A NEW COP SONG and
SOME MORE RANDOM THOUGHTS (2)
I am an old-fashioned guy, with new-fangled ideas, especially about the church. To me, monologues, also known as sermons, are passive experiences, with mainly the hearing engaged, easily distracted, while multi-note expression, also known as singing, is much more active, with eyes, voice, brain, ears participating.
That said: we need new church songs! Scrap the 19-20th pious and outdated hymns, often heaven-oriented, but treasure the old melodious tunes, and then simply write songs to reflect today’s world, because – for the first time in 100 years – the world is trying to change: we are hearing, reading, experiencing daily that we must shake our addiction to carbon fuels: an (almost) impossible venture. But our future depends on it. That’s why we also need NEW songs!
It’s not difficult to compose a new song: just pick a tune, and a theme, and pronto, a new hymn is soon composed: if I can do it, anybody can. Take COP.
The next three (3) weeks is COP time again, an annual affair: Number 28, meaning that 27 “Conferences Of the People”, have preceded this one, all with negative results. These UN sponsored gatherings are, supposedly, about eliminating or at least diminishing Climate Change. Yes, it warrants a new song, emphasizing its lofty goal: to save the world from burning: literally a hot topic these days.
Here’s simple try: by no means a literary masterpiece about this present problem.
COP 28:
Is it too late?
Should we preserve the present?
Keep burning oil,
Risk great turmoil
Endanger our essence.
COP 28,
Is it too late?
Can we still do the mending?
Can we retreat
And stop the heat
For it would cause our ending.
COP 28
Is it too late?
Our lifestyle needs a changing
Turn down the heat
Eat much less meat
Our life needs re-arranging.
COP 28
Is it too late?
Our future is the new earth
God promised this
He’s not amiss
Pray for a speedy re-birth.
I agree: it’s not the greatest poetry, but so what? It gives a message; it is a communal act, in which the so-called laity is actively involved.
A few more random thoughts.
Carl Jung and his idea of the collective unconsciousness, is now evident in anger, war, climatic turmoil, political discord; they make me think that the human race is preparing to face its own extermination.
Jevons and his paradox. The resources saved by do-gooders are gleefully used by those who don’t care, so the overall resource consumption keeps growing.
Our collective response to the environmental crisis has been marked by denial, delay and delusion – denial of the problem’s seriousness, delay in doing anything significant about it and delusion about the efficacy of those things we’ve finally gotten around to doing.
The Bible records that the early humans lived hundreds of years, as many as 968 in the case of Methuselah. The abundance of trees ‘in the beginning’ made this possible. We cannot live without trees and we cannot live without air. Trees produce life-giving and life-prolonging oxygen.
We know the answers, and they will be given in the COP28 meetings, but they will be shunned and ridiculed: only today’s moment counts, the present prosperity, the current standard of living, and so,
we plot and plunder,
we waste and wonder,
we foul and flounder,
we try and trample
and still expect to emerge victorious.
It now is beyond certain that we will experience the utmost of floods, the tipping points of earthquakes, the culmination of all possible crimes, human-induced and divinely determined, so severe….
Here I go again: great in the negative, sparse in the positive.