A Candle Burning; A Song Still Singing

Amazing, the resilience of the human heart -- how hopeful and trusting is the human spirit.  Perhaps, on second thought, it is not so much the "human heart/spirit" but rather that persistent glimpse of the Divine Image indelibly stamped upon us, animated by the holiest of breaths, that imbues us with the capacity to look beyond the brokenness of the darkened moment to a brighter light just over the horizon.  However common and expected that spiritual ruggedness might be in theologians, it is the more viscerally approachable,  consistently steady effluence of poets and musicians.  

Throughout the national grief of recent days, these are a few of the songs that have been humming through my soul:

And though this world, with devils filled,
should threaten to undo us,
we will not fear, for God hath willed
his truth to triumph through us.
Martin Luther -- "A Mighty Fortress is Our God"

This is my Father's world.
O let me ne'er forget
that though the wrong seems oft so strong,
God is the ruler yet.
Maltbie D. Babcock -- "This is My Father's World"

  It was as if an earthquake rent 

    The hearth-stones of a continent,
        And made forlorn
        The households born
    Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

    And in despair I bowed 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!"

    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."
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow -- "The Christmas Bells"

Death may raise its voice today 
O but life will have its say 
Speaking in lovers and in children 
In poets pens and philosopher’s visions 
Life is a planet’s daring dream 
Earth’s devotion, spoken in green 
Peter Mayer -- "Green"

You say you see no hope, 

you say you see no reason

We should dream that the world would ever change

You're saying love is foolish to believe

'Cause there'll always be some crazy with an Army or a knife

To wake you from your day dream, put the fear back in your life

Look, if someone wrote a play just to glorify

What's stronger than hate, would they not arrange the stage

To look as if the hero came too late, he's almost in defeat

It's looking like the Evil side will win, so on the 

Edge Of every seat, from the moment that the whole thing begins

It is....

Love that mixed the mortar

And it's love who stacked these stones

And it's love who made the stage here

Although it looks like we're alone

In this scene set in shadows

Like the night is here to stay

There is evil cast around us

But it's love that wrote this play...

For in this darkness love can show the way

David Wilcox -- "Show the Way"  

And then this, from the testament of the season, spoken, almost as a spiritual requirement, with a flickering candle in our hands:



The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

John 1:5



Indeed.



This is, after all, Advent, the season in which our very job description as children of God's imagination is to stand somehow in the breach between the way the world is and the way God intends it to be and both name the difference, and stir up momentum for a mass exodus from the former as pilgrims toward the latter.



Having found that music nourishes the journey, here's my advice:  keep singing as you light the way.