I Am the Violinist in the Bomb Shelter
The Synergy of Personal and Collective Evolution
By
Stephanie Mines, PhD
Copyright 4/22
Both Climate Change & Consciousness and the TARA Approach for the Resolution of Shock and Trauma, organisms I birthed and consider as my daughters, are conceived with the faith that personal evolution is synergetic with the evolution of the living organism of the earth. This faith assumes the ineffable bond between humanity and all aspects of nature, a kinship that is known to us physiologically, despite how we may have displaced it. Remembering who we are and our primordial family is, therefore, a viable solution to all the crises that inundate us now. This solution depends on the evolution of consciousness, fueled by the resolution of personal and collective trauma. This is entirely within the realm of possibility. It is why I birthed Climate Change & Consciousness and the TARA Approach.
The congruence of our current world struggles with my history and how I mirror both the suffering, the defiance and the transmutation of overwhelming threat, convinces me that my premise bears verisimilitude.
As Vera Lytovenchenko, the violinist depicted here in a bomb shelter in Kharkiv portrays, along with her many counterparts, like Ilia Bondarenko in Kyiv, and countless unknown artists and musicians, poets and dancers, singers such as the little girl who stood on a box to render the songs from Frozen to the frightened Ukrainians huddled together, silencing them with her tenderness, art is activism. It ignites the evolution of consciousness, sometimes instantaneously.
Vera Lytovenchenko says, “I don’t need pity. I don’t need to complain. I just need the bombing to stop so that we can rebuild We will rebuild. I need the war to end.” I share this poem with that same spirit.
I AM THE VIOLINIST IN THE BOMB SHELTER
I rise with the rush of love in my fingertips,
Each digit insistent, grasping to touch the world
My eyes are draped with aching to see renewal,
The springtime of humanity,
The stunned re-membering of the truth:
The realization of unity.
Just as I longed for my mother and father to stop killing each other,
Just as I waited and waited for them to say,
“We forgot about you, precious vulnerable beings, please forgive us.
Let us repair the world together, as our faith decrees,”
So do I long for this awakening.
That never happened.
They tore each other apart, shredding the words
Unity, human family, protection
Into strips of paper with letters torn asunder,
That I have spent my whole life reassembling.
I rise with the rush of love in my fingertips.
The motion of reaching is so familiar.
I think of the violinist in the bomb shelter,
Or the cellist playing in the rubble of his homeland,
Or the child in the refugee camp standing to sing
And everyone becomes silent, recalling original brilliance.
I am the violinist in the bomb shelter
Who continues to play whether or not anyone listens.
I am she who has become
The violin of the Mother, delivering a sonata of her
Longing to reunite with her children
And feel them close to her again.
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