Be Still, My Soul

APOLOGY:  NO IMAGES AVAILABLE FOR KATHARINA VON SCHLEGEL (1697-?), JANE L. BORTHWICK (1813-1897) & JEAN SIBELIUS (1865-1957).  

© Copyright 2013 PJ Stassen

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A pessimist is one who has been intimately acquainted with an optimist.

-          Elbert Hubbard, 1856-1915.

   My father-in-law  (who had  passed away a few days earlier on 1 January 2013) was buried on Wednesday, 9 January 2013.  My own father died on the 6th of January and was buried on Friday, 11 January 2013, in the same week as my father-in-law.  This ‘hauntingly’ beautiful song (the instrumental version of Be Still, My Soul) was chosen as the funeral march for my own father’s memorial service on Friday, 11 January 2013.   So, for the family it was a (very personal) 9/11 type of a week, with two funerals in that one week: One on the 9^th (father-in-law) and one on the 11^th (father).   

   My father-in-law’s funeral service (on the 9^th) was the standard, traditional Christian ceremony, for he had been serving God in an official capacity as well as privately for many years … it was a beautiful, dignified burial service.  My own father’s memorial service (on the 11^th) was quite different; it was a graceful, upbeat type of memorial service, with few tears and lots of quiet and somewhat restrained, rejoicing.  The reason for this change in ‘funeral ambience’ was the fact that my father had made his final, personal peace with God (at the age of eighty-six) only as late as 1 October 2010, an unusual thing for a man of his years to do. 

   We have calculated that he had been economically active for as long as at least seventy years, i.e. for longer than his eldest son is old.  He started off in life in 1940 at the age of sixteen as a steward in the (passenger-rail) dining-saloon of the South African Railways, and only retired as a professional courier on the road at the end of 2010 when his health had finally started to fail him. 

   One highlight during his youth on the railways is the fact that he had personally helped serve dinner to the renowned Noel Coward, the famed British playwright, on the train during WWII.  Coward was in South Africa at the time doing some clandestine undercover-work for the British Secret Service under the ruse of a South African holiday in the tropics.  Bear in mind that South Africa then was still part of the British Commonwealth and had entered the war on the side of the Allies, so, officially, was thus also at war with the belligerent axis-powers of Germany, Italy and Japan.  In those days it apparently was not uncommon for artists and actors to be drawn into the world of international espionage … Cary Grant, Merle Oberon and a host of other celebrities reportedly used to spy on behalf of the Allies during the war years. 

   Incidentally, my father’s low-profile, modest and humble conversion (and final decision to put his hand unconditionally in the Mighty Hand of God) came to me in the form of a telephone call on Saturday morning of 1 October 2013.  The call came, amazingly, while Andre Rieu’s Amazing Grace (what a ‘coincidence’) was playing on TV.  I even went and pressed my cell-phone to the TV to enable him to listen to the song until it had finished. 
   It must have demanded tremendous courage for him to phone me to share such a momentous decision with me, for in his heyday he used to be quite a proud, no-nonsense, unrepentant, businessman-type of an individual. However, he went to his eternal home in his sleep, peacefully and in the comfort of my sister's home, surrounded by his wife and most of the children.  As they say, the bend in the road does not necessarily always mean the end of the road.  In Ethics Of The Dust, John Ruskin writes:

   “There is no music in a rest, but there is the making of music in it. 

   “In our whole life-melody, the music is broken off here and there by ‘rests’ and we foolishly think we have come to the end of the tune. God sends a time of forced leisure, sickness, disappointed plans, frustrated efforts that makes a sudden pause in the choral hymn of our lives, and we lament that our voice must be silent and our part be missing in the music which ever goes up to the ear of the Creator.

   “How does the musician read the rest?

   “See him beat the time with unvarying count and catch up the next note true and steady as if no breaking place had come in between.

   “Not without design does God write the music of our lives.  But be it ours to learn the time and not be dismayed at the ‘rests’.  They are not to be slurred over, not to be omitted, nor to destroy the melody, nor to change the keynote. 

   “If we look up, God, Himself will beat the time for us.  With eye on Him, we shall strike the next note full and clear.” (Shea & Bauer: 51-52).

                 

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Be Still, My Soul

(Katharina Von Schlegel, 1697-? [Trans. Jane L. Borthwick, 1813-1897] /Jean Sibelius, 1865-1957:
Based on a Finnish national song)

Be still, my soul – the Lord is on Thy side!

Bear patiently the cross of grief and pain;

Leave to thy God to order and provide –

In every change He faithful will remain. 

Be still, my soul – Thy best, thy Heavenly Friend

Thru thorny ways leads to a joyful end.

Be still, my soul – Thy God doth undertake

To guide the future as He has the past;

Thy hope, thy confidence let nothing shake –

All now mysterious shall be bright at last.

Be still, my soul – the waves the wind still know

His voice who ruled them while He dwelt below.

Be still, my soul – the hour is hast’ning on

When we shall be forever with the Lord,

When disappointment, grief and fear are gone,

Sorrow forgot, love’s purest joys restored.

Be still, my soul when change and tears are past,

All safe and blessed we shall meet at last.

Piet Stassen

eLiterature/eLiteratuur:

1. Scribd Publishing Site:  www.scribd.com/PietStassen (ENGLISH & AFRIKAANS)
2. eBook: 'Evolution: The Science That Evolved Into A Fairy Tale' (ENGLISH)  
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Bibliography

1.  Andrews, Allen (1969) Quotations For Speakers And Writers. Newnes Books. London.

2.  CyberHymnal. 'Eric Liddell'. Accessed At <http://cyberhymnal.org/htm/b/e/bestill.htm> [online] 2013.
3.  Peterson, John V. et al (1968) Great Hymns Of The Faith. ‘Be Still, My Soul’. Zondervan Publishing House. Grand Rapids, Michigan.

4.  Ruskin, John. Ethics Of The Dust as quoted in Shea, George Beverly & Bauer, Fred (1972) Songs That Lift The Heart. Lakeland. Great Britain, pp. 51-52.