Last weekend was Easter weekend. We thought about life and death, blood and tears, despair and hope, life on earth and the life to come.
Yesterday was Pope Francis’ funeral attended by more than 250,000. There were world leaders in black, cardinals in red, bishops in purple, priests in white. Choirs sang Latin hymns and prayers were recited in various languages. A good life remembered; a death mourned.
A couple of weeks ago I attended the thanksgiving service for my friend Bruce; this week I hope to attend the funeral of my friend John. Ordinary men, special men, with a strong faith. We value and celebrate their lives; we’re saddened by their deaths; they’re now at peace.
I am tired and weary but I must toil on
Till the Lord come to call me away
Where the morning is bright and the Lamb is the light
And the night is fair as the day
There’ll be peace in the valley for me some day
There’ll be peace in the valley for me
I pray no more sorrow and sadness or trouble will be
There’ll be peace in the valley for me
The story goes that Thomas A. Dorsey wrote ‘Peace in the Valley’ during the tensions of the late 1930s. Traveling on a train through southern Indiana, observing horses, cows, and sheep grazing together in a small valley, Dorsey reflected on peace in a world that was about to go to war.
Originally he wrote it for Mahalia Jackson; I first heard versions by Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash, but it’s been covered by many artists.
There the flowers will be blooming, the grass will be green
And the skies will be clear and serene
The sun ever beams, in this valley of dreams
And no clouds there will ever be seen
There the bear will be gentle, the wolf will be tame
And the lion shall lay down by the lamb
The beast from the wild will be led by a Child
I’ll be changed from the creature I am
As a child I was taught about heaven in Sunday School. The streets paved with gold, the river of life running through it. I liked this place that I would go to when I die; I remember children’s talks with bandages, aspirin, handkerchiefs and torches that would be redundant in heaven. I pointed to the heaven-in-the-sky; my childish brain realised that people in Australia were pointing in the opposite direction!
As I’ve got older, I’ve become less certain of the detail, less argumentative about who’s in and who’s out. On a bad day I might be tired and weary; I might experience sadness and sorrow. I have no idea what my future holds in this life. I know that ‘peace in the valley’ doesn’t contain the whole truth, but it’s good enough for me to muse on today as a picture of my certain hope of final transformation, resolution, reconciliation and peace.
malcolmsmusings.org 