Since my middle daughter introduced us to Richard Peck about
5 years ago, we have greatly enjoyed his books. He writes with a broad range,
from historical fiction to modern ghost stories to Victorian mice to slapstick.
Here are our previous selections:
The River Between Us
is a historical novel, set in two distinct periods of American history. The
framing story is from 1916. Fifteen year old Howard takes a trip with his
father and twin brothers to visit his grandparents and aunt and uncle in Grand Tower, Illinois.
Old Doctor Hutchings served in the Civil War as a Union surgeon. His wife,
Tilly, and her twin brother Noah (who lost an arm in the war), and Aunt
Delphine make up the rest of the household living alone in a house on a ridge
called the Devil’s Backbone.
During this visit, Howard listens to Tilly talk about the
war and how they all came to live there together. The bulk of the book is her
story. (In the audiobook version, two narrators are used: Lina Patel and Daniel
Passer.)
Tilly and Noah, their mother, and their younger sister Cass
lived in the house at the outset of the war. Dad had long since abandoned them,
and they were considered kind of outcasts in the town. One day, soon after the
war starts, two young women get off a steamboat. Delphine is pale, but with
dark eyes and hair. Calinda is darker. They are from New Orleans, and speak with a French accent.
For most of the book, their relationship is a mystery - as is their secret.
It is later, when Noah has joined the Union forces, and come
down with a nasty illness, that Tilly and Delphine travel to Cairo (not the Egyptian one) to care for him.
While there, Delphine is outed as what she is: one of the gens de couleur
libre - free people of color. I was only passingly familiar with the
story of these people, and what I knew mostly came from the biographical
information of Alexandre
Dumas. Not too many know that he was the grandson of slaves.
The gens de couleur
libres were generally former slaves that had been granted freedom (although
some were runaways that managed to stay free), generally because of an, ahem,
arrangement. A wealthy white man would keep a pretty black woman as a mistress,
maintaining her and their children in style, while living with his legitimate
wife and their children. The sons were often sent to France for education - many of them
stayed, although some were given property. The daughters were expected to
follow the family path: find a wealthy white man to support her, and live as a
mistress.
Richard Peck doesn’t sugarcoat this reality at all in this
book. There is nothing graphic, of course - this is a book for children or
teens - but the nature of the arrangement is all too clear.
The other thing that Peck doesn’t back away from is the
reality of “passing.” Delphine can (and does) pass for white. Calinda cannot.
But even Delphine is at risk of being “outed” as black. During the Jim Crow
era, the “one drop” rule meant that she risked a lot, up to and including her
life. Her status as free before the war mattered not. As a bigoted character
gloats, once the North won the war, the gens
de couleur libres would be no better than any common slave.
As in his other books, Peck is a master of the setting.
Everything is brought to life with economic yet evocative writing. Peck also
treats the moral dilemmas with a light touch. His books are never preachy - but
they often pack a wallop. Whether it is racism, class prejudice, sexism,
bullying, or sexuality, Peck shows rather than tells. At regular intervals in
this book (and in most of his others), there are some devastating moments when
things become all too clear. After every book, I have come away thinking about
how deftly he handles situations and people. He is a simply wonderful writer,
and his books are good literature, not simply good books for kids. One of the reasons
that Peck’s books seem ageless is that he doesn’t ever talk down. He assumes
kids can handle hard stuff. Death, mental illness, bigotry, violence, and such
like are things that exist. Kids already know that. But many adults prefer to
pretend they don’t. Peck knows better, and addresses stuff head on, but with
compassion and realism and an optimism that isn’t foolish.
The River Between Us
is an outstanding book, and one I recommend. My kids love Richard Peck too, and
read (and re-read) these books and more every time we go to the library. (My
boys are particularly fond of the Grandma Dowdle stories - with good reason.)
Peck is getting up there in years, but continues to write - and we are glad he
did.
The audiobook versions have been a bit of a mixed bag. This
one was fine. Others have been less good, notably Here Lies the Librarian, which is an excellent book, but a kind of
annoying narrator.
