Let it Shine, Let It Shine, Let It Shine
The winter solstice is upon us, along with the practices in many cultures of cultivating and encouraging light at this time of year.
My parents weren’t fans of organized religion, but we celebrated Christmas as a story of a displaced refugee whose child was born in the most humble of shelters. A star lit the world, just as the North Star guided those who escaped enslavement during those shameful many decades in the United States of America. The shadow of that time is still with us.
This has been my favorite Christmas album since my mother brought it home when I was ten years old. Odetta’s voice goes straight to my heart, especially on this song:
“Anybody ask you who you are … you tell him you’re a child of God.”
A little about Odetta:
According to the late Reverend James Lawson, this concept — I am a child of God — inspired the belief in enslaved people that they were not lesser beings than the oppressors and thus deserved and were owed freedom. Reverend Lawson’s great-grandfather escaped to Canada via the Underground Railroad and took the name Lawson to honor the abolitionist who helped his family get there.
A little about Reverend Lawson’s work:
I grew up with civil rights music. My parents took me to rallies, vigils, and marches. We lived in Milwaukee, which at the time was referred to as the most segregated city in the North. This is one of the standard songs that everyone at those justice gatherings knew.
Light over Darkness
Light is a theme in the quest for freedom and equality. Light is a theme in the Christmas story and in the Hanukkah story. My family lights candles on the nights of Hanukkah to honor our relatives who escaped the Nazis and the enslaved ancestors who believed that they, like all living beings, hold sacred light.
Light is the theme of the Peace Tower that Yoko Ono created to honor her husband, a man who renounced his own violence and then died from violence.
Speaking of John, my chapbook would be a nice gift for any of the Beatles fans in your life!
May we promote peace. May our light shine into the shadows.
About the pictures
The photo of a group of courageous freedom fighters in silhouette is from Powerful Days: The Civil Rights Photography of Charles Moore. They are on their way from Selma to Montgomery in 1965 in support of voting rights for all Americans. Moore’s caption: “Hard-core marchers huddle by an early morning fire.” The trees are from a Paul Landacre print. The stars are the wallpaper on my kitchen ceiling.
The illustration of little baby Jesus in the manger are from the lovely book American Folk Songs for Christmas by Ruth Crawford Seeger (stepmother of Pete Seeger and a composer and folklorist), illustrated by Barbara Cooney, who said upon receiving her first of two Caldecott Medals: “I believe that children in this country need a more robust literary diet than they are getting…. It does not hurt them to read about good and evil, love and hate, life and death.” Amen.
I believe that the people on the Sing for Freedom cover are The Freedom Singers, with co-founder Bernice Johnson Reagon (who later founded Sweet Honey in the Rock) in the foreground. The photo was taken by Ken Thompson.
The illustration of Good King Wenceslas witnessing the peasant gath’ring winter fuel is from Fireside Book of Folk Songs, illustrated by Alice and Martin Provensen. It was their first illustration job. They both went on to illustrious careers. Perhaps you’ve seen their work in Little Golden Books!
The Lennon photo was taken by Jill Krementz. The War is Over postcard is the image that John and Yoko posted on billboards all over the world in 1970, the fifteenth year of the Vietnam War. The war went on for five more years.
