Friends of Padre Steve’s World,
It is now 2018.
After the year that was 2017 with its seeming unending cycle of violence, hate, war, destruction, and political turmoil including political turmoil in Europe and the chaotic political Overall 2017 was a difficult year around the world despite the boom stock markets.
One hundred years ago the world was engaged in a war that was killing thousands of men a day. Some hoped that 1918 would be better, but it wasn’t. Despite the victory that the French, British, and Americans achieved over Imperial Germany and its allies brought some measure of peace to the world, the embers of war, economic crisis, and political instability would plant the seeds for the totalitarian movements of communism, and Fascism in its various forms. Because of this the conflagration that had erupted in 1914 would get far worse in just over 20 years time.
I hope that 2018 is different and turns out better than 2018, we certainly could use a break, but the forces of history and nature are sometimes greater than our hopes, but we can always hope. Even so more than hope we who believe in liberty, freedom, humanity, brotherhood, and justice must work against the forces of war, terrorism, dehumanization, and political ideologies that are designed to enslave, devalue, and marginal people based on race, religion, gender, color, or belief.
I believe that the forces that made 2017 so terrible in so many ways will not take a break and that we need to stand up and do the right and sometimes the hard things in order to protect liberty. The time for safe zones is past, as progressives we have to toughen up; think rationally, and act strategically if we are to protect the liberties of all people, including people who will find out far to late that they placed their trust in the wrong place. But I digress…
Many people will see in the New Year singing Auld Lang Syne. It is a nice song, I have written about it before. A little bit ago after watching the movies It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World and The Great Race Judy, I and our friend Patty popped the Champagne and toasted tonight as we watched the Ball descend in Times Square on our television, safe from all the drunk drivers that we will as well.
But I digress. My favorite song for the New Year is Abba’s Happy New Year. Like Auld Lang Syne it is a melancholy song of the end of one year’s hopes, dreams and expectations and hopes and dreams for the New Year. The song is embedded above and the lyrics are here:
Happy New Year
No more champagne
And the fireworks are through
Here we are, me and you
Feeling lost and feeling blue
It’s the end of the party
And the morning seems so grey
So unlike yesterday
Now’s the time for us to say…
Happy new year
Happy new year
May we all have a vision now and then
Of a world where every neighbour is a friend
Happy new year
Happy new year
May we all have our hopes, our will to try
If we don’t we might as well lay down and die
You and I
Sometimes I see
How the brave new world arrives
And I see how it thrives
In the ashes of our lives
Oh yes, man is a fool
And he thinks he’ll be okay
Dragging on, feet of clay
Never knowing he’s astray
Keeps on going anyway…
Happy new year
Happy new year
May we all have a vision now and then
Of a world where every neighbour is a friend
Happy new year
Happy new year
May we all have our hopes, our will to try
If we don’t we might as well lay down and die
You and I
Seems to me now
That the dreams we had before
Are all dead, nothing more
Than confetti on the floor
It’s the end of a decade
In another ten years time
Who can say what we’ll find
What lies waiting down the line
In the end of eighty-nine…
Happy new year
Happy new year
May we all have a vision now and then
Of a world where every neighbour is a friend
Happy new year
Happy new year
May we all have our hopes, our will to try
If we don’t we might as well lay down and die
You and I
I think one of the lines that I like, one which I think calls on us to actually do more than hope, but to act on hope, is “May we all have a vision…” A vision requires that we begin to imagine a better future, in a sense it is to dream, as Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed, I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”
To fulfill that dream and vision we must live, work, dream and imagine that things can be better, and as Dr. King said, Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.
And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream…
The song, Happy New Year ends with this verse, May we all have our hopes, our will to try, If we don’t we might as well lay down and die, You and I…
Here is wishing you the best New Year possible, and I for one will not lay down and die.
Peace
Padre Steve+
The Inglorius Padre Steve's World 