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SHINE

Joni Mitchell

 

Oh let your little light shine

Let your little light shine

Shine on Wall Street and Vegas

Place your bets

Shine on the fishermen

With nothing in their nets

Shine on rising oceans and evaporating seas

Shine on our Frankenstein technologies

Shine on science

With its tunnel vision

Shine on fertile farmland

Buried under subdivisions

 

Let your little light shine

Let your little light shine

Shine on the dazzling darkness

That restores us in deep sleep

Shine on what we throw away

And what we keep

 

Shine on Reverend Pearson

Who threw away

The vain old God

kept Dickens and Rembrandt and Beethoven

And fresh plowed sod

Shine on good earth, good air, good water

And a safe place

For kids to play

Shine on bombs exploding

Half a mile away

 

Let your little light shine

Let your little light shine

Shine on world-wide traffic jams

Honking day and night

Shine on another asshole

Passing on the right!

Shine on the red light runners

Busy talking on their cell phones

Shine on the Catholic Church

And the prisons that it owns

Shine on all the Churches

They all love less and less

Shine on a hopeful girl

In a dreamy dress

 Let your little light shine

Let your little light shine

 

Shine on good humor

Shine on good will

Shine on lousy leadership

Licensed to kill

 

Shine on dying soldiers

In patriotic pain

Shine on mass destruction

In some God’s name!

 

Shine on the pioneers

Those seekers of mental health

Craving simplicity

They traveled inward

Past themselves…

May all their little lights shine

 

It was simple scene.

 

 A young family was having dinner. A young attractive husband and wife with two children, ages about 5 and 7. The father seemed disinterested in everything his wife had to say as his happy little children vied for his attention.

 

 

Dropping my head, I thought what I often do when I see a young family, like them. It has to do with the feelings of sorrow I have when I place myself in that same scene many years ago. I sorrow over my failings as a husband, I sorrow over choices I made out of vanity and pride. I regret my anger; anger born out of a belief that I wasn’t getting a fair shake in life and that I couldn’t prevail upon God to give me everything I wanted, when I wanted it. I regret my pettiness, and most of all I regret not knowing how happy I was. I had it all. I had a wife and a family I loved and was loved in return. Complicated as we were, we were a family and we all needed each other, more then we could possibly know. We also needed something else, that we might have had but was negated by failure to see it. We needed powers and wisdom beyond our years.

 So when I ever see those little families and I project what I know to be the struggles they face, I always say a little prayer now.

 

 The prayer is, “ Dear Father, let your little light shine. Let your little light shine on the Fathers and Mothers of little children who need to know that they are loved and that in this hard world, God’s love, gave us families. Let your little light shine.”