“To Ada, though it seemed akin to miracle that Stobrod, of all people, should offer himself up as proof positive that no matter what a waste one has made of one’s life, it is ever possible to find some path to redemption, however partial.”—Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain
I never thought Stobrod would be the character of redemption, that he would be who I identified with most. I don’t have a good feeling for what may be coming to him, just as he is uneasy in his own premonitions, but when I read, I highlighted whole passages describing his mind and discovery as he fell into his music and expressed his soul—raw, bare, simple—as it rose and revealed itself in song.
Stobrod’s contemplations struck me in his walk home after playing for the little girl, when he gave something of his spirit as offering to an innocent in her midst of passing:
“Time and again during the walk back to camp he stopped and looked at his fiddle as if for the first time. He had never before thought of trying to improve his playing, but now it seemed worthwhile to go at every tune as if all within earshot had been recently set afire.
The music he had made up for the girl was a thing he had played every day since. He never tired of it and, in fact, believed the tune to be so inexhaustible that he could play it every day for the rest of his life, learning something new each time. His fingers had stopped the strings and his arm had drawn the bow in the shape of the tune so many times by now that he no longer thought about the playing. The notes just happened effortlessly. The tune had become a thing unto itself, a habit that served to give order and meaning to a day’s end, as some might pray and others double-check the latch on the door and yet others take a drink when night has fallen.”
I lived that in my writing, wanting it to be more than the same private stories I wrote only for myself. I discovered, and believed, there was Worth in me to share, if I focused energies, and gave my craft time and effort to improve. There are stories and moods I write again and again, each time in a different way, but if you read them all, you see how little of its message changed. The story, message, comes to me naturally—a habit in act that gives peace to my days—and I write it again and again to express gratitude, hope for goodness, and intended goodwill to all who find and read. These are my simple stories and lines, written of the soul, that gift a steady state of spirit every time I write and share them away.
As Stobrod began to be a student of his craft, I marked his study of the songs that stirred his soul:
“…he began to listen to the words of the songs…admiring how they chanted out every desire and fear in their lives as clear and proud as could be. And he soon had a growing feeling that he was learning things about himself that he had never sifted into his thinking before. One thing he discovered with a great deal of astonishment was that music held more for him than just pleasure. There was meat to it. The grouping of sounds, their forms in the air as they rang out and faded, said something comforting to him about the rule of creation. What the music said was that there is a right way for things to be ordered so that life might not always be just tangle and drift but have a shape, an aim. It was a powerful argument against the notion that things just happen.”
I’ve felt that order in creation: as if by writing and orchestrating our own dreams and hopes into form, we manifest in obeisance to the will of a higher force, that we will a similar Creation by our own small means. Maybe our creation is insignificant. Maybe our creation alters worlds—like Stobrod to the invalid.
Writing became, to me, more than a pleasure. It gave order and a sense of purpose where, before it, I was lost. Maybe I wasn’t as outwardly destitute as Stobrod in his living, but I was inwardly as empty.
When I read, I payed greater attention to the constructions and tellings of Great Artists, the spirit in Hugo, Dostoevsky, Steinbeck: how the great stories were not of Man, but of God in Man. These are the eternal stories, and it tells in Stobrod’s own awakening and soul-salvation. He remains a fallen and imperfect man, but aren’t we all?
Even in our failings, we can still find grace in living the expression of good that is in us. Not one of us is all light. Not one of us is wholly shadow, but we become the greater of the direction in which we choose to move. I believe, if we slow and listen and accept the signs and draw of Spirit, we discover our purpose for which we’re meant, even if only a small part in the shaping of a Higher becoming. When we sense this, when we submit and follow as we perceive our faith to call, our creations become as “easy as a man drawing breath, yet with utter conviction in its centrality to a life worth claiming,” just like Stobrod’s playing.
I believe these small discernments, even if unnoticed to surrounding world, change lives—as if God or the Holy Spirit revealed Itself in living presence…Maybe It has…A darkness falls away and a new beginning is perceived. You give of this spirit “with such utter faith in its substance, in its ability to lead one toward a better life, one in which a satisfied mind might one day be attainable,” the exact perception Stobrod’s playing gave to Ada. Ada saw it in his expression:
“…a saint’s blithesome face, loose and half a-smile with the generosity of his gift and with a becoming neutrality toward his own abilities, as if he had long since cheerfully submitted to knowing that however well he rendered a piece, he could always imagine doing better. If all the world had a like countenance, war would only be bitter memory.”
We are always human, imperfect and capable of improvement, but even with our imperfections, we may still communicate the Wonder and Beauty that is in our souls. Our fallen nature is not the sin. The sin is the despair we do not forgive in ourselves and let alone to fall as our focus and spirit are drawn upward. Salvation is the rediscovery of Joy, living it in outward expression indifferent to its acceptance in a human world. Joy is not something to be compelled, not something we may force or demand but only offer to any and all who may wish to begin with a seed from its bloom and bounty in us.
Maybe it’s a fairytale, but does that matter? How many of Man’s Greatest Truths do we dismiss as fairytale and fictions because Man—himself—cannot explain them into indifference by modern means. Modern man fears Mystery and will do anything to diminish the power that it holds. Mystery defies the known, the expected, and predicted. It’s upended worlds again…and again…and again throughout human history. It is why believers were fed to the lions, thrown into fiery furnaces, hung from a cross…and emerged from each with Greater Life. This is the power of Faith and Mystery, the magic in music and stories written in soul.
We look at a senseless world and forget it is Faith that provides precisely the order absent in our Modern Day. Order is in the Mystery we cannot explain. It’s all still there. It requires only to have the courage to return again to belief and faith in Higher Mysteries.
Have you ever felt that, an airy concept condensing into clarity? Have you ever sensed that breakthrough in light and revelation from a state of knowing one’s self completely, and entirely, lost?
I have. It was my new beginning, inception to an after-Joy found through discovery and embracing of Revelation to what had always been within me…waiting to be found and given free to the world, spreading further the gifts and mysteries of Spirit in this life.