form of resistance to oppression, we can affirm that we are on the path. We can know that we are connected to brilliant human intelligence all over the planet which is striving to lift us up and out of the muck and mire of oppression. We can know that we are part of a long history of the life force growing and expanding and becoming more complex, creating new possibilities.
Now and then, we might need to sing a few bars. (sings)
“We are going, heaven knows where we are going,
We’ll know we’re there.
We will get there, heaven knows how we will get there,
We know we will.”
And if the flow of progressive force seems to have turned backwards, if greed and corruption, tyranny and bullying seem to have the day, we can remember that the day is not over. The march of time will go on.
Herman Melville wrote: “The past is the textbook of tyrants; the future is the bible of the free. Those who are solely governed by the past stand like lot’s wife crystalized in the act of looking backward, and forever incapable of looking forward.”
The trickster, the wise fool, she who will don a little madness for the sake of liberation, will not be imprisoned in the confusion and distortions of the day.
Is the goal of life to have it all figured out? The totality of all that is, sometimes reduced to a god of our understanding can perhaps not be understood at all. However, God, or the fullness of life can be experience. It can be embraced.
Liberation seems like a lot of work, because it is. However, our perspective might also be skewed until we see life as a problem to be solved, or a task to be completed. We have reflected today on creativity and turning questions around.
Sometimes creativity requires us to be with what is, and some moments seem easier to embrace than others. Allowing our flow means embracing moments of sadness, grief and fear- at least long enough to remember the beautiful dreams of our heart and soul. Grief can be a journey that allows us to come home to what is most dear to us.
When we can embrace whatever flows inside us, we can find a stillness. And in that stillness, there is an endless source of creativity. So when the bully or the tyrant trips us, we rise again knowing that eventually they not us will go down. We will rise as we are connected to the source of all life, to life itself, life flowing eternally. From that place everything is possible, and faith is given.
Benediction (after congregational response)
Having invoked the spirits of the trickster, the jester, the artist, madman and wise fool, may we be inspired to abundant creative resistance.
May we be strengthen to bring goodness, humanity and kindness into the world day by day.
May we know joy throughout the journey,
grief that connects us with our heart
Big big Love that connects us all.
Amen and Ashe’
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