Dear Friends,
On a January day in 2007, the famed violin virtuoso, Joshua Bell, played for 45 minutes at the entrance to the L’Enfant Plaza Station of the subway line in Washington, D.C. He was part of an experiment put together by Washington Post writer Gene Weingarten. Bell, a winner of the Avery Fisher Prize for outstanding achievement in classical music who regularly has over 200 concerts a year, was to spend part of a morning playing incognito during a morning rush hour. Weingarten set up the event “as an experiment in context, perception and priorities — as well as an unblinking assessment of public taste: In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?” He won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the event.
Over a thousand morning commuters passing through the Metro stop were, without publicity, treated to a free mini-concert. Bell performed six classical pieces (two of which were by Bach) during the 45 minutes on his handcrafted 1713 Stradivarius violin (for which Bell reportedly paid $3.5 million). As Weingarten described the experiment: “Each passerby had a quick choice to make, one familiar to commuters in any urban area where the occasional street performer is part of the cityscape: Do you stop and listen? Do you hurry past with a blend of guilt and irritation, aware of your cupidity but annoyed by the unbidden demand on your time and your wallet? Do you throw in a buck, just to be polite? Does your decision change if he’s really bad? What if he’s really good? Do you have time for beauty? Shouldn’t you? What’s the moral mathematics of the moment?”
Three days earlier, Bell had played to a full house at Boston’s Symphony Hall, where good seats went for $100. But on this day, he collected just $32.17 for his efforts, contributed by a mere 27 of 1,097 passing travelers. Only seven people stopped to listen, one man stayed nine minutes, and just one of them recognized the performer. Most people walked by quickly without even turning their heads. You can watch a two-minute segment of the experiment on YouTube.
On this January day thirteen years later, I think it is good for us to think about how often we miss the wonder God puts into our lives because we are too busy and too caught up in our own worries to notice. Hopefully, 2020 taught us to treasure life, our loved ones, and the world around us a lot more than we did before. Perhaps, the presence of a virus taught us that life could be short and we needed to appreciate each moment since it could be one of our last. Maybe, it encouraged us to say “I love you” frequently to those we love.
The beginning of a year is the time when we make resolutions to change how we will live the new year. Can we resolve to live in such a way that we would not miss the beauty that more than 1,000 people missed on that January morning in Washington, D.C.? Can we resolve to notice God’s wonder for a just a few minutes each day? Can we pause for a moment each day to sense that we are loved…by God and others…and say “thanks”?
Peace,
Fr. Damian