A wilderness wish: 'Let There Be Peace'
Wilderness and peace endure, but always walk hand-in-hand with turmoil and danger
Peace and wilderness have in common the ability to bring calm to any soul and at the same time are closely related to our greatest fears and violent elements capable of tearing us apart.
Weeks ago it came to me that a Thursday column in December would fall on Christmas Eve in 2020 and the desire to share a feeling of peace and joy in this time of political turmoil and economic hardship would be my goal. But this one has been a tough one to nail down. Anger is near the surface everywhere these days, it seems.
So, quite honestly, here I am at 4 a.m. with the goal of a 6 a.m. post and rewriting—again—an essay that I imagined might hinge on one of my favorite songs this time of year, “Let There Be Peace on Earth.”
The song has become a holiday anthem. I like the Vince Gil version, but it is the official theme for the International Children’s Choir and it’s just not possible to duplicate the power of children’s voices in song. But that song, like wilderness and peace, has an underlying history and origins in turmoil.
True peace and wilderness to me are places where I have felt most free, the most isolated and self-reliant.
After a Bush plane dropped me off in a remote Alaska location, after the drone of the engine faded into the distance, the air was so still, the climate so silent, all I could hear was one faint sound, the rush of my own blood in my eardrums. Mountains and lakes lay out before me as far as I could see in all directions. It felt surreal, as if I were part of a wilderness painting.
Absolute calm. Absolute peace. Absolute wilderness.
And yet at my feet lay packs holding basics for survival and at least one firearm. What if the plane crashed and I was left on my own? Only one other person in the world knew exactly where I was at that moment, and he was flying a tiny plane through the mountains.
What if weather suddenly rolled in? What about the grizzly bears? This place of peace, deafening silence and calm held elements that literally could rise up and try to kill me. A simple turn of fate could change the picture in a heartbeat.
Yet those things at that moment didn’t enter my mind. It would be an hour before the plane returned on its round-trip and I soaked up every second of that silence, calm and endless beauty.
Peace, if you read the Oxford dictionary to the letter, is not possible without war coming to an end. In our lives and those we love all is not peaceful. Under the surface turmoil and tragedy always lurk. Sometimes it grabs us and sometimes we might even find ourselves embracing it.
Jill Jackson-Miller, who wrote the Lyrics for Let There Be Peace on Earth said in early interviews her inspiration rose from a failed suicide attempt in 1944. But what followed was an inexplicable realization of unconditional love, “which God is,” she told interviewers.
Her husband, Sy Miller, composed the melody. He once wrote that the song came to life in 1955 with a group of 180 teenagers from across the world, of all races and religions, who met high in the California mountains, locked arms and sang the song with its simple, basic sentiment.
It is simple, basic, loved worldwide, a theme of peace and adopted by churches as a hymn and Christmas carol.
And yet the song born of a woman’s recovery after suicide has not dodged further turmoil. The original lyrics have been altered—not without some objections—on many occasions for gender-neutral or secular alternate lyrics. Microsoft in 2015 got in hot water for dropping the religious references in a Christmas YouTube video. And an early group to adopt the song as an anthem was the American Peace Crusade, a group that stood against the Korean War and was identified as by the federal government as “a Communist front.”
Always, around us, the potential for turmoil swirls and danger lurks, but always, too, come the individuals who perform unexpected acts of human kindness, or people who seize upon hope in the midst of darkness to express words in song that endure for decades and change the world.
The feeling of calm and peace I’ve found in different wild places across the country, including a spots across Oklahoma (although that silence just doesn’t last as long here) is something I soak up every time, every moment I can get. I try to carry it with me and share it as I can.
And let it begin with me.
And so here it is 6:05 a.m.
My writing time is up and this will just have to do.
I wish you all peace, God’s love, and the places to find it.
Merry Christmas.
Thank you. Merry Christmas