Originally published on March 24, 2022 in Beyond the Nest’s weekly newsletter.

On Sunday, I saw a story on ABC News about a Ukrainian violinist named Vera Lytovchenko who is performing in the war-torn basement bomb shelter of her apartment building in Kharkiv for friends and neighbors seeking shelter there. The videos she posts online have gone viral.

Vera, who is a member of the Kharkiv City Opera Orchestra, dresses in performance attire, as if entertaining on the most elegant of world stages: Her audience deserves nothing less. Many have written, thanking her

When asked why she plays, she responds of her viewers, many of whom are in the Ukraine, “My video helped them to be not so alone and to feel more strength…to be able to distract for several minutes, and to not just think about war, to think about something better.”

She does not plan to leave her city, in spite of the fact that bombs have exploded very close to where she is sheltering. 

When I posted on social media last week about an initiative the school at which I work had undertaken to raise money and send medical supplies to help the Ukrainian people, a man name Ilya posted the comment, “Thank you so much,” in Russian.

We exchanged posts, and he wrote he knows many people in Rochester from the Ukraine. I commented how hard it is to see what is happening there and to wish there was more that can be done, or to have family or friends in the Ukraine and feel helpless to help them.

His comment was priceless: “Doing a little is doing a lot. Small impacts eventually turn into big ones.”

How right he is. Whatever you do to “light one candle,” shining light through the darkness, as Vera does, matters. It can inspire comfort or courage. I think of the Peter, Paul and Mary song “Light One Candle,” written so many years ago, that I find so relevant today:

“Light one candle for the strength we all need
To never become our own foe!
And light one candle for those who are suff’ring
Pain we learned so long ago!
Light one candle for all we believe in,
Let anger not tear us apart!
And light one candle to bind us together
With peace as the song in our heart!”

May we all be the bearer of candles.

P.S. It greatly saddens me that, as of September 2023, Peace has not yet been sung.