Your hope a fire

I was resigned to foregoing the concert. “Sara Groves will be here again someday,” I told my friend Emily wistfully. “I just don’t think I can afford 24 hours off next weekend.” “Sara Groves – are you kidding me? Chelsea, just go.”

Emily knows me well enough to understand that Sara is more like my long-lost older sister than anyone else I’ve never met. She was my closest friend in Europe this summer, the one who was always as close as my laptop. She reminds me in all her songs that she understands my life and offers a better way to see it. So go I did, last weekend, to the Art.Music.Justice concert near Harrisburg, and found it well worth the while.

The drive there and back was stunning. I’m enraptured by rural Pennsylvania because it reminds me of Vermont, and I felt like a leaf peeper hypnotized by the dazzlingly vibrant leaves transparent in the intense sunlight. Arriving at the concert, I met up with Penn State friends (Ruth, Catherine, Dana, and others) likewise involved in International Justice Mission (IJM), an antislavery group and one of the concert’s beneficiaries. My parents even decided last-minute to join me.

I knew the concert couldn’t top the five years I’ve spent getting to know Sara’s music. Her portion was too brief, but it had what I wanted: stories. Much of her latest album has puzzled me, and at the concert, I realized how much of it is about social justice. She told of Elisabeth, an Asian girl forced into prostitution, and others she’s met through her support of IJM. She spoke of her heroes and people near to her heart. It went beyond her music, just as I had hoped. I enjoyed the other artists, too: Derek Webb I’ve liked for a while, and I’m hoping for more of Sandra McCracken and Brandon Heath soon.

Afterward, I spent the night with my friend Catherine’s family. Her mom greeted us with, “Hi, I’m sporcling!” Sporcle, as I discovered, is a cache of addictive quizzes that makes you fill in lots of blanks. We beat one on Oh, Susanna, and got pretty far on Symphonic Orchestra Instruments, but were crushed on the Periodic Table. Catherine’s parents remind me a lot of Catherine, and so I loved them instantly. It was also great hearing teacher insights from her new husband Greg, now in his second year of teaching music. We proved together that water tastes better when sipped through neon straws.

I thought I had worked ahead enough, but it turns out that I was correct in my initial hesitation about affording time for this trip. All this week, my German students suffered from my lack of preparation, despite my best efforts to recover. It’s a shame for them and makes me feel guilty, but I can’t regret the trip. It reminded me of so much that is important to me.

Your courage asks me what I am afraid of
(what I am made of)
And what I know of love...