<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div><span></span></div><div><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div><span></span></div><div><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div>Courtesy of today's (December 24, 2015) Moscow-Pullman Daily News with thanks to Nick Gier.</div><div><br></div><div>---------------------------------</div><div><h1 id="blox-asset-title" style="font-size: 30px; outline: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-weight: 400; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 34px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"><span class="blox-headline entry-title" style="outline: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(204, 0, 0); line-height: 38px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His View: The night wind, the lamb and the shepherd boy</span></h1><p style="outline: 0px; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 24px; background-image: none; float: none !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">By Nick Gier</span></p><p style="outline: 0px; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 24px; background-image: none; float: none !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">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.</span></p><p style="outline: 0px; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 24px; background-image: none; float: none !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">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.</span></p><div class="encrypted-content" style="outline: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; float: none !important;"><p style="outline: 0px; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 24px; background-image: none; float: none !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">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.</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content" style="outline: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; float: none !important;"><p style="outline: 0px; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 24px; background-image: none; float: none !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">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?</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content" style="outline: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; float: none !important;"><p style="outline: 0px; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 24px; background-image: none; float: none !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">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.</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content" style="outline: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; float: none !important;"><p style="outline: 0px; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 24px; background-image: none; float: none !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">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.</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content" style="outline: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; float: none !important;"><p style="outline: 0px; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 24px; background-image: none; float: none !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">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.</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content" style="outline: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; float: none !important;"><p style="outline: 0px; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 24px; background-image: none; float: none !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">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.</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content" style="outline: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; float: none !important;"><p style="outline: 0px; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 24px; background-image: none; float: none !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">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.</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content" style="outline: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; float: none !important;"><p style="outline: 0px; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 24px; background-image: none; float: none !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">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.</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content" style="outline: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; float: none !important;"><p style="outline: 0px; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 24px; background-image: none; float: none !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">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."</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content" style="outline: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; float: none !important;"><p style="outline: 0px; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 24px; background-image: none; float: none !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">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.</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content" style="outline: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; float: none !important;"><p style="outline: 0px; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 24px; background-image: none; float: none !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">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.</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content" style="outline: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; float: none !important;"><p style="outline: 0px; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 24px; background-image: none; float: none !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">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."</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content" style="outline: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; float: none !important;"><p style="outline: 0px; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 24px; background-image: none; float: none !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">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.</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content" style="outline: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; float: none !important;"><p style="outline: 0px; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 24px; background-image: none; float: none !important;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">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."</span></p></div></div><div>---------------------------------</div><div><br></div><div><b>"Do You Hear What I Hear"</b> by Bing Crosby</div><div><a href="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</a><br><br><div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Have a very VERY merry one, Moscow, because . . .</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"Moscow Cares" </span></div><div><a href="http://www.moscowcares.com/" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><font color="#000000">http://www.MoscowCares.com</font></a></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> </span></div><div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Tom Hansen</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Moscow, Idaho</span></div></div><div> </div></div></div></div></div></body></html>