Lenten Meditation for Today : A Piano Teacher, A Girl, and Some Muslim Prayer Beads
A PIANO TEACHER, A GIRL,
AND SOME MUSLIM PRAYER BEADS –
A TRUE STORY OF THE GREAT CIRCLE OF GOD’S LOVE
The story begins some years ago. A little girl is taking piano lessons from a teacher whom she dearly loves, as do most of the students of this teacher known for her devotion to her students. That the young student is Muslim and her teacher Christian (a Christ Church parishioner) is not unusual – this teacher has always taught young people from all backgrounds. What matters to her is the child and the music, not the “packaging.”
Several years in, the girl’s parents make the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, the holy pilgrimage to the holy center of Islam, a journey required of all Muslims at least once in their lives. As a symbol of the family’s love and respect, the Muslim mother brings back to the piano teacher a simple yet beautiful set of Muslim prayer beads, blessed in the holy city of Mecca for that year’s Hajj. A very special gift. Even more so as it is chosen by a Muslim for a Christian.
Long after the Muslim student is grown and gone, the beautiful Muslim prayer beads remain treasured by the piano teacher, hung prominently where she can look at them every day. But as the years piled on, the piano teacher decided these beads should go where they would have new life, to someone who would treasure them as she had treasured them.
And so, the now long-retired teacher asked a friend at Christ Church for help in finding a new home for her treasured beads. She knew this friend is actively engaged in Christ Church’s Interfaith Refugee Ministry and might have some ideas, which, of course, she did. And so the teacher’s friend told us in the refuge ministry about the prayer beads.
In the way that things happen in God’s time, in that same week near Thanksgiving 2024, a new Afghan refugee family came under the Refugee Ministry’s umbrella of help and hope. Shell-shocked from three years living under the Taliban, grieving over two grown children left behind and the deaths of two younger children, thrust suddenly into a radically different country with a radically different culture and radically different language which they did not understand (just as we do not understand their language), this family of four was barely functioning.
But when the piano teacher’s prayer beads were pressed into the Afghan mother’s hand, and when her daughter read her the translation into Dari of the prayer beads’ story, a dam of fear and worry began to break. She, and all her family, suddenly knew, really knew, that they were among friends, friends who were genuinely welcoming them, who would help them, who expected nothing in return, who had deep respect for their Muslim faith.
The simple gift of these Muslim prayer beads, first from a Muslim family to their daughter’s beloved Christian piano teacher, the beads’ years as a treasured possession, the unexpected gift of this treasure from a Christian mother to a grieving Muslim mother she had never met – this completion of a circle of God’s love for all his children, by whatever name they call him, well, isn’t this what we are all called to be about?
Thank you, Alta. Thank you, Dione. Thank you, Paula. Thank you each for your part in this great circle of God’s love.
Ann Barnes
Chair, Interfaith Refugee Ministry