Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 768 Plough Quarterly • Winter 2015 8 Plough Quarterly Fa m I Ly C o r n e r Daring to Sing T hose aren’t the words I know. My son is sprawled on the rug, hitching up a tractor and trailer, and taking liber- ties with lyrics. There aren’t enough machines mentioned in his song repertoire, so he’s re- purposing “This Land Is Your Land.” Woodie Guthrie’s song is being populated with excava- tors and front-end loaders. Not that Guthrie would object–his songs often grew new verses or underwent spontaneous substitutions. I believe that music is every child’s birth- right. I’m not talking about canned music, shrilling through speakers or ear buds, synthe- sized and sterile. I mean songs with humble origins, growing, changing, shared among friends on a winter evening–songs that celebrate the seasons of the planet and the heart. The professionalism of commercial music may have scared us away from attempting our own unpolished melodies. If so, we need to climb back into childhood and lose our self- consciousness along the way. Perhaps the best time to do that is at Christmas, when in public places we’re bombarded with every tune from the sacred to the inane. Last year, I was toting my son along in my shopping cart, dodging through the Christmas crush, when he looked up into my face in alarm. “Why did they just do that?” “What?” I whipped around, looking for an altercation. “No,” he said. “In the music. They just ran ‘Jingle Bells’ into ‘Away in a Manger.’” I hadn’t heard anything more than seamless back- ground noise. He had heard a collision of two unrelated songs. Does he have an aversion to ‘Jingle Bells’? No. We live in the country; he’s ridden in a sleigh; it jingled, jolly good fun in January. Does it relate to a baby who had no crib for a bed? Not really. Children are hungry for meaning, for a song they can claim as their own. Our favorite Christmas song is a simple dedication to the baby without a crib: Advent, we are waiting for Advent with your candles, for now in this darkness the light will come once more. This year a new verse appeared: “Jesus, we are waiting for Jesus, with your kingdom.” A child’s longing for a special birth now reaches toward rebirth for all people. Maureen Swinger From www.kremlin.ru / Wikimedia Commons