As a young person, songs like “Amazing Grace” carried me through the pain of life, helping me to know God and remain hopeful. When I was 12 years old, my hero and role model, the man I loved with all my heart, my beloved maternal grandfather died when his tractor overturned. At his funeral, we sang “The Old Rugged Cross.” I cried and was comforted. For decades, when I heard that song, tears welled up in my eyes.
I had just turned 15 when the assassination of President Kennedy rocked my world. In the next few years, more of my heroes would be gunned down, Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy the most prominent; but many more died who I longed to know better, among them Malcolm X and Huey P. Newton. Dion released “Abraham, Martin and John” in 1968, a song that has long comforted me. I never lost my faith that God was present. My faith, however, grew and matured as my understanding of God did the same. One of my two best friends, Larry, disappeared the night Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were gunned down, December 4, 1969. His body was found weeks later. In my grief as I had always done since I was a boy, I would hole up all alone and play the music that helped me grieve through those times and get my joy back.
In my 30’s, I realized that the lessons about God that I learned as a boy were impermanent. As my faith was rocked, music rescued me once again. In 1990, Carly Simon wrote and released the little known song that has been my own personal theme ever since, “Life Is Eternal.” A couple of my favorite lines are “But just how long and who knows…how and where my spirit will go. Will it soar like Jazz on a saxophone or evaporate on a breeze?” and “Here on earth I'm a lost soul ever trying to find my way back home. Maybe that's why each new star is born, expanding heaven's room, eternity in bloom. And will I see you up in that heaven in all its light will I know you're there? Will we say the things that we never dared? If wishing makes it so,
won't you let me know…that life is eternal and love is immortal and death is only a horizon. Life is eternal as we move into the light and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight." I encourage you to listen to it on You Tube If you have a favorite theme song for your life, revisit it. You may never stop listening…just like me.
