Aging Capriciously

Hello America, well I’m your native son.  Born to a Southern Woman and a Northern man.  I grew up listening to hillbilly music and classical opera.  I grew up with a decorated WW II veteran for a dad who was mean as hell and a mom whom my friends all loved and called her an angel.  My dad saw the bad in everyone while my mom saw only the good.  My father disowned me when I joined the military without telling him, while my mom wept for days when she found out I was gone.

Today we are here to witness the dawn of a new era of greed and empire.  Some of you are no doubt mourning the demise of the old era of greed and empire.  Many Americans including the rich, super-rich and mega-rich are out learning how to do the “Musk Frolic and Prance” as they await their expected epoch of profits and returns.  Even the poor who voted for Trump expect that in making America great again, Trump will give everyone a turkey for Christmas along with a free bottle of Jim Beam Bourbon.

For those of us who share less than kindly sentiments towards Trump, American Exceptionalism and Corporate Profits, it can be said that one person’s heaven is another person’s hell.  I know many of my friends woke up sick and petrified by the election results.  Years of trying to figure out how anyone could vote for such a character, were demolished in one horrific nightmare of populism which saw Trump actually win by a majority of the votes cast.

Some are now saying that it is time to regroup and rethink our strategies.  Many more have decided that the stress and frustrations are not worth it and have turned off the news and tried to shut Trump and his minions out of their minds.  It is hard to do this when everywhere you turn you see people jumping up and down celebrating Trump’s victory.  I want to share with you a very famous song (Light One Candle) which I think provides some inspirational thoughts.

This song goes back to the days of the Civil Rights movement but in terms of its subject matter dates back more than two thousand years.  I would like to interpret some of the stanzas and describe what they mean to me.  I recently heard this song again while listening to some old tapes.  I could not help but think how relevant it still is.  I hope it moves you the way it moved me.

First, here is some background information about the song from Wikipedia:

“Light One Candle” is a song by the folk group Peter, Paul and Mary.  It is a popular Hanukkah song.  Peter, Paul, and Mary performed the song in concerts starting in 1982, before recording it for their 1986 studio album No Easy Walk to Freedom.

The lyrics commemorate the war of national liberation fought by the Maccabees against the Seleucid Greek empire from 167 to 141 BCE, a war described in the Books of the Maccabees and commemorated by the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah.  After Judah Maccabee and his army defeated the Syrian-Greek forces, the Jewish people according to custom cleansed and rededicated the Temple by lighting a Menorah, or a candelabra with nine branches.  There are eight branches surrounding a central branch which holds a special candle called a Shamash.  The Shamash is used to light each of the other candles one at a time.  According to the Talmud—an extensive collection of rabbinic law and biblical commentary written between 200 and 500 CE—the Maccabees found only a small amount of oil to light the candelabra.  It miraculously lasted 8 nights, resulting in Hanukkah’s nickname, “The festival of lights.”

Light One Candle by Peter, Paul and Mary

1. Light one candle for the Maccabee children with thanks that their light didn’t die:

I want to give thanks for my life, my wife’s life, the lives of my friends and the lives of the many people who are still willing to fight the good fight for freedom and justice.  I give thanks for the people who will not give up and for whom the light of hope has not gone out.

2. Light one candle for the pain they endured, when their right to exist was denied:

I want to light a candle so my eyes can see the hardship and sacrifice that so many people who have gone before me have endured.  I want to see with my heart and feel with my soul the pain that the heroes and heroines have endured who gave their last breath for my freedom and rights.

3. Light one candle for the terrible sacrifice justice and freedom demand:

Let the sacrifices made by other always be illuminated in my eyes by this candle.  Never let the realization dim for me that you gain what you strive for in this world and that as Frederic Douglas so famously said: “Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground”.

4. But light one candle for the wisdom to know when the peacemaker’s time is at hand:

I light a candle that shows two wars being waged as I sit here at my computer.  I suspect many more wars are going on that I do not see.  The two wars the candle shows are killing innocent men, women and children each day while cries for peace and ceasefires are ritualistically ignored.  Day after day goes by while those with the power to stop the killings refuse to see the light shone by the candle.  Where are the leaders with the wisdom to know when the time for peacemaking is at hand?

Chorus:

Don’t let the light go out!

It’s lasted for so many years!

Don’t let the light go out!

Let it shine through our hope and our tears.

5. Light one candle for the strength that we need to never become our own foe:

Pogo said that “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”  I light a candle so that I can see the truth and avoid the path of vengeance and retribution that guides so much of war.  It is easy to lose sight of the path that we want to be on and to go blindly down a trail that makes us “one of them.”  We become the “wolf that we feed.”

6. And light one candle for those who are suffering, pain we learned so long ago:

I light one candle to see the grief and suffering that are afflicting humanity.  To see the many people who are in the shadows and cannot be seen.  The light from the candle shines on those who are deeply in distress but are being ignored.

7. Light one candle for all we believe in, that anger not tear us apart:

I will light a candle to shine into my heart, to keep it from becoming dark.  A light to show me that all people who walk this earth deserve more than my scorn or wrath.  Under the light from this candle, we can all work together to made a better world for ourselves and our children.

8. And light one candle to find us together, with peace as the song in our hearts:

Let the light from this candle shine like a million suns until we can all see the glow of peace that burns in every heart.  Humans from the beginning of time have sought peace wherever they have settled.  Let this light remind us of the common bond  that unites all of us in every part of the globe regardless of race, religion, gender or ideology.

Chorus:

Don’t let the light go out!

It’s lasted for so many years!

Don’t let the light go out!

Let it shine through our hope and our tears.

What is the memory that’s valued so highly

That we keep it alive in that flame?

What’s the commitment to those who have died

That we cry out they’ve not died in vain?

We have come this far always believing

That justice would somehow prevail

This is the burden, this is the promise

This is why we will not fail!

There are those who say keep the faith.  Those who say do not give up hope.  Those who say when you get knocked down, you only succeed by getting back up.  We cannot fail if we keep trying.  We can only fail when we stop trying.  The days ahead may see and probably will see many of our dreams destroyed.  We may see a world tilting towards injustice and cruelty.  It may become a landscape full of the wreckage of many of our hopes and desires.  But it is only our own despair which will defeat us.  Each of our voices are needed.  Each of us must carry a candle to illuminate the visions of what could and should be.

Chorus:

Don’t let the light go out!

Don’t let the light go out!

Don’t let the light go out!