I am reading this book as an unofficial selection for Black History Month. It is unofficial because, while it is about Black History, it was written by a white author. My official Black History Month selection is the early poetry of Langston Hughes - stay tuned for a post about that. I also have another one that I intend to read, but will hold off on naming until I am sure I will get to it.
Anyway, here is the list of Black History Month selections since I started this blog, and also some related books:
The Slaves’ War was written to tell the story that hasn’t really been told. There are more books about the American Civil War than you can fit in a library. Whether about military strategy or philosophy or religion or whatever approach the author takes, the one voice most missing is that of the people about whom this war was fought.
(And sorry, if you think that slavery wasn’t the cause of the war, the reason for the war, and the single most important issue in the war, then you are being wilfully historically ignorant. The Confederates made no bones about it: they seceded to preserve - and expand - slavery, and their state was founded on the central premise that white people were superior, and were thus entitled to enslave non-whites.)
Andrew Ward has written a number of books on history, as well as commentary for The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and NPR. His approach to this book is interesting. Although he doesn’t explain his methods until the end of the book (intentionally), I am going to start with that part here. Ward primarily utilizes the interviews of former slaves by the WPA during the 1930s. In addition, there are some interviews which were preserved from the 1920s, although these are less extensive. Using these, Ward tells the story of the war in different theaters in his own words, but just enough to give context to the quotes from the formerly enslaved. Most of these quotes are one-liners, or at most a few sentences. That is the nature of his material.
He also had to grapple with the fact that his sources were written in “Negro dialect,” which is problematic. (The white WPA interviewers converted the statements into dialect, even when the subjects were educated. Ward shows the hypocrisy here by translating some of the interviewers’ questions into their own regional dialects - like Texan.) He tried to undo some of the most egregious stuff, but left as much of the syntax intact. I think, given what he started with, he did an admirable job.
The limitations of his source material are also what led him to fill in the background narrative. Devoid of context, much of it wouldn’t make sense. Ward did, however, let the eyewitnesses talk whenever they could, and this means that a high percentage of the words are from the formerly enslaved.
There are also a few cases where whites are quoted, where they were able to fill in background on what happened to the main characters. There are also a number of cases where the formerly enslaved directly quote their masters and mistresses - a rather candid look at race relations.
The book covers the period immediately before the war through the first year or so after the end. Thus, we hear about John Brown and Nat Turner, as well as the efforts families made to find each other after the war.
There are far too many great lines to quote, but I’ll hit a few highlights.
Mattie Jackson recalls her mistress after Lincoln’s election complaining that Lincoln wanted to put black people “on an equality with whites,” and that before she saw her children on such a footing, she would “rather see them dead.” I chilling reminder about what we are still wrestling with 150 years later.
Another interesting discussion in the book was on the class distinctions in the South. The upper class was the slave holders. The middle class wanted to be rich. And the poor whites were hated by everyone. Interestingly, the slaves were taught to keep away from the “white trash” and look down on them. And vice versa. Also interesting was the “field slave” versus the “house slave.” I’d heard about this before, but it was very interesting to see it in the words of the enslaved themselves. In fact, hearing about the class levels in the South from that perspective is fascinating. It is refreshingly honest coming from those who lived at the bottom of the hierarchy.
Also honest, but more in a devastating way, were the sections that revolved around children. One of the horrors of slavery we easily forget is that enslavers literally sold their own children. Let that one sink in. The enslaved had no problem talking about that in this book either. Just one reason I get a bit hot and bothered when people claim that we were more moral in the past. Like hell we were! We just casually raped brown people (it was legal, actually) and sold our own children into slavery. Or beat them to death.
One exchange in this book that stood out regarding children was between Mill (last name not known) and her mistress when the Yankees landed at their plantation on the Mississippi River. About to be overrun, the mistress is panicking and tries to convince the house slaves to stay, but they tell her they will leave if given the chance. Then, in an incredible act of hubris, the mistress tries to convince Mill to lie if the soldiers find the silver plates - that they belonged to Mill, not her mistress. Mill refuses, reminding her, “Mistress, I can’t lie over that. You bought that silver plate when you sold my three children.” Boom.
