Goodnight, Irene
Vindication of William Alexander Percy
During the early 1940s (I would have been six and seven and eight and nine, the War was going on) as an anthem closing each Sunday service, our choir at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church sang the hymn
O God of love, O King of peace,
Make wars throughout the world to cease;
Our greed and sinful wrath restrain.
Give peace, O God, give peace again.
I loved it and hearing it, just as deeply prayer as hymn, and (I’ve remembered this here before) choir of a dozen or so singing SATB, John Pennel tenor. Haunting, plaintive, the smell of the wood in walls and pews, it still rings in my mind, innocent, naive, believed efficacious.
We don’t sing the hymn anymore. Literally or figuratively, I’ve not heard it in forty years. H.W. Baker’s poem, the words are still there, (#578 The Hymnal 1982), re-set oddly to a tune with melody by Nathaniel Gawthorn and harmony by Samuel Wesley. But it’s no longer heard or sung, and if we sang #578 it would be like “Jesus calls us, o’er the tumult” sung to one of the several lovely but infuriating tunes, the grating sound of gears clashing and fingernails screeching on the blackboard, right words wrong tune, don’t even put it on the schedule. No matter, when the organ strikes up Ton-y-botel, Fr. Crotchety sings “Once to every man and nation” and walks back more than sixty years to another time and place.
That paragraph was rambling, wandering, drifting, which the mind does on its own as the eye sweeps the dark Bay and pauses on the green channel light across the way that blinked at me early mornings. Is that you, Daisy? Why does the mind do these cruel things? Stop. Period. Full stop. Baseline dot.
The thought, my blogpost theme, was peace and the song, hymn, a prayer. Choir postlude, innocent at that age before life happened to me, I believed it had power. The hymn. And the prayer in Morning Prayer every Sunday, the collect for peace:
A Collect for Peace.
O GOD, who art the author of peace and lover of concord, in knowledge of whom standeth our eternal life, whose service is perfect freedom; Defend us thy humble servants in all assaults of our enemies; that we, surely trusting in thy defence, may not fear the power of any adversaries, through the might of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
That isn’t exactly a prayer for peace, is it, but I thought it was at the time. I do remember peace, what it was like, summer 1945 to summer 1950, it seemed so natural at the time. But it wasn’t, was it, it was not natural. Check it out: natural to our God of the Bible, and to our human nature in his image, is war. Joshua, Judges, First and Second Samuel, First and Second Kings, First and ... War is how we settle things and things are never settled and there is never peace, only postponement of the next war to give toddlers a moment to grow up into warriors. War is even progress, its foundation and financing, farm or pasture, hunt or gather, lebensraum, spears, arrows, shields, chariots, jet planes, weather satellites, space exploration, computer based modeling, GPS. War is our peace and Orwell is right. Israel wants war with Iran and will have it, J. Kerry notwithstanding. Humanity could only have been different if Adam had been formed from Eve's heart instead of Eve from Adam's rib so that instead of Cain and Abel, two grandmothers, daughters of Eve, had gone out into the field that day. In which case instead of Ares and Mars we would have been in the image of Eirene, who, as it is, hardly has a Room for her statue, much less a Temple.
The peace of God, it is no peace, but strife closed in the sod.
May the God of peace …
Davis to Courtney 201508040645
Pax anyway.
W+
During the early 1940s (I would have been six and seven and eight and nine, the War was going on) as an anthem closing each Sunday service, our choir at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church sang the hymn
O God of love, O King of peace,
Make wars throughout the world to cease;
Our greed and sinful wrath restrain.
Give peace, O God, give peace again.
I loved it and hearing it, just as deeply prayer as hymn, and (I’ve remembered this here before) choir of a dozen or so singing SATB, John Pennel tenor. Haunting, plaintive, the smell of the wood in walls and pews, it still rings in my mind, innocent, naive, believed efficacious.
We don’t sing the hymn anymore. Literally or figuratively, I’ve not heard it in forty years. H.W. Baker’s poem, the words are still there, (#578 The Hymnal 1982), re-set oddly to a tune with melody by Nathaniel Gawthorn and harmony by Samuel Wesley. But it’s no longer heard or sung, and if we sang #578 it would be like “Jesus calls us, o’er the tumult” sung to one of the several lovely but infuriating tunes, the grating sound of gears clashing and fingernails screeching on the blackboard, right words wrong tune, don’t even put it on the schedule. No matter, when the organ strikes up Ton-y-botel, Fr. Crotchety sings “Once to every man and nation” and walks back more than sixty years to another time and place.
That paragraph was rambling, wandering, drifting, which the mind does on its own as the eye sweeps the dark Bay and pauses on the green channel light across the way that blinked at me early mornings. Is that you, Daisy? Why does the mind do these cruel things? Stop. Period. Full stop. Baseline dot.
The thought, my blogpost theme, was peace and the song, hymn, a prayer. Choir postlude, innocent at that age before life happened to me, I believed it had power. The hymn. And the prayer in Morning Prayer every Sunday, the collect for peace:
A Collect for Peace.
O GOD, who art the author of peace and lover of concord, in knowledge of whom standeth our eternal life, whose service is perfect freedom; Defend us thy humble servants in all assaults of our enemies; that we, surely trusting in thy defence, may not fear the power of any adversaries, through the might of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
That isn’t exactly a prayer for peace, is it, but I thought it was at the time. I do remember peace, what it was like, summer 1945 to summer 1950, it seemed so natural at the time. But it wasn’t, was it, it was not natural. Check it out: natural to our God of the Bible, and to our human nature in his image, is war. Joshua, Judges, First and Second Samuel, First and Second Kings, First and ... War is how we settle things and things are never settled and there is never peace, only postponement of the next war to give toddlers a moment to grow up into warriors. War is even progress, its foundation and financing, farm or pasture, hunt or gather, lebensraum, spears, arrows, shields, chariots, jet planes, weather satellites, space exploration, computer based modeling, GPS. War is our peace and Orwell is right. Israel wants war with Iran and will have it, J. Kerry notwithstanding. Humanity could only have been different if Adam had been formed from Eve's heart instead of Eve from Adam's rib so that instead of Cain and Abel, two grandmothers, daughters of Eve, had gone out into the field that day. In which case instead of Ares and Mars we would have been in the image of Eirene, who, as it is, hardly has a Room for her statue, much less a Temple.
The peace of God, it is no peace, but strife closed in the sod.
May the God of peace …
Pax anyway.
W+