Two Songs are sung

"He taught me the music of the book written by the Creator God. I am not now a believer, but I was then, and felt certain that I was learning the music chanted by God Himself whenever He opened the pages of the sacred narrative. And the angels, too, used that melody each time they told the story to one another. So Mr Zapiski informed me one evening. Sweetly the celestial choir sang the sacred trope, and the music ascended through all the heavens and reached to the seventh heaven wherein was the Throne of Glory on which sat the Creator God, and the Creator God would hear the chanting and be transported with joy, and the joy would overflow and drift downward from the Divine Presence, down like the invisible benevolent rain through all the lower heavens and the fiery stars to our troubled Earth, and brush humankind with its radiance, and for a time there would be peace in the world and an abundance of happiness."  So said this Jewish survivor of the Great War ( 1914 - some say 1918, but actually it continued to the end of the 20th century)

A little later Mr Zapinski told 13 year old Benjamin Walters of another music.

"Not everything that sounds like music is truly music. ... The tyrant Phalaris roasted his prisoners in a huge bronze bull, in whose nostrils he had his servants place reeds in such a way that the prisoners shrieks were transformed into music. The sounds came  out as music, but were they indeed music?"  There was a pause a resonating silence."

While Phalaris is long since gone his descendants continue his practice to this day. The spin doctor, the thirty second news bite on television, and all those who sing "all is well when so much is not well". To speak of dead civilians in a war as "collateral damage" and so many other expressions remind us that Phalaris continues his demonic song. The song from Robert Mugabe's lips about his Zimbabwe is such a song. Pol Pot's Cambodian song is another.

"Victory in Iraq" is a Phalaric song. The misuse of the word "terrorist" provides echoes of Phalaris. And now in May 2008 "The Song of Burma"  sung by the Myanmar Junta joins the Phalaric chorus. One of my first posts was "A Justified Complaint" a short story written by Oz Shelach an Israeli. Its telling has a similar impact and therefore worth visiting.

This comes from the third story - The Trope Teacher - in Chaim Potok's book "Old Men at Midnight" A Ballantine Book published in 2001. It is a sobering book touching, CONNECTIONS, JOURNEYS LESS TRAVELLED and JERUSALEM MISSED!

There is a third song sung that arises from that same sacred text. The song that required the words IT IS FINISHED to be said before it could be sung.   

While not directly connected the second verse of a hymn sung yesterday at the Anglican Cathedral here in Brisbane is worth a pause. In other words there are songs we may sing that ring true that care and hope.

"When love is tried as loved-ones change,

hold still to hope, though all seems strange,

till ease returns, and love grows wise

through listening ears and opened eyes."       Brian Wren