It's the same in any language

On Tuesday and Thursday nights I work at the 174 Trust with the disabilty projects for youth and adults. Tonight, being a Thursday, I went over to the Adult group where we've been working with the New Belfast Arts Project to create a DVD done entirely by the group members which highlights the group, it's members, and hopefully shares about it's importance so the community can see what an asset it has. Over the past 3 weeks I've gotten to know the group members as they've been shy to get up in front of the camera, or eager to get behind the scenes, or today when they got to try on wigs and laugh at each other. Through conversations with them I've found how much the 174 trust project means to them. It means they can gather once a week for a night out. Many of the members may be in day centers or cared for by family members. Their Thursday night is a night just for them when they can have fun being themselves. They enjoy outings like shopping and other day trips they've gone on through the project. Many of them have made genuinely close friendships through the meetings, just by the reassurance of a strong voice saying their name with an inviting tone. Being around this group you cannot help but laugh, smile, and be enfolded in the sincerity of friendship. The craic is great with one man trying to get me to sing Merle Haggard, another ribbing me about not noticing his glasses, and me trying to get the girls to jump in front of the camera for a glamor shot.

Tonight someone brought a keyboard and one of the members, who is blind and uses a seeing eye dog sang for us. She sang 2 hymns for us and then another lady got up and sang 2 traditional Irish songs. One about marrying a boy she loves and the other about a sailor. The coordinator went around and asked people if they knew other songs and when she came to me she remembered that someone somewhere must have let it out of the bag that I sing. So I went back to the first performer for suggestions and even asked her to join me in a hymn, thinking surely I would know one she knew. After naming several with no luck of recollection on my part, we were about to sing "White Christmas" when I remembered "How Great Thou Art" from singing it in Alpha and Sunday nights in Whitehouse. We sang the hymn together, three verses, and she even harmonized on the last part. As we sang, other members joined in, some who are almost nonverbal and some whom I have not spoken with much before. I looked around the room at the mouths moving and remembered a moment in high school during a service project.

We were volunteering at a nursing home and there was a woman doing table games with us who would not respond at all. She wouldn't play or speak to us and the nurses seemed content to let her sit there. Then we started singing some songs and this woman came alive. She remembered words to songs with perfect clarity and sang with beautiful precision. That moment was an inspiration to me, when I first thought I would do music therapy for geriatric patients. Now as I sit here with my masters degree in a box somewhere back home, a degree that has little to do with music and more with a passion for sharing apprecation for people with differences, I am amazed at how this moment happened tonight. It was a gift, a perfect gift, that truly made me smile from the inside out. We all have differences, sometimes those of us without a "disability" often have deeper differences. But the language of friendship, the communication of fellowship in the commonality of a song, and the beauty of a hand or heart extended in respectful desire of knowledge of each other is the same no matter who you are.