I am an atheist. There is no god. I’m sure of that, as sure as I can be. I want to make that completely clear.
Still, this one makes me oogy-soft-warm-fuzzy.
I remember hearing this as a child and being deeply moved by it. I didn’t really grasp the references, but the music incised me and left its mark forever.
Unlike the current cult of hate-fanatics being raised to die or kill for a god that is not there, the children of the 1970s had a sense that god, if he existed, might not even be a he; and that was okay; as long as we could run through the fields and roll in the grass, as long as Mom and Dad loved us, we were doing all right.
It’s so beautiful, this song. It’s unabashedly worshipful; and yet, I love it so. It reminds me of summer in Nebraska, of my mom, young and pretty, smiling at me; it reminds me of endless seasons of bottomless, innocent love.
How sad I was then, only five and just starting to taste life, to think that people might die; how terrible it seemed to me that anyone could ever end. Never to see a fragrant summer’s day again. Never to wonder at the rain. Never again to hear Mom say, I love you.
Morning has broken like the first morning.
Blackbird has spoken like the first bird.
Praise for the singing, praise for the morning,
praise for them springing fresh from the Word.Sweet the rain’s new fall, sunlit from heaven
like the first dewfall on the first grass.
Praise for the sweetness of the wet garden
sprung in completeness where His feet pass.Mine is the sunlight; mine is the morning.
Born of the one light, Eden saw play.
Praise with elation, praise every morning.
God’s recreation of the new day.
This song is, I think, one of the most lovely things I have ever heard in the English canon.
This song was sung, according to the US government, by a terrorist.
We’re trying to kill these people. We’re trying to kill Muslims. We’re trying to kill the people who do things like this song.
Well, what the fuck — they’re just a bunch of ragheads, right? So who cares?
Listen:
We’re trying to kill them, we are killing them, and it is wrong, and it must stop. Even if it means we’re the losers.
We must stop.
I thought it was “praise for them springing fresh from the Word,” as in, “in the beginning was the Word.”
I am: Atheist, too. Inspired by the song since a child, too. Sickened by violence, too.
I thought “fresh from the Word” too, for obvious reasons; it’s much more perfect poetically. Allegedly, though, the lyrics are “world” instead.
That’s not the version I prefer.
I think we’re agreed. It’s Word, not world. Revised, and damn the lyrics databases.
You know, it’s hard enough to look back on the 1970s and know a lot of that innocence is gone forever — and it’s harder still to look back on, say, 1996 and wish to hell Clinton was back in power again.
Remember how nice it was, just ten years ago?
Christ, I hate feeling so damned old. And so. Damned. Tired.
I was reading a thread recently on an atheist board I sometimes hang out on and it got me thinking that yes, there are some songs that have religious themes and that doesn’t stop me from enjoying them. And I don;t mean stuff that even atheists like such as Jesus Christ Superstar or Faure’s or Mozart’s Requiem or “Amazing Grace”…
But I like stuff like “Morning Has Broken” (love Cat Stevens…to bad he joined that stupid club!) and Lori McKenna’s “Paper Wings & Halo” and Bob Schneider’s “God is My Friend”.
I am sure I will think of other examples as soon as I post this…
But I avidly disliked forced religious BS like “Jesus Take the Wheel”…