song for theme #34: Valuing Traditions and Status Quo

“When Our Days on Earth Are Done” by Stephen P. Cook

 sung to the tune of “Wild Montana Skies” by John Denver / performed by John Denver, Emmy Lou Harris

Into tradition and prejudice

The plain where I was born¹

Learning to do what I was told

Not expressing any scorn

Respecting parents and elders

My true self not taking wing

A coddling mother shaped me

Sometimes she would sing

Dear God we pray, guide our family

Help us honor and better serve You

Staying strong and healthy

Help us be cheerful kind hard-working

Facing adversity not run

Then guide us home to Heaven

When our da----ays on Earth are don----ne

The times they were a changing²

Off to university I went

Held onto some of what I’d been given

But some of it got spent

Becoming a card-carrying hippie

Discounting tradition

Identifying with disturbance²

And consciousness revolution²

On the USA bicentennial

I finally spread my wings

And headed for Ozark wilderness

Doing a back to the land thing

Finding freedom hard work and discipline

Thinking I was pretty tough

And like that red tail hawk I’d see

I was sailing past the bluff³

After twice becoming a father

I started writing a book⁴

A coming of age story

And some foundations got shook

As new projects were launched

Some took flight and soared

Others crashed and burned

But seldom was I bored

Singing to my two young children

Mom’s song was never heard

But singing it someday as Grandpa

Perhaps with changing a few words

Looking back on life’s hard knocks

Some bowing to tradition

But after all life’s disturbance Mom

I hear your rendition⁵

Dear God we pray, guide our family

Help us honor and better serve You

Staying strong and healthy

Help us be cheerful kind hard-working

Facing adversity not run

Then guide us home to Heaven

When our da----ays on Earth are don----ne

SONG—NOTES / COMMENTS     (this song is part of the author’s personal story)

1—The author was born in 1951. This song is semi autobiographical.

2—Dylan protest songs, the Stones’ “Street Fighting Man,” Yale’s Charles Reich’s The Greening of America

3—And metaphorically free, flying high “above the plain of tradition and prejudice” (Kate Chopin’s phrase)

4—Coming of Age in the Global Village, published in 1990

5—Or, like a disturbed extended spring’s restoring force returning it to equilibrium, we return to traditions we were born into.

Comment: For many the path offered by this theme is the least resistance, least stressful one.