On Alternating Between Hope & Resignation

 

Whatever happens, those who care about the outcome of our 2024 election are in for a November Surprise of one kind or another. 

Yesterday as I was working on my red placemats, with my mind freewheeling in the quiet flow that comes with project work, words from a song I'd sung with my high school choir (1970-1972) came back to me.  Since I don't believe I've sung or even thought about that song in the fifty plus years since I last sang it, I felt somewhat surprised and unsettled when "Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me" came to mind.  

I couldn’t remember all the words, and when I looked up the lyrics, I learned the song had been written in 1955 by a woman, Jill Jackson Miller, who’d had a spiritual awakening following a suicide attempt after a failed marriage.  The wiki also said that Mahalia Jackson had performed it in Berlin in 1967.  

And that mention of Berlin caught my attention as MrM had been stationed at the Tempelhof Air Force base in the divided city of West Berlin, East Germany, after enlisting in '72 when his draft number came up high.  With not much to do off base, he spent most of his spare time bartending at the NCO club, collecting wooden antique German clocks, and eventually sending a total of 30 wall, mantle and grandfather clocks back home in the crates he built in the base woodshop.

Today the Berlin Wall is down, and Tempelhof is closed, but most of the clocks are still with us, solid and silent since we gave up on the winding, ticking, and chiming a while back.  And here I am pondering a future I could not have begun to imagine back when I was singing hopeful songs with the choir, wondering what’s yet to come?  What will this election bring?  Is it still possible for an individual’s contribution to matter and make a difference for good?  

All of which brings me back (Weave Style!) to a woman on the brink of suicide who didn’t know she’d be writing a song that would be sung around the world (including Berlin) and continue to be sung world wide years after her death in 1995 at age 82. Below is the recording of Mahalia singing that song in Berlin in 1967. It begins with her in rehearsal and 1:50 marks the start of the live performance of her expressing her heartfelt desire in song, for Peace on Earth.  

On the history of Tempelhof Airport/Base:   Tempelhof was opened in the 1920s as the airport for Berlin, which was then extended several times. At the end of the Second World War in 1945, the field was first occupied by Soviet troops, who handed it over to US troops shortly afterwards. During the Berlin Airlift in 1948/49, Tempelhof was the most important airfield for supplying the city's western sectors by air. In the following years, intensive civil air traffic developed here until it was moved to the Tegel airport in 1974. The airfield thus became a pure US military airfield again. With the reunification in 1990 and the withdrawal of the US units, Tempelhof Airport was again used for civilian purposes until it was closed on 30 October 2008. On 24 November 2008 the last aircraft left the airport, which had already been officially closed. The airfield building was now used for events and the area has been converted to a recreational park.