TURN

Pete Seeger 

Activist and Folk Singer

Turn, Turn, Turn

Pete Seeger & Judy Collins – Turn, Turn, Turn (1966)

Seeger used the words from the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes when writing Turn, Turn, Turn. The author of the book of Ecclesiastes had learned from his experience that many things occur in a person's lifetime.The way he saw it, life was cyclical. We do the things that are possible according the season, or our age, or the conditions which exist. When the circumstance recurred the activities would be repeated. Man went form activity to activity without discerning how it all fit together. The author was interested in the cycle of time; although he acknowledged that God had also put eternity into the minds of men he did not concern himself with it. Since man has no direct physical knowledge of the beginning or the ending, he chose to focus his attention on what he could see and do, and not on what he could think or understand. Although he knew that man is spiritual by the gift of God, he turned toward outer things and neglected his inner life.

Ecclesiastes
[1] For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
[2] a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
[3] a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
[4] a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
[5] a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
[6] a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
[7] a time to rend, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
[8] a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.
[9] What gain has the worker from his toil?
[10] I have seen the business that God has given to the sons of men to be busy with.
[11] He has made everything beautiful in its time; also he has put eternity into man's mind, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.
[12] I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live;
[13] also that it is God's gift to man that every one should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil.
[14] I know that whatever God does endures for ever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it; God has made it so, in order that men should fear before him.
[15] That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already has been; and God seeks what has been driven away.
[16] Moreover I saw under the sun that in the place of justice, even there was wickedness, and in the place of righteousness, even there was wickedness.
[17] I said in my heart, God will judge the righteous and the wicked, for he has appointed a time for every matter, and for every work.
[18] I said in my heart with regard to the sons of men that God is testing them to show them that they are but beasts.
[19] For the fate of the sons of men and the fate of beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts; for all is vanity.
[20] All go to one place; all are from the dust, and all turn to dust again.
[21] Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes down to the earth?
[22] So I saw that there is nothing better than that a man should enjoy his work, for that is his lot; who can bring him to see what will be after him?

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus teaches the alternative attitude. If we cling to the ordinary cyclical life, it will be lost to us because it is temporal. The soul which is eternal is more valuable that anything that the ever circling time and space can offer.

Matthew 16
[25] For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.
[26] For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?

 

 

Minneapolis Institute of Art 

Nebuchadnezzar

by William Blake

Minneapolis Institute of Art description

"King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon failed to heed the prophet Daniel’s warning to mend his sinful ways and show mercy to the poor. God stripped the king of his realm and drove him to “eat grass as oxen, . . . his body . . . wet with the dew of heaven, till his hairs were grown like eagles’ feathers, and his nails like birds’ claws” (Daniel 4:33). Poet-painter William Blake’s luminous exploration of depravity is part of his extended investigation of the Sublime, the irrational realm of visceral, overwhelming emotion—the flip side of the Enlightenment—where God and nature tower over even the most powerful human being."