When I was ten, my mother drove me from our hometown of Concord to a violin shop located in Berkeley. 
After finding parking on University Avenue, my mother paused to admire the silks displayed in the Indian fabric and clothing store: shimmery splashes of magenta and chartreuse and gold-embossed tunics and saris. Besides teaching me music, she had also taught me to sew, but today our mission was music, not fabric. Walking another block, we found and entered the narrow storefront where families of violins and violas lined the walls like attentive students, silent and curvaceous, waiting to sing their notes.
We had come to select a full-sized violin for me, since I had moved up over the years from a half-sized to three-quarters-sized violin and was now ready for a full-sized beauty. The salesman pulled down a violin of reddish hue and handed it to me. I put it to my chin and listened as I stroked the bow across the strings, feeling with my heart for the sound I wanted. I shook my head and handed it back to him. He pulled down another violin, and another. The violin I eventually selected was stylish, with a bold voice. The petals of an inlaid mother-of-pearl flower gleamed from the black piece that met the chin rest. I loved that pretty flower as much as I loved the violin’s vibrant resonance: full-bodied, melodic, clean. 
As a pre-teen girl, I prided myself on her bold voice. She was not timid, so I could not be timid when I played her. She could whisper of course, but she was more likely to shout in solid, staccato notes. I loved bringing out the variations in her voice to match my mood. Whatever emotion I wanted to convey, she issued that tone, that feeling, into the world.
population—who fled their homes in terror. She recounts the Guinda del Mayo (the Flight of May, 1980), when she and her neighbors ran for days, finally hiding in thorny underbrush and capping their children’s mouths to avoid detection. “We were surrounded by the troops. They were combing the whole zone, helicopters machine-gunning from above, and we were under the chupamiel bush, praying for our lives.” She says that they had been running away from the massacre that had taken place at the Sumpul River and that they had been without food for two days. “The soldiers were so close that we could see them eating the mangos from the trees. How I longed to eat one of those mangos! We were hungry and so were our children. Instead, we covered the mouths of our babies to keep them from crying. But thanks be to God, even though in our group there were three of us who had recently given birth, our babies didn’t cry. The soldiers were close by, but they didn’t detect us.”
ys, I fling back my covers to look it up and discover that it signifies self-emptying in ancient Greek. Back in bed, I try to sleep, but the notion of self-emptying echoes inside me, reminding me of the Buddhist concept of no-self: not a cipher or empty sack, but a receptivity to Spirit that makes incarnation possible.
womenspiritandfaith 