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martin sheen was the special guest on the Prairie Home Companion show (9.30.07) rebroadcast today, and he explained that he went to work as an actor in New York, and the disector sent him to a soup kitchen to supplement his meager paycheck. The kitchen was run by Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker, and as he said, that's where he learned about social justice movements. He then went on to sing this, his favorite hymn.
Sheen said he’d never sung in public before, but now he wanted to sing his favorite hymn because of the “great lamentation” that’s “rising out of the violent darkness descending on Burma”…. he describes, “in response we lift up our voice in a simple act of faith and nonviolent solidarity with the Burmese people.” He sang the three verses below.
and the words:
How Can I Keep From Singing
My life flows on in endless song;
Above earth’s lamentation
I hear the sweet though far off hymn
That hails a new creation:
Through all the tumult and the strife
I hear the music ringing;
It finds an echo in my soul—
How can I keep from singing?
When tyrants tremble, sick with fear,
And hear their death-knell ringing,
When friends rejoice both far and near,
How can I keep from singing?
In prison cell and dungeon vile
Our thoughts to them are winging.
When friends by shame are undefiled,
How can I keep from singing?
What through the tempest loudly roars,
I hear the truth, it liveth.
What through the darkness round me close,
Songs in the night it giveth.
No storm can shake my inmost calm
While to that rock I’m clinging.
Since love is lord of Heaven and earth
How can I keep from singing?
———————————————————————–
You can find the rest of the hymn, by Robert Wadsworth Lowry, by googling it. I don't have much use for God-talk, but this was interesting.
I was impressed by a few lines. First, there aren't many hymns I've heard that talk about tyrants trembling.
Then at the end, the song says that love is lord. Most prayers and like say LORD is LOVE -- this one gets the order right, I think.
Paul Siegel, in The Meek and The Militant , says succinctly what is in other Marxist writing about religion-- that the political debates and ideas are refracted through a religious lens, and this is a good example. I rejoice in the trembling of tyrants, in my unshakable inner calm, and in people's solidarity.
Anne Feeney also uses a religious figure to express outrage about the ICG's company's responsibility for the deaths of the miners in Sago, West Virginia in You Shall Answer. Why did you send these miners to me too early? You'll have to answer for worshiping Mammon instead of me, letting them die for profit.
She does that song either before or after the more traditional approach to religion in "The Preacher and The Slave". (http://www.musicanet.org/robokopp/usa/longhair.htm) Pie is the sky? Just a lie.
People, including young people, have such great spirit, such a passion for justice and fairness, such power in their belief -- which they then attribute to some external abstract thing -- not where it is.
In my journey trying to stay in touch with my own motivations, emotions, willingness, spirit, trying not to be betrayed by my own "no"! at the wrong time, I am always impressed at the power of that spirit.
I finish with a Hindi greeting --
Namaste. The immense joy within me greets the immense joy within you.
