Opus 2023-285: The Music Speaks

I am driving a used car that is new to me.  It came with a cassette deck.  I knew it was old but I am finding that even the thrift stores don’t bother carrying old cassettes.  I finally found a place that provided me with a couple of tapes of Christmas music.  I put it to use this morning as I ran an errand.

“I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” came up and I tried to figure out who was singing.  At the next red light I looked and found out it was Johnny Cash.  Good deal.  As I listened to the words it hit me how appropriate this old hymn was for today.  

The song starts off on a positive note but that changes in the third verse,

    And in despair I bow’d my head.  “There is no peace on earth,” I said,
    “For hate is strong, and mocks the song of peace on earth, good-will to men.”

Does that sound like the world we live in?  The song was written in 1864 according to my hymnal.  All right all you public school graduates out there, what was happening in 1864?  Give up?  Oh, you know.  For the rest of you it was in the second half of the American Civil War.  Bloody battles were a regular news item.  Lists of fatalities were published daily.  Brother was turned against brother.  To many it seemed like there would be no end.

And you think we have it bad.

But Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was not done after the second verse.  He goes on to express the hope that we all should cling to,

    Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:  “God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
    The wrong shall fail, the right prevail, With peace on earth, good-will to men.”

Don’t despair.  Don’t give up.  Keep being a source of light and reflect the Light.  

Is it any wonder that our secular, pagan culture is working to remove Christmas and its music from our culture?

Merry Christmas.

homo unius libri