REALIZING THE DREAM

March on Washington

Martin Luther King

1963

I Have a Dream excerpt from speech delivered from Lincoln Memorial:

"I say to you today, my friends, though, even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. 

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream . . . I have a dream that one day in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today ." 

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If we are open to listening and seeking new experience we are often led in unexpected and surprising directions. When seeking performances by The King's Singers I came across a meditative video which included in the title Bono/U2 arr. Bob Chilcott - MLK.

This is the legend for the recording: "To mark Martin Luther King Day 2018, The King's Singers took a few minutes to record their cover of this song, MLK, by Bono from the band U2. The arrangement is by Bob Chilcott, former tenor in The King's Singers, and it was recorded during in L'Oratoire du Louvre, Paris."

So my next step was to check out Bono and the connection to Martin Luther King.

These are the simple words of the song:

 

"Sleep
Sleep tonight
And may your dreams
Be realized

If the thundercloud
Passes rain
So let it rain
Rain down on him
Mmm
So let it be
Mmm
So let it be

Sleep
Sleep tonight
And may your dreams
Be realized
If the thundercloud
Passes rain
So let it rain
Let it rain
Rain on him"

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Adam Clayton / Dave Evans / Larry Mullen / Paul Hewson [Bono]

 

I found this tribute to King from Bono:

“Dr. King kept us tolerant in a time of terror,” Bono says during his 10-minute tribute. “Kept us faithful to peace and community. Made us believe in joy and justice. Showed us the way to a shared humanity. Dr. King’s voice is louder today than it has ever been. He is one of the true fathers of our American dream.”

Now I wanted to know more about Bono and U2. Searching on Wikipedia through his biography and career as a pop singer, I learned that a tour which the group made in 2014-15 was named Songs of Innocence. The next tour 2017 they named Songs of Experience. A combined Innocence and Experience tour took place in 2018. I needed to know more about the connection of Bono with William Blake who wrote his illuminated poetry titled Songs of Innocence and of Experience in the late 18th century.

Here is what Bono had to say in an Interview with Rolling Stones:

What are the common themes that tie the songs on Songs of Experience together?
I try not to talk about William Blake too much because it sounds pretentious quoting such a literary giant but it was his great idea I pinched to compare the person we become through experience to the person who set out on the journey. If you’re talking about innocence, you’ve probably already lost it but I do believe at the far end of experience, it’s possible to recover it with wisdom. I’m not saying I have much of that but what little I have, I wanted to cram into these songs. I know U2 go into every album like it’s their last one but even more this time I wanted the people around me that I loved to know exactly how I felt. So a lot of the songs are kind of letters, letters to Ali [wife], letters to my sons and daughters, actually our sons and daughters.
...
And one that I didn’t realize until too late that I was writing to myself, “It’s the Little Things Give You Away.” In all of these advice type songs, you are of course preaching what you need to hear. In that sense, they’re all written to the singer. One other piece on Blake, I don’t know if I’m explaining too much here but the best songs for me are often arguments with yourself or arguments with some other version of yourself. Even singing our song “One,” which was half fiction, I’ve had this ongoing fight. In “Little Things,” innocence challenges experience: “I saw you on the stairs, you didn’t notice I was there, that’s cause you were busy talking at me, not to me. You were high above the storm, a hurricane being born but this freedom just might cost you your liberty.”

At the end of the song, experience breaks down and admits his deepest fears, having been called out on it by his younger, braver, bolder self. That same conversation also opens the album with a song called ”Love Is All We Have Left.” My favorite opening line to a U2 album: “There’s nothing to stop this being the best day ever.” In the second verse, innocence admonishes experience: “Now you’re at the other end of the telescope, seven billion stars in her eyes, so many stars so many ways of seeing, hey, this is no time not to be alive.” It’s a chilling moment – in the chorus I was pretending to be Frank Sinatra singing on the moon, a sci-fi torch song “love, love is all we have left, a baby cries on the doorstep, love is all we have left.”

William Blake

Songs of Innocence 

Little Black Boy

Bono quote from the LA Times:

“Songwriting comes from a different place,” he continues. “Music is the language of the spirit. I think ideas and words are our excuse as songwriters to allow our heart or our spirit to run free. That’s when magic happens.”

