As I set in Aristotle square, strumming my guitar, a little girl with an accordion walked up to me. I had seen her wandering around the streets full of cafes near the waterfront a couple different times, playing her cracked and worn accordion for the diners sitting outdoors.
She jerked her chin up at me as a sign to play her a song and sing a bit. As I strummed for a bit, I wandered why she had stopped and what it felt like to ask someone else to play music for her instead of the other way around. I continued to play and sing and won a slow grin that spread across her face and almost made it to her eyes before it died out again. It was so sweet to see that smile and so sad to see it go! As she moved on I learned that her name was Maria and we wished one another luck in our musical endeavors.
Would it have shocked her if she had known that I was playing out in the busy square for the sheer joy of it, not to feed myself or make money (though if someone had dropped coins, I would have taken them)? Did Maria ever play her accordion for the sheer joy of it?
As I walked back home after this encounter, my guitar slung over my back, I ran into Maria, one of her little sisters that I had met in the square and a brother that I hadn’t yet met. He was selling fans and cigarette lighters from a little basket that he carried. As I watched the little sister hand a water bottle to Maria, I realized that some of the children I had met earlier while playing in the square had been Maria’s younger siblings and that it had been her mom sitting behind me in the grass feeding her baby. I said hello as I walked up and Maria explained something to her brother in Greek. His eyebrows went up and he set down his basket, motioning to my guitar to ask if he could have a turn strumming it as well.
I handed him my pick and he began to strum the guitar and sing at the top of his lungs, drawing one or two smiles along with some clearly disapproving glares. In the midst of this, he accidently dropped the pick down into the sound hole of the guitar. The reactions of the children that followed were immediate and highly disturbing:
“Sorry!” the boy exclaimed, jumping back and using one hand to grab his basket of goods and the other he held in front of his face to protect himself. Horrified looks crossed his sister’s faces and they pulled close to one another. All three of them were about to run, until they realized that I wasn’t angry and wasn’t going to do anything violent to them.
This whole interaction happened so quickly and it took me a minute to register that they were afraid of me as I haven’t really experienced this reaction towards me before. When I did realize, I was so confused as to how I should explain that it was ok, that I wasn’t angry to these children who didn’t speak English. I am pretty sure my face kept switching between a concerned look of “don’t be scared” back to a relaxed smile of, “I am not angry” a couple different times. It took a bit, but they began to relax and the boy set his basket back down and watched me for a minute.
What did their mother think of her children wandering the streets, playing for money? What had caused these children to react so quickly to their fear of my possible anger? Had customers hurt them, their parents, both? It was summer time and school was out, so these kids weren’t skipping school to work, but the boy could have been no older than eight or nine and Maria was probably around ten. Her eyes were the eyes of someone who has seen a lot, experienced a lot, not like the eyes of most ten year olds that I know.
I had watched how people treated these children. Some were kind and asked them their names or offered money (which the children do not get to keep) while most ignored them or glared at them and told them to get lost. No wonder Maria’s eyes were hard! All she knows from her experience of working is that she is annoying or that she is not worth anything.
As I got ready to go, I asked Maria if I could play a song with her. She automatically plunked out the tune that she normally plays for customers, a tired look on her face as she raced through the song. I was too heartbroken at her reaction to play along.
These are the least of these. The unseen. The unwanted. These are the little children. If you encounter them, do not ignore them. Just because you aren’t comfortable sharing money with them, doesn’t mean you can’t interact with them, love them, play with them, talk to them, share the gospel with them. The kingdom of heaven is for them. They need hope. They need Jesus. What are we going to do about it?