It was interesting the amount of propaganda the enslavers fed the enslaved to try to make them fear the Yankees. In a sign that nothing is new under the sun, one recalled a local preacher who loudly declared that the Southern cause was divine, and that God ordained that the South would win. Then as now, as Richard III put it, “But then I sigh and, with a piece of scripture / Tell them that God bids us do good for evil / And thus I clothe my naked villainy / With odd old ends stolen out of Holy Writ / And seem a saint when most I play the devil.”
Experiences varied quite a bit, depending on location. While many escaped slaves fought on the Union side, and thus had first hand accounts of the battles, others were whisked away to Texas, where they saw nothing of the war. Felix Haywood was one of these, and his description of it is amusing:
“It’s a funny thing how folks always want to know about the war. The war wasn’t so great as folks suppose. Sometimes you didn’t know it was going on. It was the ending of it that made the difference. That when we all woke that something had happened. Oh, we knew what was going on in it all the time, because old man Gudlow went to the post office every day and we knew.”
Another interesting story was of Stonewall Jackson’s death. The facts aren’t a mystery, but William Mack Lee adds the detail that Jackson had a Union uniform on to scout across the line. Then, he was shot by his own men when he returned - he had given them specific instructions to shoot anyone crossing the line. Oops.
The most touching story in the book, however, was of Andrew Bradley. When his master was killed, he was horrified at the thought of the body being dumped in a ditch and quickly buried. Using money given him by the dying man, he concocted a plan to smuggle the body back by train - and carried it off too! As he tells the tale, it was all about respect for human dignity, and that he himself wished to be buried on his own land.
The same respect, alas, was not granted to the enslaved. Throughout, there are sad tales of the Confederates imprisoning any blacks they found - including freemen, who were then enslaved.
I don’t want to paint the South with too broad of a brush here. There are a wide range of stories in this book. What was a common refrain, however, was that the closer the Yankees got, the better many masters treated their slaves, returning to mistreatment as the threat passed. And yes, there were a few good relationships. But it is telling that, given the chance, the vast majority of the enslaved left.
One quote here also is apropos. It was give by William Henry Downs, and was directed more at the failure of the war to prevent Jim Crow. It holds true in our own time too.
“All mens means well, but some of them ain’t broad-minded enough to do anything for nobody but themselves. Any man that tries to help humanity is a good man.”
This might be a bit generous. There are indeed truly deplorable people (and yes, I used that word), filled with outright hate for those outside their tribe. Alas, these people currently wield a lot of political and religious power. But most people probably mean well. They just can’t bring themselves to actually care about people outside their tribe. And then, when a demagogue comes along and feeds their fears, the follow right along that dark path of tribalism and hatred.
Two final things I want to mention are in connection with the aftermath of the war. First is the idea that the freed slaves would get “40 acres and a mule.” In retrospect, this actually would have been more fair than what ended up happening. Which was 100 years of segregation and violence against African Americans. Make that more like 150 and counting, honestly. The best time for reparations would have been then, and if you think about it, my ancestors got their “640 acres and subsidized grub stake loans” under the Homestead Act 20 years later, which was even more generous. And my ancestors weren’t enslaved for 250 years, which means they were not morally owed compensation for all that violence and theft. I cannot help but wonder how different things might have looked in our nation had the right thing been done at the time.
The second one I found interesting is that along with the formerly enslaved, a number of Confederate wives left too. The upper crust often engaged in what were essentially arranged marriages, and a number of these wives were tired of being abused (oh yes, men who would flog slaves predictably tended to abuse their wives too) and humiliated by their husbands’ sleeping with the slave women, and thus left to find a new life elsewhere. A bit of a reminder that Patriarchy isn’t just about men and women. It is a whole system built on the privilege of powerful men to abuse and control those below them, women, children, and slaves. (Aristotle had something to say about that, come to think of it…)
This is an interesting book to read, with its variety of perspectives, earthy first person narratives, and a view of the war that is rarely considered.
