Breath to Change the World

May 8, 2009
Rabbi Seymour Rossel

     May 3, 2009, was the 90th birthday of a legend. The man who theoretically needed to get up enough breath to blow out 90 candles is a man who could always actually get up enough breath to change the world around him. When he first lifts up that instrument, whether it is a banjo or a guitar, you can see his hands as clear as day. But when those fingers start pressing, lifting, and plucking strings, pretty soon you see only a blur that sends forth a sound that sets a house full of folks, an auditorium of admirers, a park of disciples, singing to the rhythm of picking and strumming and the infectious baritone that comes from the smiling lips of the one and only 90-year-old master of folk music, Pete Seeger.

     Now when I say that he has enough breath to change the world around him, I do not mean that Pete Seeger is a world-shaker like some of the people he admires. Seeger has painted a picture of war's uselessness in his song, "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" but it has not toppled governments like Gandhi's nonviolence. He has given us a tune for words from Ecclesiastes, "To everything, turn, turn, turn/There is a season," but it did not shape a movement like the "I have a dream..." speech.

     Even so, the big moments are not the only ones worth dreaming. Pete Seeger teaches the importance of every single moment when he starts his audience singing, encouraging them with the words, "Don't worry. There is no such thing as a wrong note." Not that Seeger's life has been without mistakes. He knows he has made many mistakes -- even some big ones. Mistakes, though, are not the price of moving forward, he says, they are the way to hear new harmonies. If enough people hit wrong notes, the result can be pleasing and musical. Just hitting notes is important. Right and wrong get balanced out in a true democracy, Seeger says. Hitting notes just makes the music grow.

     Back in 1949, Pete Seeger and the great black singer and actor Paul Robeson offered a joint concert in Peekskill, NY. Peekskill then was an upstate village with an active Ku Klux Klan chapter, so a mob of vigilantes stoned the crowd. Hundreds of people were injured. Maybe that was a mistake, a wrong note. Seeger and Robeson did not perform that day to cause anyone injury, but maybe they were naïve to imagine Peekskill was a good location for their concert. On the other hand, the folks who were injured may have felt they made an important contribution to freedom and democracy just by being there and listening to Seeger whose music had been "blacklisted" and Robeson whose music had been "white-listed." Those who were not injured may have shared similar feelings. For the crowd, the songs were an expression of harmony -- harmony with voices that others wanted to silence. All of us need as much to listen to voices we disagree with as we do to hear the soothing tones of voices saying what we want to hear.

     After the stoning incident, Seeger took some rocks that had been thrown and used them in building his fireplace at home. In that way, he said, the stones meant to hurt and maim eventually served to protect the flame. To build on our mistakes is essential -- not to forget them or to reject them, but to make them part of our foundation. We need that kind of wisdom.

     Ninety years of building is a lifetime of learning and teaching, of changing and reaping, of repairing and assessing. Seeger is a master at thinking through his mistakes to hear new harmonies. He tells about an Arab he met in Lebanon, who had a special way of counting. It works like this:

If you have your health, you can put down the number "1." If you have a family, put a zero beside it. Now you have the number "10," so think how lucky you are. If you have a house or land, you can put down another zero. Now you have "100!" How much more can you expect? Well, if you have a good reputation and a good name for yourself in the world, then you can put down one more zero -- now, you've got it all: a full "1000!" But if you take away the one, all you have left is three zeroes.

     Without health, which is the number "1" thing, you have zeroes. But for Seeger number "1" is the health of the spirit. Anyone who does harm to others is ill, unhealthy. Anyone who does harm to the world by polluting it or perverting it is ill, unhealthy. Anyone who is unhealthy can have all the land and reputation and family in the world and still have nothing but a handful of zeroes.

     We need to guard our spiritual health by watching our feelings, protecting our souls, doing kindness to others, forgiving others when they act in unhealthy ways, practicing self-restraint, and being persistently flexible enough not to judge our friends and neighbors harshly.

     Life is not merely reaching a specific age, even the age of ninety. Life is an issue of being healthy every moment we live. As long as we draw breath, we can sing in harmony. As long as we have strength, we can turn every seeming sour note into new musical thinking. Being healthy is just another way of saying being good and kind and well-meaning. It's the best we can be no matter what age we reach. That's what Pete Seeger has done to help change the world with his breath; and that is what each and every one of us can do to help change the world with our breath, too.

     Every one of us can sing without worrying. There is no such thing as a bad note, only a new harmony:

To everything, turn, turn, turn,
There is a season, turn, turn, turn,
And a time for every purpose under heaven.

A time to be born, a time to die;
A time to plant, a time to reap;
A time to kill, a time to heal;
A time to laugh, a time to weep.
To everything...

A time to build up, a time to break down;
A time to dance, a time to mourn;
A time to cast away stones,
A time to gather stones together.
To everything...

A time of love, a time of hate;
A time of war, a time of peace;
A time you may embrace,
A time to refrain from embracing.
To everything...

A time to gain, a time to lose;
A time to rend; a time to sew;
A time to love, a time to hate;
A time for peace, I swear it's not too late.
To everything...

And let us say: Amen.