CHRISTMAS WITH A BROKEN HEART

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I can’t bear to think any more about the school murders in Connecticut but I can’t stop thinking about them.

And so Christmas Day dawns once again in this wicked world, full of horrors.  Many years ago, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote, in another time of horrors:

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled so long
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And in despair I bowed my head;
“There is no peace on earth,” I said;
“For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men.”

And that will have to do for today as well.

SHE LOVES YOU

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I love a lot of rock and roll songs, but I don’t love any rock and roll song more than I love “She Loves You” by The Beatles. A combination of great song, first Beatles song I ever heard and the onset of puberty conspired to etch this record into my consciousness and my heart in a unique way.

It takes me back, sure, but it also propels me forward — the same way it propelled me forward in 1963.  It was about the future then, and it’s about the future now.

O LITTLE TOWN OF BETHLEHEM

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O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie!
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by.
Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting Light;
The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.

Hopes and fears.  Fears.  Tonight is a night of fears.

Click on the image to enlarge.

WHY?

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We ask, “Why would a young man from a materially comfortable home walk into a school and murder 20 children?” The better question might be, “Why don’t more young men do it?”

More young men who don’t know what it means to be a man, and thus don’t know how to become one. More young men who have no religious or ethical beliefs that make honor and sacrifice attractive. More young men who have no real political power, in a political system in which only the obscenely wealthy have real political power, and thus no real control over their future.

What would give them a will to live, to look out for and protect the weak people around them? A million-dollar home? Another cool video game? The next mindless Hollywood blockbuster?

What?