One of the great voices of
my youth has fallen silent this day. Pete Singer was the voice of the folk
music movement of the early 1960s. His haunting lyrics and melodious songs called
Americans whose sons and daughters were being shipped in mass to Southeast Asia
to ask themselves, “Where have all the flowers gone? Gone to graveyards every
one. When will they ever learn?” It would become the anthem of an
anti-war movement which would galvanize America against the war in Southeast
Asia over the next bloody seven years of that conflict.
Seeger led crowds across our
nation fighting for civil rights - a fight that continues today for immigrants,
LBGT people, working class people and the disabled – in an anthem which promised
that someday, “We shall overcome.” Seeger called us to use the hammer of
justice to build a new America, to ring the bell of freedom to pierce the din
of discrimination and always to keep singing the songs “about love between my
brothers and my sisters…all over this land.”
I did not know until this
morning that Seeger was the author of what is probably my favorite song of all
times. Recorded by The Byrds in 1965, “Turn, Turn, Turn” took the words of the Hebrew Scriptures
found in Ecclesiastes and set them to music. Seeger had crafted them in the
late 1950s but The Byrds took the song to the top of the charts.
Simultaneously mindful of our mortality and calling us to be fully present for each day, Seeger reminded us
that there is “a time to every purpose under heaven; a time to be born and a
time to die.” And, most characteristically, Seeger’s song ended with the
exhortation, “A time for peace…I swear it’s not too late.”
I long ago decided that
whatever else is sung at my memorial service, I want that service to include “Turn,
Turn, Turn.” But for today, it is Pete Seeger’s time to die and I join a
generation in grieving his passing and in expressing gratitude for his life, his work and the way it has shaped our own.
Rest in peace, brother. You
will be sorely missed.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., M.Div. Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar
(inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church
(Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Religion and
Cultural Studies
Osceola Regional Campus
University of Central Florida, Kissimmee
If the unexamined
life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious
or political, is not worth holding.
Most things of value do not lend themselves to production
in sound bytes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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