[Vision2020] The night wind, the lamb and the shepherd boy

[Nicholas Gier]

Thanks, Tom, for linking us to one of Bing's greatest performances.

I'm just hoping that the East Wind and her daughters are kind to my own
daughter and son-in-law driving all the way from Edmonton, Alberta.

Merry Christmas to all on this list!

nfg

On Thu, Dec 24, 2015 at 8:21 AM, Tom Hansen <thansen at moscow.com> wrote:

> Courtesy of today's (December 24, 2015) Moscow-Pullman Daily News with
> thanks to Nick Gier.
>
> ---------------------------------
> His View: The night wind, the lamb and the shepherd boy
>
> By Nick Gier
>
> One of the Christmas songs in our Unitarian choir repertoire is "Do You
> Hear What I Hear?" When we first practiced it, we were delighted to learn
> that the lyricist Noel Regney was a Unitarian.
>
> After fighting for the French Resistance in World War II, Regney came to
> the U.S. in 1952 and married pianist/composer Gloria Shayne. In addition to
> their great Christmas carol, they also wrote "Rain, Rain, Go Away," "Sweet
> Little Darlin'," and many other top tunes.
>
> Regney and Shayne wrote their famous piece during the 1962 Cuban missile
> crisis, and they must have decided - perhaps due to the threat of nuclear
> annihilation - that their "mighty king" should have a different view of the
> world than the biblical King Herod.
>
> The carol begins with the "night wind" telling the "little lamb" to look
> skyward and see "a star, dancing in the night, with a tail as big as a
> kite." Was the Christmas star a comet?
>
> If the night wind is a witness for the earth, then today she could ask the
> little lamb to look at what he sees in India. The Ganges River, worshipped
> as a goddess by the Hindus, has a coliform bacterial count 3,000 times
> higher than the U.N. standard for safe water.
>
> The night wind could also tell the little lamb to look at the world's
> glaciers, most of which are melting at an alarming rate. This will
> eventually lead to the inundation of many islands and coastal cities.
>
> The night wind and her daytime sisters are invigorated by the warmest
> years in recorded history. By their very nature they cannot help but cause
> more unpredictable and destructive storms.
>
> The little lamb asks the "shepherd boy": "Do you hear what I hear?" Today
> the shepherd boy could hear some of same sounds he heard 2,000 years ago:
> the sounds of children, now hundreds of millions more, crying because they
> are sick and hungry.
>
> The shepherd boy would be dismayed at the same huge gap between the rich
> and the poor. Today he would hear the pleas of 1.3 billion people who are
> trying to feed, clothe and house their children on less than $2 per day.
>
> The shepherd boy would be alarmed that today there are just as many
> discordant voices and armed battles as there were at Jesus' birth.
> Thousands of young children are carrying weapons into battle, and a record
> number of girls and women are being raped.
>
> The shepherd boy asks the mighty king in his "palace warm": "Do you know
> what I know? A Child shivers in the cold, let us bring him silver and gold."
>
> What the children of the world need far more than jewels is clean water;
> as many as 5,000 die each day from diarrhea and other water-borne
> illnesses. Today the shepherd boy would know, sadly, that as many as 9
> million children die annually from various illnesses before they reach the
> age of 5.
>
> Though the world's farmers produce enough food for everyone, over one
> billion people are malnourished. Every day about 16,000 of the world's
> children die of hunger.
>
> The mighty king says: "Listen to what I say: Pray for peace, people
> everywhere! The Child, sleeping in the night, will bring us goodness and
> light."
>
> For Unitarians the birth of a divine child is a metaphor for the promise
> and great possibility of all infants born into this world. We see the
> miraculous births of Confucius, Buddha and Jesus as symbols of the hope
> that every newborn child brings to a broken world.
>
> As Unitarian Sophia Fahs writes: "No angels herald their beginnings. No
> prophets predict their future courses. Yet each night a child is born is a
> holy night."
> ---------------------------------
>
> *"Do You Hear What I Hear"* by Bing Crosby
> http://www.TomandRodna.com/Songs/Christmas/Do_You_Hear_What_I_Hear.mp3
> <http://www.tomandrodna.com/Songs/Christmas/Do_You_Hear_What_I_Hear.mp3>
>
> Have a very VERY merry one, Moscow, because . . .
>
> "Moscow Cares"
> http://www.MoscowCares.com <http://www.moscowcares.com/>
>
> Tom Hansen
> Moscow, Idaho
>
>
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-- 

A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they
shall never sit in.

-Greek proverb

“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity.
Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance
from another. This immaturity is self- imposed when its cause lies not in
lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without
guidance from another. Sapere Aude! ‘Have courage to use your own
understand-ing!—that is the motto of enlightenment.

--Immanuel Kant
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