Is Everything Lovely?

Twice a year, Pansy and I go to a conference in the tiny village of Cherry Log, Georgia.

They have no hotels or motels in Cherry Log, so when we drive over on the day before the meeting, we stay a few miles to the north in Blue Ridge.

Our ritual includes a Sunday supper at The Village, a buffet in Blue Ridge.

We look forward to the question from a pleasant lady on the restaurant staff.  She stops by our table and asks, “Is everything lovely?”  We assure her: Everything is lovely.

And it is — at least as far as the food and environment in The Village at the moment is concerned.

Outside The Village, the world may be going to hell in the proverbial hand basket, with climate change, endless engagement in war in the Middle East, joblessness, and efforts in Congress to make life miserable for people who need Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare).

Though I do not minimize serious problems at home and abroad, I believe every generation has had momentous problems.  So, if there ever was or ever will be room for optimism, it will come amid strife and uncertainty.  Consider two examples from optimistic songwriters:

• Carmen Elizabeth Clarke was a nurse at a Vancouver hospital for crippled children in 1947 when she wrote the song, “There’s a Bluebird on Your Windowsill.”

She paid to have the song recorded, but it went on to become a hit, first with Country and Western artists in Canada.  Then it crossed the border into the United States where Doris Day and Bing Crosby were the most notable singers to record it.

The refrain suggests the bluebird’s singing on your sill will fill your heart with happy thoughts, “near enough to make you cry.”  But the song acknowledges other, not so happy, tears that fall along with the emotionally, spiritually rainy days.

The bluebird song may be overly optimistic when it says the clouds will roll away and everything will come our way in answer to prayers.  But don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it.

Short term, God’s answer may not appear from behind the cloud.  But despite the dark clouds of hostile politics and religion that rain on us, if we listen to the bluebird’s song, we may be surprised.

The world was still recovering from the immediate effects of World War Two when Ms Clarke wrote about the bluebird.  But she was inspired, initially, by the crippled kids she sought to nurse and nurture toward health.

She demonstrated her generous spirit by designating children’s hospitals across Canada to receive all the royalties from the million-selling recordings and sheet music (http://www.vancouverhistory.ca/archives_bluebird.htm).

Amid their individual struggles with health in the larger war-torn world, perhaps Ms Clarke enabled these children to answer affirmatively to the question, “Is everything lovely?”

• When Edmund H. Sears wrote “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear” in Boston in 1849, not everything was lovely.  The song's initial words of peace from the angels precede scenes of “sad and lonely plains” and “woes of sin and strife,” as well as “man at war with man” and those “who toil along the climbing way With painful steps and slow.”

To those in such unlovely circumstances, the challenge comes to “rest beside the weary road and hear the angels sing.”  If we can stop to rest, we can look in faith to that day .  .  .

“When peace shall over all the earth

Its ancient splendors fling,

And the whole world give back the song

Which now the angels sing.”

Compete Lyrics:

It came upon the midnight clear,

That glorious song of old,

From angels bending near the earth

To touch their harps of gold.

“Peace on the earth, good will to men

From heaven's all-gracious King”

The world in solemn stillness lay

To hear the angels sing.”

Still through the cloven skies they come

With peaceful wings unfurled,

And still their heavenly music floats

Over all the weary world

Above its sad and lowly plains,

They bend on hovering wing,

And ever over its babel-sounds

The blessed angels sing

Yet with the woes of sin and strife

The world has suffered long.

Beneath the heavenly strain have rolled

Two thousand years of wrong

And man at war with man hears not

The tidings which they bring.

O hush the noise, ye men of strife,

And hear the angels sing.

O ye, beneath life's crushing load

Whose forms are bending low,

Who toil along the climbing way

With painful steps and slow,

Look now, for glad and golden hours

Come swiftly on the wing.

O rest beside the weary road

And hear the angels sing.

For lo, the days are hastening on

By prophets seen of old,

When with the ever-circling years

Shall come the time foretold:

When peace shall over all the earth

Its ancient splendors fling

And the whole world give back the song

Which now the angels sing

Edmund H. Sears wrote the words in 1849 in Boston

(“It Came Upon the Midnight Clear,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Came_Upon_the_Midnight_Clear#History.)