I’m trying to move on from my disappointment about the 2024 election [primarily with the people who elected him]. To help with that effort, I turned off the news channels. Being hooked on the drama of what is happening in our nation’s politics is a drug that was killing me. For years, I had allowed the news to chirp incessantly while I did what I needed to do on my computer. The news was always a raucous opera, but lately, it has evolved into a horror show. To escape that threatening noise, I stream Amazon Music now.

After I added the Amazon Music Channel to my Fire TV, I made out my playlist: Folk Songs of the 60s. Neil Young, Van Morrison, Cat Stevens, and others pipe in, and I love those guys, too, but my playlist is filled with Peter, Paul, & Mary, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Judy Collins, Joan Baez, and others.

The bird-like voice of Joan Baez singing in the 60s is unforgettable. I thought I knew all her songs, but last night I heard her singing over 50 years later. Her voice had become older and raspier–not the bird that she once was–but she is still a poet and a prophet.

Last night I heard Baez singing “My President Sang Amazing Grace,” and I wept. It was a painful reflection on our nation, and there is a hint of the old hymn “Amazing Grace” filtering in and out throughout the song. What a masterpiece:

The song tells the story of how a young man entered a church in Charleston, SC.

“He was not friend, he was not kin
But they opened the door and let him in.”

The people in that church welcomed the newcomer who eventually pulled out his automatic and obliterated 9 sweet lambs.

I remember that violation in 2015, and I remember watching and hearing our president Barack Obama speak at the subsequent funeral service. His voice was not like a bird, but he sang to my heart.

Joan Baez turned that poignant moment and the tragedy before it into a song that makes me cry. My sleep last night was frequently interrupted by that song’s message. Today, I cry for all the people who have been slaughtered in mass murders, and I cry for our nation that refuses to end that devastation. But yesterday, when I heard the older and wiser Joan Baez sing: “My President Sang Amazing Grace,” I realized that the travesty of that song has not ended in other ways:

“… We argued where to lay the blame
On one man’s hate or our nation’s shame
Some sickness of the mind or soul
And how the wounds might be made whole.”

Half a century ago, Joan Baez sang Blowin’ in the Wind. Her new album is: “Whistle Down the Wind.” I am not certain, but that title suggests that like me, Joan Baez never found “The answers my friend … blowing in the wind.”

Rather, the wind has continued to howl. Our choice is whether to “Whistle Down the Wind” or succumb.

Some might say that it was serendipitous that I heard Joan Baez’s newer song last night, as I continue to mourn for our nation. I call it the hand of God. Turning off the news did not turn off my mind. While bad news is not hammering me constantly today, I still hear the truth, and I still pray that the Truth will set us free.