OCHS, PHILLIP DAVID (1940–1976)
Phillip David Ochs, singer and songwriter, was born on December 19, 1940, in El Paso. He was the son of Jacob "Jack" Ochs and Gertrude Ochs. Like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, Ochs was one of the most successful singer–songwriters to arise on the New York City folk-music scene in the 1960s. Plagued with depression throughout his short life, he wrote politically-charged songs that became protest anthems of that decade. He strongly opposed the war in Vietnam and supported supported the civil rights movement -- two themes that dominated much of his music. " (Bradley Shreve, Texas State Historical Association. Click here for more.)
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You must protest, you must protest; it is your diamond duty; ah but in such an ugly time the true protest is beauty.
* One good song with a message can bring a point more deeply to more people than a thousand rallies. * Show me a prison, show me a jail, show me a prisoner whose face has grown pale, And I'll show you a young man, with many reasons why. There but for fortune, go you or I. * All my days won't be dances of delight when I'm gone And the sands will be shifting from my sight when I'm gone Can't add my name into the fight while I'm gone So I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here * It's always the old to lead us to the war; it's always the young to fall Now look at all we've won with the saber and the gun. Tell me is it worth it all? For I flew the final mission in the Japanese sky; set off the mighty mushroom roar. When I saw the cities burning I knew that I was learning that I ain't marchin' anymore. |
True Protest is Beauty
appreciating Phil Ochs
Beauty is not always prettiness. It is intensity and harmony combined in some variation that shakes and shocks our imaginations, so that we are then capable of receiving novelty in our lives. The beauty can come through nature, music, friendship, or kindness. It is a scrap of light that opens a door to novelty. It is the lyrics and melody of a Phil Ochs song.
The Freshness
The novelty evoked by beauty may be a new idea, a transformed memory, an unexpected hope, a fresh possibility. It is one way that the Deep within the deep, sometimes named God, arrives in our lives, moment by moment. The novelty is what the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins called The Freshness Deep Down. This novelty does indeed refresh us, helping us to get up again if we have fallen down. Equally important, it is healing energy that can be channeled into the great work of our time.
The Great Work
This great work is not simply to become whole, or at least half whole, as a person. Such wholeness is indeed a very good thing. It is itself beautiful. But the beauty of individual wholeness is incomplete and for that matter impossible without communion with other people, hills and rivers, trees and stars. We meet the Deep, the Yes of life. not through connection not isolation. We are ourselves nodes in a vast network of inter-becoming.
No for the Sake of Yes
The great work is a No to injustice for the sake of a Yes to beauty. In the No we protest against a callous politics of ethnic nationalism, collective greed, violence and exclusion. The No says, with Phil Ochs, "I ain't marching anymore."
But the No is not sufficient unto itself. It festers into resentment and vengeance, unless folded into a Yes, the aim of which is to help build beloved communities that are creative, compassionate, participatory, diverse, inclusive, kind to animals, and good for the earth, with no one left behind. These communities partake of beauty and honor beauty: beauty in nature, beauty in friendships, beauty in life. They are beautiful because they are loving. Justice itself, understood as fidelity to the bonds of mutual becoming, is a form of beauty. Just, loving and joyful communities are the building blocks of ecological civilizations. They are the best hope, and the only hope, for a planet now assaulted by human greed, hatred, and envy.
The greed, hatred, and envy are built into the societies we inhabit and also found within each of us in varying degrees. They are forms of idolatry. The powerful among us have made gods of our own ethnicities, our economies, our religions, our individual and collective egos. In some sense we the powerful must protest against ourselves, or at least against those aspects of ourselves that shortchange the only hope.
In the language of Islam, we must undertake a struggle (jihad) against our own selfishness. In our protest we need not and cannot hate one another. That will yield only ugliness. We can love one another into beauty. Into the divine Yes, ever so merciful, and ever so compassionate. The Yes is already a Yes. We need not appease an angry God. We need only awaken to a tenderness, a love, in which we've always been marinating, if only we knew.
There but for Fortune: Mutual Becoming
The capacity to love one another can be enlivened by recognizing our inter-becoming. Even the Freshness inter-becomes. God is not removed from the world by the trappings of divine transcendence. God is great because God has no trappings: everywhere at once. We need to know our own everywhereness, too. To forget our everwhereness is to fall into what Whitehead calls the fallacy of simple location: the fallacy of thinking we are here but not there. In truth we are here where we are, but also there where they are. Phil Ochs sings of it in There But For Fortune.
