Archives for 10.23.15

There are a lot of sounds in an orphanage of 300 children. Some rooms of toddlers are full of chaotic noise of toys crashing together, pots of porridge being banged with spoons, crying by little ones who just got bumped or felt ignored, ayis chatting away in Mandarin to each other and to children. All the noise echoed in the hallways off tiled floors and bare walls, making it seem much louder than it should. Other rooms seemed to be missing sound altogether. Children in those rooms lay quietly on the floor. Ayis sat beside them folding towels that serve as cloth diapers. The absence of noise in those places seemed to create a chaos in and of itself. They made me long for music, just a quiet melody to fill the quiet with something beautiful.

My heart let out a sigh when we were led to this place.

Here, a local woman comes every Friday morning from 9am until 10:30am. She pulls up a stack of papers where little socked feet can rest. And, she shows little fingers where to touch little keys and teaches little eyes to read little symbols on a page. She receives no compensation for what she does; she just comes on her own volition. The orphanage has no budget for piano lessons. And, there in the middle of the chaotic noise and chaotic silence, she helps little people create beautiful melodies all their own.

In that moment of hearing a simple tune played by a few tiny little fingers with a few obvious mistakes, it was if I heard a perfect symphony, and I applauded when it ended in kind.

There’s always something beautiful if we look for it. There’s always hope, always something to admire and always something that leads us to say, “There is good here. He is good here.”