Dexter Iowa Community Site

Consider this quote from Abe Lincoln

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."

Have you ever stopped to consider what your life would be without music? From our earliest ability to respond to sound, music affects our lives in so many ways. None of us would feel that each passing year had been marked properly without the sounds of family and friends singing Happy Birthday.

Most of us who grew up in the Midwest can remember the first couple of songs we learned. The first, Jesus Loves Me is a song that I feel as though sometimes we forget about when we get older, but still applies to each of us. And how many of us stood every morning before the pledge of allegiance and sang My Country Tis of Thee?

As we grew we learned to appreciate music more, from piano lessons, to music teachers like Mrs. Sellers to being stuck for hours in a car or tractor with our folks we learned to love music.

Music made us happy and fired us up on Friday afternoon pep rallies at school…I’m sure you can still remember the tunes but can you remember the words to your school song? Or perhaps standing with fifty thousand of your closest friends singing your colleges fight song after a huge victory?

As teens there was Air Supply to play when we felt that mushy newness of love, a little Styx to remind us of the most underrated group in Rock history, a dash of Johnny Cash when we wanted to go out and tear up the town and more than enough sad songs to help us get over that first inevitable break up.

No one will ever forget the association they have with Amazing Grace or Sweet Caroline, and the things those songs bring to mind. Nor will any of us ever be able to stifle a laugh remembering singing You Can’t Roller Skate In A Buffalo Herd or The Streak with friends.

From the playing of Taps at a lonely grave to the unmistakable start to Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue we associate music with so many parts of our lives. When we are sad, music comforts us and helps to heal the pain, and when we feel joy, it is music that helps us pronounce that joy to those around us.

It also can make us think. It is hard for anyone to listen to the words of the great Lennon song Imagine and not to picture the world a little better place and there are few who can not be moved when they join in singing the words, “Here I am Lord, is it I Lord?”. Even if you can’t carry a tune, or play an instrument music plays an important part of your life without you even knowing it. If you think I’m a little crazy try saying the alphabet without singing just a little of that song.

We all stand and rise at the start of the National Anthem and we all learned the dangers of being out in the rain remembering what happened to the Itsy-Bitsy Spider. Music in any form is another way we express ourselves. Our joy, sorrow, anger, hope: we take those feelings deep from within us and form connections to music that stay with us for ever.

So look for the music in your life this week, from the song of the wrens sitting on the clothesline, to Simon Estes singing in his deep baratone voice “In the beauty of the lilies…Christ was born across the sea”, to the latest thing on the Pop and Country charts, music is everywhere to be found. And it’s ok to sing along if you want, even if it’s only in the shower.

See you next week…Remember, we’re all in this together.