The question of our highest values is always personal. And there are many who may question the relevance of the following lofty ideals to the life any of us have lived over the past fifty years. Yet I confess that I cried last night, as I practiced the bass part of the following wonderful hymn, which our director Mindy Edwards selected for your choir to perform at the reunion. Please read the words:
"O brother man! fold to they heart thy brother. Where pity dwells the peace of God is there. To worship rightly is to love each other, each smile a hymn, each kindly deed a prayer. Follow with reverent steps the great example of Him whose holy work was doing good. So shall the wide earth seem our Fathers temple, Each loving life a psalm of gratitude. Then shall all shackles fall, the stormy clangor of wild war music o'er the earth shall cease, Love shall tread out the baleful fire of anger, and in its ashes, plant the tree of peace." John Greenleaf Whittier
This hymn (and others), touched me then, and continues to touch me now. Bravo Mindy Edwards and Walter Ehret.
I've wondered why the young often confuse us with sixties people. Many barely remember fifties folk ever existed. Certainly we were less clamerous. Yet we shared a passion for high values. Did we provide part of the foundation for the rampant idealism of later decades?
We haven't fixed civilization yet Great '58, but if we apply the sentiment expressed in O Brother Man to our three shared days, don't you agree that we will experience one of the warmest and most memorable class reunions in human history. Let's go for it!
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