This is my song, O God of all the nations,
A song of peace for lands afar and mine;
This is my home, the country where my heart is;
Here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine:
But other hearts in other lands are beating
With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.
This was sung during Mass today, I'm sure because of our Independence Day holiday this weekend.
My country's skies are bluer than the ocean,
And sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine;
But other lands have sunlight too, and clover,
And skies are everywhere as blue as mine:
O hear my song, thou God of all the nations,
A song of peace for their land and for mine.
The hymn, sung to the melody from Finlandia by Sibelius, speaks of his great love for his homeland, but without that sense of superiority that can border on the dangerous.
May truth and freedom come to every nation;
May peace abound where strife has raged so long;
That each may seek to love and build together,
A world united, righting every wrong;
A world united in its love for freedom,
proclaiming peace together in one song.
It's so moving, especially at a time in world history when the real possibility of war threatens everything dear and familiar to us.
Yes, indeed. When I actually read the words of our National Anthem and our national songs they make me cringe! Some of them were not really meant as national hymns eg Rule, Britannia which is from a masque by Arne about King Alfred the Great. However....! There is a very fine line between being pleased to belong to a certain nation and not wanting to live anywhere else (which is a personal feeling) and that of thinking that your own country is better in every respect to any other and forcing your ways of thinking and doing on other countries (which is not personal at all but bullying).
ReplyDeleteYes, but in our country, it’s also terrible how the young seem to be learning a disdain for our past, and what we all really need is a proper balance. In fact, the balance only God can give us.
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