Wind and Souls

At the church I am currently attending, the organ is under construction. From the pulpit, the Rector explained that the 100 year-old blower needs a tune-up. The organ, he explained, is truly a wind instrument. The blower forces air through the network of pipes, and the keyboard simply directs that air as needed to produce sound. In this way, he explained, the organ has a sort of soul – a breath that flows through it and gives it life. Take away the breath, and you’re left with an empty shell.

This month I am rotating with a thoracic surgery team. We spend most of our time operating on lungs – the organ that is responsible for blowing our air, and distributing the oxygen throughout our bodies. Maybe this is really the seat of the surgical soul, just as the blower provides the soul of the organ. Take away the lungs and the oxygen they provide, and you’re left with a lifeless body.

When we resect part of a lung to remove cancer, the remaining lung tends to leak air into the chest. We place chest tubes so that this doesn’t compress the remaining lung and crush the heart. We call this an “air leak” – maybe now I’ll think of it as a soul leak.

I feel like my soul has been leaking out of me for some time. Maybe I need a chest tube so that my heart won’t be crushed. Then again, maybe it’s too late, and the soul that was such a part of me is forever changed because some of it has simply leaked away.

The organ repair will take at least all summer, the rector reports. How long do you think my repair will take? Is my soul easier or harder to fix than a 100 year-old organ? Certainly mine takes up less space on this planet. And given the size of the congregation, I’m sure many less people care about mine.

At about 3 AM today one of our patients died. Her cancer had just run too wild, and our surgeries were not enough. Her soul was destroyed. I had to tell her daughter.

Fortunately, the church I attended is grand enough to actually have a second organ in the back of the church. The postlude was the marvelous prelude and fugue in E by Bach. The organ – with its pipes and wind and organist – was spectacular. I knew an organist who once told me that she chose to play Bach whenever her soul was troubled, and that somehow Bach’s music had a way of helping her make sense of all that seemed wrong. Today I felt that same sense, as I sat there and let the music pour over me – a perfect manifestation of soulful music. Somehow the organ made sense. It was inspiring to literally feel the soul of the organ, and to image one day my own soul being just as grand.

I can’t wait.