May 2026

VIEW FROM THE HEIGHTS               

May 2026

“Pursue the goal of peace  with everyone—and holiness as well.”

Hebrews 12: 14 C.E.B.

Greetings!

Driving to church last week, I began listening to an NPR broadcast about hate groups. As my anxiety & blood pressure increased (!), I had the gradual presence of mind to change to classical music.  Marvellously, CRB was playing Ralph Vaughan Williams, “A Lark Ascending.” Its haunting beauty was immediately calming. My pent-up angst morphed into worry about larks.

Vaughan Williams wrote his best-loved opus in July 1914. On the eve of the humanitarian, ecological, and financial disaster we call, “The First World War.”

“A Lark Ascending” is a testament to peace - and nature unharmed by human conflict.

Even though he was 42 years of age, the composer enlisted. He served in the thick of battle, including at Ypres. After the Armistice, works such as the “Pastoral Symphony” were his lament, and his protest against, the horrors he had witnessed.

Edward Elgar was similarly impacted by WWI, albeit too old to enlist. Best known for his pre-war Imperialist marches, Elgar’s music became more contemplative and introspective after 1918. The 1919 “Cello Concerto” is a meditation on grief and struggle in E minor. It is one of the greatest works for the instrument. (Listen to it played by Jacqueline du Pré.)

Music has the power to transform hearts and minds. As do all the Arts. From poets to painters to photographers, great artists movingly convey the horrors of conflict and destruction, and the blessings of peace.

Which brings me to politics! I wonder whether we ask the wrong questions of our representatives in government. We inquire about their fiscal policies, their [supposed] faith beliefs, and their attitudes to families, foreigners, and formalised othering.

What if, instead, we questioned their taste in music, and fine art, and literature?

A reader of Wilfred Owen would not quickly rush us into war. Dickens’ fans are, by definition, compassionate to the poor. Elgar’s “Cello Concerto” played by du Pré, is at once a plea for peace, a call for rights for the differently- abled, and a demand that governments support scientists in their search for cures for terrible diseases as MS.

A cello concerto, an echo of lark song, a portrait of “Gassed” soldiers,[1] and of children held in detention[2] …

Pretty soon, we could save the whole world.

May you be blessed by good books and beautiful music.

May you be blessed by God’s peace.

Brenda

Tina Datsko de Sánchez, “Poem 30”, Dancing Through Fire

Remember, dear ones, peace is a choice.

Even amidst crashing waves of grief, pain, despair

stands a lighthouse with a glowing beacon,

warm as sunlight, pouring out love.

Swim for it.

Even amid the cacophony of worry, frustration, anger

a clear true note shimmers.

Tune your ears to peace.     

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[1] John Singer Sargent, 1919

[2] Charles Dickens, “Oliver Twist”, 1838