Musings

This Is My Song

My wife, Roberta Maran, loves "This Is My Song", Lloyd Stone's lyrics to Sibelius' tune, Finlandia.  She mused that it would be wonderful if it was sung during Barack Obama's inauguration as President on January 20.  So we decided to try to make that happen - and short of getting the song into the inauguration program, try to get people to sing it after the ceremony.  To that end, the lyrics are shown below - in hopes that there will be a grass-roots sing-a-long around the world in homes, schools, and work places after Obama is sworn in.  And in houses of worship on the weekends before and after the event!

The original lyrics in Finnish were fiercely nationalistic, reflecting the country's struggle for its own identity during a time of oppression by Russia.  Stone transformed an almost xenophobic song into a hymn of international understanding, a beautiful expression of that most exalted kind of patriotism which honors one's own country while honoring the pride of citizens of other lands.  

It's hard to exaggerate the significance of January 20, 2009, for the citizens of the other lands celebrated in Lloyd Stone's words.  Whether we knew it or not when we cast our votes in November, we were electing the leader of not only our own country, but of the whole human family.  What better way to honor the billions of people who had hope, but no choice, in that election than to sing this song together?  

Perhaps it is no accident that both Barack Obama and Lloyd Stone lived in Hawaii, that most international, multi-cultural, and pluralistic American state.  So let us celebrate our global "ohana" (family) on January 20 - "proclaiming peace together in one song"!

This Is My Song
tune: Finlandia
New Century (UCC) Hymnal #591
words Lloyd Stone, 1934 (verses 1 and 2) - Georgia Harkness (verse 3)
Nice harmonica/video version:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_W-zWj0iCA

This is my song, Oh God of all the nations,
A song of peace for lands afar and mine.
This is my home, the country where my heart is;
Here are my hopes, my dreams, my sacred shrine.
But other hearts in other lands are beating,
With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.

My country's skies are bluer than the ocean,
And sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine.
But other lands have sunlight too and clover,
And skies are everywhere as blue as mine.
Oh hear my song, oh God of all the nations,
A song of peace for their land and for mine.

May truth and freedom come to every nation
May peace abound where strife has raged so long;
That each may seek to love and build together,
A world united, righting every wrong.
A world united in its love for freedom,
Proclaiming peace together in one song.

 

The Rick Warren Gamble

"We're both betting. He's betting his life that he's right. I'm betting my life that Jesus was not a liar. When we die, if he's right, I've lost nothing. If I'm right, he's lost everything. I'm not willing to make that gamble."

The man who uttered these breathtaking sentences will give the invocation at President-Elect Obama's inauguration next month. These words from Rick Warren, evangelical mega-church pastor, closed the "God Debate" between him and atheist writer Sam Harris in Newsweek's 2007 interview.

There is a lot of controversy from all sides about Obama's choice of this particular pastor for this role. Many evangelicals are unhappy that one of their leaders will be blessing someone whom they vigorously opposed in the election. Other evangelicals are delighted that finally they have a leader willing to stray from the narrow path of the political right. Many secular liberals and progressive Christians are outraged at the choice of a pastor who supported the recent ban on gay marriage in California.

I can't think of a more appalling summation of the Christian faith than the one Rick Warren offered at the end of the Newsweek interview. It's the formula that permeates his best-selling book, "The Purpose-Driven Life". (With difficulty, I read it, finding it to be, as Mark Twain said of the Book of Mormon, "chloroform in print".) Fear is his bottom-line argument for Christian faith. So maybe my arguments for dogmatic, literalistic Christianity don't make perfect sense, Warren suggests, but why gamble with roasting in hell for eternity? Just go with it. Say the magic words. Drink the kool-aid. Better to be safe than sorry.

Warren's theology insults the intelligence that God gave us all. He trivializes the message and example of Jesus. He reduces Christian faith to a crass analysis of cruel options, a species of investment advice, a self-help formula for success in a fantasy afterlife. He makes the Christian religion look downright weird. In that Newsweek interview, Rick Warren did more to advance the cause of atheism than Sam Harris ever could dream of achieving.

But I enthusiastically support Barack Obama's choice. Obama is showing the country and the world that he plans to lead the whole United States of America. He can't do that without listening to people with whom he does not agree on all points, or even on most points. By choosing Rick Warren, Obama is showing what it means to be a progressive Christian: one who shows respect and inclusion even toward people who aren't progressive. As Lincoln strove to reconcile North and South after the Civil War, so Obama aims to reconcile the division created by the religious and political right-wing in this country. He can't heal the terrible wounds of division inflicted on this country unless he shows respect even to the people who tore the country apart.

It's Obama's shining moment to give Warren a taste of the real heaven. The heaven that Jesus worked to bring down to earth - not after we die, but now. The heaven of political and religious and cultural pluralism, the heaven of justice and peace. The heaven that tears down the wall between faith and good common sense, between my way and the highway. The heaven of gay and lesbian people being accepted as they are, as God made them, living with the same rights as everybody else. Rick Warren can preach all he wants about pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die. Meanwhile, the president he is going to bless was elected by the people to build the New Jerusalem in the real world. Rick Warren is going to get a taste of real Christianity, which has nothing to do with reciting the trite phrase on the evangelical "Get Out of Hell Free" card.

An evangelical Christian pastor is going to bless a progressive Christian president on January 20, 2009. May Rick Warren's Hawaiian shirt flutter in the winds of change that will follow!

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Jim Burklo's BIRDLIKE AND BARNLESS speaking-preaching tour continues!

December 28, Sunday, 10:30 am: Mt Hollywood Congregational UCC - preaching

January 4, Sunday, 10 am: Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI - preaching and after-worship seminar

The Virgin Monologue

"'God did it' isn't an explanation," said Joseph.
He got no account for the baby's chromosomes,
No description of the mechanism that
Transmuted the divine shadow into royal blood.
"'The devil made me do it' would have sounded better to me," said Joseph,
Though it never did him any good
When he said it to his old girlfriends.
It was a mystery to him,
What moved him to listen for the rhyme
And puzzle for the reason
That Mary gave him the news in the manner that she did:
A mystery that put him at peace.
There was something in the way she held his hand
That no medical journal article could correlate;
Something in the way she gazed into his eyes
That eluded the grasp of genomic research.
"I don't ask you to believe what I am saying," she said,
"I don't ask you to take my word for it.
I just ask you to love, as if.
Love me as if I were yours,
Love this baby as if he were yours,
As I love you as if you were mine."

Love 'as if" makes every child divine
Love 'as if' fits all in David's line
Live 'as if' this love was meant for you
Love 'as if' the Christmas tale is true....