I can’t remember another Christmas when I felt the ache quite like I do this year. But then again, I never experienced a Christmas where the Ku Klux Klan openly holds rallies and celebrations of the politicaltriumph of their ideals, and where Nazi salutes are proudly given, and Confederate Battle Flags stream from pickup trucks in my own home city. This is a time in which friends of my kids have been bullied and asked when they would be deported. It is a day I honestly never thought I would see, and yet here we are. What decade - or century - is this again?
[Update Christmas 2018: A mere 1 in 4 white Evangelicals think we have a moral duty to take in refugees. This while complaining about the phony "war on Christmas," a holiday centering on a refugee family. I never thought I would see the day when my former faith tradition would openly embrace anti-Christianity.]
But there have been times in our history like this before, where the nation was deeply divided over questions of exactly who counts as our neighbor. In fact, some of our most beloved Christmas carols arose in times like these, inspired by the vision of the brotherhood of mankind and love for our neighbor. These carols insisted that, despite what we saw going on in the world, God was yet on the move, and love would ultimately win out over hatred and tribalism. And thus, these songs speak to us today both in their acknowledgement that the world is not what it should be and in their hope that the people that walk in darkness will one day experience that great light.
In this post, I want to highlight four carols, each dating to the decades surrounding the American Civil War, and each in its own way referring to that desire that God would free the enslaved, lift up the oppressed, and restore the world to how it should be. These carols have always spoken to me, and speak to me still, particularly resonating in this particular Christmas season.
It Came Upon The Midnight Clear
This poem was written by Unitarian minister Edmund Sears in 1849. Sears trained as a lawyer, but entered the ministry, later writing a number of influential theological works, the most enduring of which was a commentary on the Gospel of John.
Sears also was a fiery abolitionist, preaching many sermons against slavery, some of which eventually were reprinted as abolitionist tracts. (You can read some here.) It’s strong stuff. Sears was unafraid to condemn slave owners, not just the institution, and call on them to repent and free their slaves. He was radical in other ways, too, openly preaching the equality of men and women, calling for civil disobedience, and making sharp observations about the evil entrenched in the government of his time. Perhaps his most passionate words invoked the teachings of Christ, specifically the Golden Rule and the need to love all men as our neighbors.
In 1849, saddened by the ongoing wars in Europe and the strife between the United States and Mexico - and recovering from a personal breakdown probably occasioned by extreme overwork - he penned the words to It Came Upon The Midnight Clear, one of my favorite carols, and one tinged with melancholy.
It came upon the midnight clear,
That glorious song of old,
From angels bending near the earth,
To touch their harps of gold:
"Peace on the earth, goodwill to men,
From heaven's all-gracious King."
The world in solemn stillness lay,
To hear the angels sing.
Still through the cloven skies they come,
With peaceful wings unfurled,
And still their heavenly music floats
O'er all the weary world;
Above its sad and lowly plains,
They bend on hovering wing,
And ever o'er its babel sounds
The blessèd angels sing.
Yet with the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel-strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not
The love-song which they bring;
O hush the noise, ye men of strife,
And hear the angels sing.
And ye, beneath life's crushing load,
Whose forms are bending low,
Who toil along the climbing way
With painful steps and slow,
Look now! for glad and golden hours
come swiftly on the wing.
O rest beside the weary road,
And hear the angels sing!
For lo!, the days are hastening on,
By prophet bards foretold,
When with the ever-circling years
Comes round the age of gold
When peace shall over all the earth
Its ancient splendors fling,
And the whole world give back the song
Which now the angels sing.
Here is one of my very favorite groups, Chanticleer with a gorgeous rendition of this song. I love the fact that they include the less-known third verse.
Go Tell It On The Mountain
This song is probably the best known Negro Spiritual of all time. It is believed to have originated around the time of the Civil War. Later, it became an anthem of the Civil Rights Movement, often combined with Go Down Moses in a way that highlighted the theme of freedom and deliverance.
While shepherds kept their watching
Over silent flocks by night,
Behold throughout the heavens,
There shone a holy light:
Go, Tell It On The Mountain,
Over the hills and everywhere;
Go, Tell It On The Mountain
That Jesus Christ is born.
