Now you definitely have to be at least seventy years old to appreciate what I am about to say....and you probably have to be a male. Maybe once every few years or so....but as recently as a few week ago....I downloaded and listened to an assortment of television western theme songs from the fifties....and early sixties. It might be like another person putting on some Bach. It soothes me....Gunsmoke....and Have Gun Will Travel....and Tombstone Territory. It was a time in my life before I was a teenager....safe memories from the past....and an America that is no more and will never be anymore.
A few weeks before that....and I posted on it at the time....I instead listened to all of the army and navy and air force and marines service songs....for similar reasons. A few days ago....on the computer....I booted up and watched an old WWII movie.....Sink The Bismarck....and then listened to Johnny Horton's popular song of the day of the same title.
I will at times listen to the whole movie soundtrack from Chariots Of Fire....or....Master And Commander....or even....Funny Girl....or any one of a number of the Broadway plays of the day. How about Oook-lahoma....."We know we belong to the land....and the land we belong to is grand!"
I've mentioned a few times in these posts how my wife constantly has country music on the....whatever it is...."Hey Google....play country music"....and I do my best to ignore most of it except one song that when it comes on I say...."Hey Google....turn up the volume."
Toby Keith died yesterday....as you probably know by now....but his song....Courtesy Of The Red, White, and Blue....gets turned up loud every time it comes on....as recently as three or four days ago.
The contemporary church of today can have their....praise music....it's like singing in front of a mirror....but the hymns....oh the hymns....there is the real soothing....and the real peace....and the real praise! In my mind there cannot possibly be a greater or more glorious musical composition than Handel's Hallelujah Chorus....although some hymns come very close. Our town has a musical bell tower in the middle of it....and when it plays the Star Spangled Banner....I turn to the sound and cover my heart with my hand....no matter where I am walking or who I am with.
This MAGA patriotism of today is something that I am not familiar with. It brings back no memories. It certainly does not soothe. Lee Greenwood's....God Bless The U. S. A....is wedged between Macho Man and You Can't Always Get What You Want. It's a jumbled mix of nothingness....assembly line....conveyor belt patriotism....neon Christianity with a hangover every Monday morning.
Thinking like I do at times....of the past....if you are not careful can be like a dog returning to his vomit. It's as Solomon must have felt as he remembered his early days....where in old age he could only say...."Fear God, and keep his commandments"....no longer capable or desiring of glorying in the past....which today only looks good compared to the present....a very real and earthy tombstone territory. So I can at times go back to it in my mind....not with a hope to someday return....or a wish to be there....but more as a reminder that....it's not as good as it once was....and it never was as good as I think it was....but our hope is in the One....Jesus Christ....who is...."the same yesterday and today and forever."
Hebrews 13:8
