The Mission Field

If you haven’t read this article from the Washington Post, it about sums up the mission field outside your front door.

Basically, the Post did an experiment on American distractedness and inability to see the beauty right before our eyes. They placed Joshua Bell, famous violinist, in L’Enfant Plaza (Washington D.C.) and chronicled him playing for 43 minutes, seven pieces from Bach to Shubert. 1097 people walked by, 3 or 4 stopped and overall folks threw a whopping $32 into his violin case. So sad. One of the world’s greatest, yet people were to busy to even pay attention. But it says something about our inability to see with eyes that are not stuck in the pager-cellphone-ipod-blackberry-calendar-wethinkwearesodamnbusy
-world.

Is it possible for we, in the West, to see the Good the True and the Beautiful? Can we see He who is Good and True and Beautiful?

4 thoughts on “The Mission Field

  1. Dang, I’d drive all the way downtown to see JB play for free. Now, what if they had put Jordin Sparks there singing? Don’t you think more people would have stopped? Maybe it’s not so much that they’re too disinterested to stop, but they’re too disinterested in what was being offered…which is a whole other kind of sad.

  2. $32 for 43 minutes? That’s $44/hr, or about $80,000/yr. Not bad for a street musician.

    hehehehehehe…..

  3. The article does mention that, near the end of the time he was playing, one lady recognized him and threw in a $20. Otherwise, he would have made only 12 bucks, or about $16 an hour — but that was rush hour, and there are only two of those per day. I would guess he would do no better than poverty wages.

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