The shepherds feared and trembled
When lo! above the earth
Rang out the angel chorus
That hailed our Saviour's birth:
Go, Tell It On The Mountain,
Over the hills and everywhere;
Go, Tell It On The Mountain
That Jesus Christ is born.
Down in a lowly manger
Our humble Christ was born
And God send us salvation,
That blessed Christmas morn:
Go, Tell It On The Mountain,
Over the hills and everywhere;
Go, Tell It On The Mountain
That Jesus Christ is born.
When I am a seeker,
I seek both night and day;
I seek the Lord to help me,
And He shows me the way:
Go, Tell It On The Mountain,
Over the hills and everywhere;
Go, Tell It On The Mountain
That Jesus Christ is born.
He made me a watchman
Upon the city wall,
And if I am a Christian,
I am the least of all.
Go, Tell It On The Mountain,
Over the hills and everywhere;
Go, Tell It On The Mountain
That Jesus Christ is born.
I grew up singing this song, and kind of assumed that everyone else did as well. It was surprising, then, when I have done it in church, to find that there are people who didn’t know it. What’s up with that?
Nobody can do this song quite like Mahalia Jackson:
Oh boy, where to start with this one. This has long been one of my very favorite carols, despite its challenging melody. The history behind it is fascinating.
In 1847, the village priest at Roquemaure, France, asked a man named Placide Chapeau to write a poem for the Christmas Eve service. Like Edmund Sears, Chapeau had trained as a lawyer, before taking over the family wine merchant business and writing poetry in his spare time. Chapeau too was a bit of a radical for his time, an ardent proponent of democracy (not yet fully realized in France at the time), opposed to state-sponsored churches, and a socialist.
Chapeau decided after writing the poem that it really needed to be a song. In selecting a composer, he made a striking decision, asking his friend Adolphe Adam, best known for his ballet works, to write a tune. Adam was less than enthusiastic, because he was not a Christian, but a Jew, and thus didn’t celebrate Christmas. But Chapeau talked him into it, and Adam tried to make the tune reflect the message of the poem.
Not too long after, Chapeau formally broke with the Catholic Church, causing a problem regarding the song. After all, it had become quite popular in France, and people everywhere were singing it. But, it was written by an apparent apostate and a Jew, so it was not tolerable. The French authorities banned it. Which was about as unsuccessful as you might imagine, adding to, rather than subtracting from the popularity of the piece.
The original poem translated more or less literally from the French reads like this:
Midnight, Christians, is the solemn hour,
When God as man descended unto us
To erase the stain of original sin
And to end the wrath of His Father.
The entire world thrills with hope
On this night that gives it a Saviour.
People, kneel down, await your deliverance.
Christmas, Christmas, here is the Redeemer,
Christmas, Christmas, here is the Redeemer!
May the ardent light of our Faith
Guide us all to the cradle of the infant,
As in ancient times a brilliant star
Guided the Oriental kings there.
The King of Kings was born in a humble manger;
O mighty ones of today, proud of your greatness,
It is to your pride that God preaches.
Bow your heads before the Redeemer!
Bow your heads before the Redeemer!
The Redeemer has broken every bond:
The Earth is free, and Heaven is open.
He sees a brother where there was only a slave,
Love unites those that iron had chained.
Who will tell Him of our gratitude,
For all of us He is born, He suffers and dies.
People, stand up! Sing of your deliverance,
Christmas, Christmas, sing of the Redeemer,
Christmas, Christmas, sing of the Redeemer!
There are some pretty amazing lines in there. “O mighty ones of today, proud of your greatness / It is to your pride that God preaches.”
But that isn’t the end of the story. In 1855, John Sullivan Dwight discovered the song, and in his capacity as editor of Dwight’s Journal of Music, a highly respected and influential magazine of its time, published his own revised version.
Dwight was quite the character. A Unitarian minister and a member of the Transcendentalist movement, he was also America’s first serious music critic, and shaped the musical taste and culture in America more than anyone else of his time. He participated in the Brook Farm utopian community (along with George and Sophia Ripley, Charles Lane, and Nathaniel Hawthorne), and advocated strongly for abolition. He also got memorably punked by pianist Louis Gottschalk.