Dreams, too, come from a different place. We don't own them; they are shared. But the dream of freedom, equality and justice is implemented in individual ways by individuals. Each of us becomes a part of the dream in the way that it can be expressed through us.

SIMPLE GIFTS

Alfred Shaker Village

Alfred Maine

1915 Postcard

A favorite hymn among Quakers is a Shaker hymn written in 1848. The writer and composer is said to be Elder Joseph Brackett of the Alfred Village in Maine.

'Tis the Gift to be Simple

Original Shaker Hymn
1
Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,
'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
REFRAIN
When true simplicity is gain'd,
To bow and to bend we will not be asham'd,
To turn, turn will be our delight,
Till by turning, turning we come round right

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Additional verses in Worship in Song - A Friends Hymnal
2 -
'Tis the gift to be gentle,'tis the gift to be fair,
'Tis the gift to wake and breathe the morning air.
To walk every day in the path we choose.
'Tis the gift we pray we will never, never lose.
REFRAIN
3
Tis the gift to be knowing, 'tis the gift to be kind,
'Tis the gift to wait to hear another's mind,
That when we speak our feelings we might come out true,
'Tis the gift for me and the gift for you.
REFRAIN
4
'Tis the gift to be loving, 'tis the best gift of all,
Like the warm spring rain bringing beauty when it falls,
And as we use this gift we might come to believe,
'Tis better to give than it is to receive.
REFRAIN

'Tis the Gift to be Simple was not well know outside of Shaker circles until in 1944 the tune was incorporated by Arron Copland in the ballet score he wrote for Martha Graham. Since Shakers used dance in their worship, it was apropos that the Shaker hymn be performed as ballet in Appalachian Spring. In 1963 Sydney Carter adapted the tune for Lord of the Dance which was prominent in the dance musical Lord of the Dance first performed in 1996.

Barack Obama's 2009 inauguration as president included a quartet Air and Simple Gifts composed by John Williams and based on the Shaker hymn. The moving performance by Anthony McGill (clarinet), Itzhak Perlman (violin), Yo-Yo Ma (cello) and Gabriela Montero (piano) made that inauguration the only one that sticks in my memory. (I do also remember Jimmy Carter and Rosalynn getting out of their limousine and walking along Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House.) 

Although the Shaker faith developed out of Quakerism it deviated from Quaker practice in many ways. Shakers practiced a communal lifestyle, they were organized under a hierarchical system, they practiced celibacy and they followed a strict set of rules. Although there were once nineteen Shaker communities scattered among at least six states with as many as 500 members each, they gradually had to close their communities for lack of membership. 

The memory of the Shaker experiment in radical Christianity is kept alive by their music, their furniture and the remnants of their communities left behind.

More music:
The songs and dances included are: The Humble Heart; Simple Gifts; Love, Love, Love; Father James' Song; Come Dance and Sing; Now My Dear Companions; A People Called Christians; I Am a Brave Soldier; Step Tune; A Cup of Rejoicing; Lay me Low; My Carnal Life I will Lay Down; Dismission of the Devil; Primitive Dance Tune; An Indian Song; When Cheer Fills the Hearts; Shuffling Song; Shepherdess Song.

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National Parks Service

History of the Shakers

EXTREME HEAT

NOAA Climate Map

Wikipedia -  Heat Wave

David Hastings, whom you met on the post SOLAR ENERGY, has written another article for the Gainesville Sun. His column titled To avoid deaths from extreme heat, we need to switch to clean power looks at Extreme Heat from several perspective. First he considers the conditions which are current on the west coast, then he presents the perspective of the impact of global warming on causing excessive temperatures and resulting deaths, and the final perspective is on what the state of Florida may expect in the future regarding expected temperatures.

Of course David's main interest is not in the problems themselves but in potential solutions to the problems we have created by our misguided choices.  

"In order to avoid more deaths from extreme heat, we need to switch to clean power, which turns out to be feasible, good for the economy and good for public health. If we continue on our current path of failing to reduce carbon emissions, extreme heat will soar. Or we can take bold action now to dramatically reduce carbon emissions and prevent the worst from becoming reality."

"In Florida we are most at risk for dangerous heat fueled by climate change compared to other states; we are projected to see the biggest increase in its extreme heat threat of any state by 2050, and yet our state is poorly prepared for this risk."

"Congress is debating an infrastructure package called the American Jobs Plan. The climate provisions of this bill are critical." 

Heat Dome