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Redemption Song

In this Season of Advent, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, candles, food and festivities, giving and cheer, I keep thinking of Bob Marley’s beautiful music, especially his, “Redemption Song.”

“Old pirates, yes, they rob me
Sold me to the merchant ships
Minutes after they took me
From the bottomless pit
But my hand was made strong
By the hand of the Almighty
We forward in this generation
Triumphantly
Won't you help to sing
These songs of freedom?
Redemption songs…”

That is the message of this Season, whatever tradition you follow.

Pirates still exist. People are still being sold in sex trafficking and sold out in politics. There are minorities and the elderly, the homeless and the disabled, who remain in the bottomless pit.

Won’t you help to sing the songs of freedom?

The Statue of Liberty is firmly anchored in New York Harbor, her light still beaming. But freedom escapes many beneath her lamp. People caught in poverty, in opioid addiction, in low wage jobs, in mental health issues; people without family, without health insurance or about to lose what they have; people hunted down by rogue police, black men shot and killed without questions, without justice; immigrants treated like animals, caged and ignored; people stuck in the exaggerated fears of political propaganda, terrified of those different from themselves, angry and hateful.

Won’t you help to sing the songs of freedom?

We send our troops across the Middle East to fight in senseless wars that win nothing and lose all we hold as precious. We feed the rage of tyrants and terrorists with our shallow patriotism and our voracious greed. Afghanistan. Iraq. Yemen. Syria. Palestine. All places where the blood of their people cover our hands and our souls.

Won’t you help to sing the songs of freedom?

What are those songs? Character. Integrity. Compassion. Mercy. Peace. These are the songs of this Season, these are the songs that once made America an example of brilliance, generosity, openness, and goodness to the world.

Marley sings,
“Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery
None but ourselves can free our minds
Have no fear for atomic energy
'Cause none of them can stop the time
How long shall they kill our prophets
While we stand aside and look?”

Won’t you help to sing the songs of freedom?

This is a solemn Season. A time for reflection. A time to see beyond our own desires. A time to wonder, to empathize, to lend a heart to the hurting. When we have done that, then we can rejoice and celebrate our freedom.

© 2018 Timothy Moody
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