But the lyrics as revised do make a couple of important points. First, that we are called as Christians to fight against slavery and oppression. As Isaiah put it, “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?” The second point is related: brotherhood. The slave, the immigrant, the person outside of our tribe. These are our brothers and sisters, our neighbors, and we are - without reservation or qualification - to love them as ourselves. Not to enslave or oppress them, not to send them away, not to blame them. To love them as we love ourselves and those within our tribe.
This song remains inspiring today because of its reminder that even though we still pine in sin and error, yonder is breaking, even at this moment, a new and glorious morning, as we embrace Christ’s call to love our neighbor. Here is Dwight’s version of the lyrics:
O holy night! The stars are brightly shining,
It is the night of our dear Saviour's birth.
Long lay the world in sin and error pining,
Till He appear'd and the soul felt its worth.
A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.
Fall on your knees! O hear the angel voices!
O night divine, O night when Christ was born;
O night divine, O night, O night Divine.
Led by the light of Faith serenely beaming,
With glowing hearts by His cradle we stand.
So led by light of a star sweetly gleaming,
Here come the wise men from the Orient land.
The King of Kings lay thus in lowly manger;
In all our trials born to be our friend.
He knows our need, to our weaknesses no stranger,
Behold your King! Before Him lowly bend!
Behold your King, Before Him lowly bend!
Truly He taught us to love one another;
His law is love and His gospel is peace.
Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother;
And in His name all oppression shall cease.
Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we,
Let all within us praise His holy name.
Christ is the Lord! O praise His Name forever,
His power and glory evermore proclaim.
His power and glory evermore proclaim.
There are far too many outstanding renditions of this song to pick from, but I am going with Pavarotti and Domingo and the original French lyrics.
I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day
The final carol in this series is the only one known to have been written during the Civil War itself. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow composed the lyrics (as “Christmas Bells”) on Christmas Day in 1863. He had recently lost his wife to a fire (having lost his first wife in childbirth), and then learned that his son - about all the family he had left - had been seriously wounded as a Union soldier. In fact, his son had joined the army without his father’s blessing, and the two had not had the chance to see each other since. Faced with these losses, and the ongoing bloodbath that would claim half a million lives, Longfellow felt that the times were dark indeed.
Indeed, the nation itself had ruptured, and the reason for the rupture was the insistence that one group of people not only weren’t our neighbors, but indeed, were not fully human. As Alexander Stephens, the Vice President of the Confederacy said in no uncertain terms that the issue in the war was slavery, and that “Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”
Longfellow was strongly in favor of abolition, and put his talents - and money - toward the cause. In 1842, his collection, Poems on Slavery, shone a light on the injustice inherent in the system. He worked with other abolitionists and gave large sums of his own money to support the effort. (The National Park Service publication on his efforts is an interesting read.)
As in our own times, it must have been discouraging for Longfellow to see just how strong hate was in his day. It would probably sadden him to see how it has persisted 150 years later. This poem and song expresses this discouragement without giving way to despair. Longfellow retains his hope that ultimately, the right would prevail, and that those filled with hate and fear would be vanquished by those who choose to embrace love of our fellow man.
I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
and wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Till ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime,
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said;
"For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men."
In the carol version, only three or four verses are sung, not the entire poem, which is too bad. I think it would be wise of us to remember the context of the original. There are several tunes that can be used for this song. Just to be different, I picked the Jars of Clay version, which uses a less popular tune. I had the chance to hear them live a few years back, and can attest that they are outstanding in person, with great musicianship and tight harmonies.
This Christmas season, may we ponder these things in our heart, and let our hearts overflow in love and kindness toward our fellow man. The world has indeed suffered long, many thousands of years of wrong have weighed us down, and man cannot hear the song of the angels, busy has he is fighting with man. We are indeed seekers, we who look for Christ, and, like him, we proclaim the good news of reconciliation, the breaking of chains, and the inheritance of the earth by the meek, not the powerful. While hate remains strong, we believe that ultimately it will fail, the right will prevail, and we seek to do all we can to spread love and fight hate.
