The Promise of Living

The promise of living with hope and thanksgiving

Is born of our loving our friends and our labor.

The promise of growing with faith and with knowing

Is born of our sharing our love with our neighbor.

The promise of living, the promise of growing

Is born of our singing in joy and thanksgiving.

No, that there's no verse by Mr Berry, though the sentiment is certainly akin. (He doesn't care to rhyme that much, anyway.) It's from The Tender Land, Aaron Copland's unfortunately neglected opera. It's sung to an original countermelody against the revivalist tune Zion's Walls, which he also arranged. (It so happened that I conducted that arrangement today in class; it's solid.) I wonder if the lyricist who wrote those words happened to believe them; can it be that intellectuals once had that sort of optimism, that sort of trust in the goodness of the human spirit? If so, what has changed?

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More devout readers, or at least the more liturgically inclined, will note that today is the Feast of the Annunciation. Over at the Episcopal lectionary I frequent, a Mr James Kiefer has written a fine meditation for this day.