The Freshness
The novelty evoked by beauty may be a new idea, a transformed memory, an unexpected hope, a fresh possibility. It is one way that the Deep within the deep, sometimes named God, arrives in our lives, moment by moment. The novelty is what the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins called The Freshness Deep Down. This novelty does indeed refresh us, helping us to get up again if we have fallen down. Equally important, it is healing energy that can be channeled into the great work of our time.
The Great Work
This great work is not simply to become whole, or at least half whole, as a person. Such wholeness is indeed a very good thing. It is itself beautiful. But the beauty of individual wholeness is incomplete and for that matter impossible without communion with other people, hills and rivers, trees and stars. We meet the Deep, the Yes of life. not through connection not isolation. We are ourselves nodes in a vast network of inter-becoming.
No for the Sake of Yes
The great work is a No to injustice for the sake of a Yes to beauty. In the No we protest against a callous politics of ethnic nationalism, collective greed, violence and exclusion. The No says, with Phil Ochs, "I ain't marching anymore."
But the No is not sufficient unto itself. It festers into resentment and vengeance, unless folded into a Yes, the aim of which is to help build beloved communities that are creative, compassionate, participatory, diverse, inclusive, kind to animals, and good for the earth, with no one left behind. These communities partake of beauty and honor beauty: beauty in nature, beauty in friendships, beauty in life. They are beautiful because they are loving. Justice itself, understood as fidelity to the bonds of mutual becoming, is a form of beauty. Just, loving and joyful communities are the building blocks of ecological civilizations. They are the best hope, and the only hope, for a planet now assaulted by human greed, hatred, and envy.
The greed, hatred, and envy are built into the societies we inhabit and also found within each of us in varying degrees. They are forms of idolatry. The powerful among us have made gods of our own ethnicities, our economies, our religions, our individual and collective egos. In some sense we the powerful must protest against ourselves, or at least against those aspects of ourselves that shortchange the only hope.
In the language of Islam, we must undertake a struggle (jihad) against our own selfishness. In our protest we need not and cannot hate one another. That will yield only ugliness. We can love one another into beauty. Into the divine Yes, ever so merciful, and ever so compassionate. The Yes is already a Yes. We need not appease an angry God. We need only awaken to a tenderness, a love, in which we've always been marinating, if only we knew.
There but for Fortune: Mutual Becoming
The capacity to love one another can be enlivened by recognizing our inter-becoming. Even the Freshness inter-becomes. God is not removed from the world by the trappings of divine transcendence. God is great because God has no trappings: everywhere at once. We need to know our own everywhereness, too. To forget our everwhereness is to fall into what Whitehead calls the fallacy of simple location: the fallacy of thinking we are here but not there. In truth we are here where we are, but also there where they are. Phil Ochs sings of it in There But For Fortune.
Show me the alley, show me the train,
Show me a hobo who sleeps out in the rain,
And I'll show you a young man with so many reasons why
There but for fortune, may go you or go I you and I.
Show me the whiskey stains on the floor,
Show me the dunkin' man as he stumbles out the door,
And I'll show you a young man with so many reasons why
There but for fortune, may go you or go I you and I.
Show me the country where bombs had to fall,
Show me the ruins of buildings once so tall,
And I'll show you a young land with so many reasons why
There but for fortune, go you or go I you and I.
You and I,
Ihsan
When we truly understand that we humans are in it together, nested in a network of mutual becoming where we are present in and to one another, indeed parts of one another, we see that we are family. Our calling is to awaken to this mutuality within the depths of our hearts and express it in our actions with others, inspired by the Freshness.
It is to allow our own hearts to be purified, to become beautiful, Process theologians speak of this becoming beautiful as creative transformation. In Islam there is a word for this: Ihsan.
Ihsan is an Arabic term meaning "beautification", "perfection" or "excellence." It is a matter of taking one's inner faith (iman) and showing it in both deed and action, a sense of social responsibility borne from religious convictions.
The need today, each in our way, and whatever our religion or philosophy of life, is to practice Ihsan. We can be inwardly inspired by the Freshness Deep Down, as we find it within ourselves, see it in others, and are awakened to it by the more-than-human world. It is the spirit, the living breath, the baraka, of the holy.
-- Jay McDaniel (March 7, 2020)
The need today, each in our way, and whatever our religion or philosophy of life, is to practice Ihsan. We can be inwardly inspired by the Freshness Deep Down, as we find it within ourselves, see it in others, and are awakened to it by the more-than-human world. It is the spirit, the living breath, the baraka, of the holy.
-- Jay McDaniel (March 7, 2020)
Here and There
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