No More Holy War

What if love was holy, and hate was obscene?
And it wasn't twisted, what a wonderful dream.
Living for love, unafraid of the end.
Forgiveness is the only real revenge.
Oh, so we can hear each other and feel each other,
We can break these walls between each other.
Baby, blow by blow and brick by brick,
Keep yourself open, yourself open.
So maybe we should love somebody
Maybe we could care a little more.
So maybe we should love somebody
Instead of polishing the bombs of holy war.
-- Alicia Keys

The recent election of Donald Trump as our next president has left me reeling with disbelief and despair along with more anger and bitterness than I care to admit. I expect to post more about this after I've had time to gain a clearer perspective on it all.

In the meantime, I want to share a video I saw and commented on this morning. A clearly distressed but hopeful Alicia Keys posted a video to Facebook after the election in which she sings a modified segment from her song Holy War. And here is the comment I left on her page in response to her powerful video:

Alicia, I'm a relatively old man who confesses that while I've long been aware of you, I haven't listened to much of your music, because I've always been more drawn to instrumental jazz and jazz-fusion music than to lyrical songs. But I have to say that I've seen some recent interviews you've done that have left me enormously impressed with the stirring beauty of your spirit and with your gleaming authenticity. And when I woke up early this morning and saw this video, I cried. The unguarded rawness and depth of your singing and emotion touches me overwhelmingly and gives me hope that during these most troubling of times, there are people like you in the world who are inspiring love rather than hate, hope rather than abject despair, and that maybe, just maybe more and more of us can follow your lead. Thank you, beautiful lady, for your wonderful video and for being a light in my life and in all our lives during this dark, dark moment in our nation's history.