fear and trembling

For some reason this morning, I was thinking about Phil Ochs. Something in the news triggered my mind to the lyrics of his song Crucifixion.
The specific phrase that rattled my mind was "Beneath the greatest love is a hurricane of hate". I remember thinkg that in Marriage Encounter, we were taught that the opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference. Now I'm sitting here trying to remember what little news item set my brain cells whirling, but it's completely lost. Funny how those things can happen on a long commute.

So I turned off the car radio and popped in a CD - I spent some time a few months back to make myself a couple of car mix CDs so that I don't have to carry my whole library with me everywhere. Car Mix one has an eclectic collection including Dave Brubeck, Johnny Cash, the Oxford Boy's choir singing Ralph Vaughn Williams hymns - and several cuts from What's That I Hear?: The Songs of Phil Ochs . Among the cuts I chose for this were Dave Massengill's rendition of Crucifixion, Outside of a Small Circle of Friends - Dave Van Ronk, Flower Lady - Ian Matthews, Pleasures of the Harbor - Rod MacDonald, and Highwayman - Steve Gillette. But I digress.

Crucifixion was written sometime between 1963 and 1965. Maybe Dawn would know the exact date - she's a storehouse of that kind of information. I know it was after November 1963 because it was originally inspired by the assassination of JFK. I know it was before 1965 because that is the earliest recording of it that I have been able to find. So, 1964.

It was the year of the last big rubella pandemic - and the argument was on for abortion for moms whose babies might have been affected. Now, many (most?) of you who read this were probably not born yet when this song was written. It was from a different era, a different way of life - not necessarily better or worse overall than what we have today - but different. The Pill was on the horizon, abortion was mostly illegal and definitely not socially acceptable, civil rights were becoming a topic of passion, and the war in Vietnam was just heating up. It was a presidential election year, there was a World's Fair in NYC, it was an Olympics year. There was hope and there was despair on the horizon.

I was nine years old, and that summer, we left Los Angeles to go first to New York for a few days (one day at the fair!) and then to fly to France (for a year's stay)with a side trip to England. I remember seeing all the mod stuff in London. The Beatles and the Beach Boys were all over the AM radio, and all the cool kids had Japanese transistor radios. The Chinese exploded an atomic bomb, and we alternated between the fear of atomic annihilation and the giddiness of the progress in science. It seemed that there was a new breakthrough every week, vividly pictured on the cover of Life or Look or the Saturday Evening Post.

Now let me share with you another bit of lyrics from the song that literally jumped out at me while listening this morning.
The eyes of the rebel have been branded by the blind
To the safety of sterility, the threat has been refined
The child was created to the slaughterhouse he's led
So good to be alive when the eulogy is read
The climax of emotion, the worship of the dead
And the cycle of sacrifice unwinds

Think about it. We now have in vitro fertilization - "the child was created"- and from the 'excess' we have the push for embryonic stem cell 'research'- "to the slaughterhouse he's led". The euthanasia movement, especially as exemplified by George Felos (see this chilling article in Crisis) gives one "the climax of emotion". The embrace of the Manichaean dualism (spirit good, body an evil trap) has become so pervasive in our culture that it even infects Christians who should know better.

I have great hopes that the Theology of the Body will help to correct or even reverse some of these changes in our culture. By recognizing that God made us as incarnate souls, as a unity, and that the body is intended to be a good thing, maybe we can get past some of the ideas that have rotted our culture from within. Maybe we can restore human sexuality to its innate sanctity. Maybe we can appreciate that human life is a gift, not a burden - even that life is at the one cell stage, even if that life is not one that seems bearable to an outsider. Maybe we can remove the death penalty from the innocents whose greatest crimes are that they are inconvenient, expensive, or suffering.

Or we can continue down the path which places the autonomy of an individual above all other moral values. God gave us free will, after all. He has told us what He thinks we should choose with that will, but he forces no one into His arms.