(Old school)
“World Troubles and Tensions
A commentary by Randy Stiver
United Church of God pastor, Columbus and Cambridge, Ohio
Titled the Merry Little Minuet, it came straight from the “Hungry i” café in San Francisco, a “mecca” of folk music in the late 1950’s. Performed by the Kingston Trio, it was song-writer Sheldon Harnick’s tribute to the troubles and tensions of the world a half century past:
They’re rioting in Africa, they’re starving in Spain,
There’s hurricanes in Florida, and Texas needs rain
This whole world is festering with unhappy souls
The French hate the Germans, the Germans hate the Poles
Italians hate Yugoslavs, South Africans hate the Dutch
And I don’t like anybody very much
But we can be tranquil and thankful and proud
For Man’s been endowed with a mushroom-shaped cloud
And we can be certain that some lovely day
Someone will set the spark off…and we will all be blown away
They’re rioting in Africa, There’s strife in Iran
What Nature doesn’t do to us will be done by our Fellow Man
Update those lines for 2006! Just change a few of the ‘who-hates-who’ entities. Then add enough verses to enable more peoples, clans and nations—and the non-ethnically-profiled—the opportunity to ridicule, hate or harm whoever they don’t like very much.
Iran and Africa will still be in the new lyrics. And we can add Islamic radicals and the Middle East in general. France seems obsessed with hating itself at the moment, as do the new factions of the former Yugoslavia. Thanks to 21st century terrorism, many more potentially fickle fingers are now on the nuclear trigger.
In the lyrics of his song, Harnick verbalized humanity’s great conundrum. We want to live in peace. But we just don’t know how. We don’t even agree how ‘peace’ should be defined.
There is a reason why we don’t ‘all just get along.’ The great lyrical team of antiquity, Isaiah and Jeremiah, wrote to the same puzzle of human peace vs. troubles and tensions:
O Lord, I know the way of man is not in himself,
It is not in man who walks to direct his own steps.
Their feet run to evil
And they make haste to shed innocent blood;
Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity;
Wasting and destruction are in their paths.
The way of peace they have not known,
And there is no justice in their ways;
They have made themselves crooked paths;
Whoever takes that way shall not know peace. (Jeremiah 10:23, Isaiah 59:7-8)
While Harnick’s satirical lyrics were sadly cynical, the poetry of Isaiah and Jeremiah was actually inspired—make that thankfully inspired. If there were no hope for the future, we people on earth would certainly be a tragic troop of Adam and Eve’s grandchildren....”(See link: http://www.ucg.org/commentary/troubles.htm)
It’s funny and sad that the areas covered in the song haven’t changed much over the decades - the UN and Peace Corpse notwithstanding.
My goodness, that takes me back
Must search out old Kingston Trio Records
I think my brother has saved his...