An Ode To the Beautiful Fool

Justice 1 Minute

Martin Luther who did you think that you were?
Appointed by some higher up
Merely mortal, your plans were unaffordable
No one wants to pay for love

Oh you beautiful fool
Swimmin up stream, kickin’ up waves
Dreams weren’t meant to come true
That’s why they call ’em dreams
Oh you beautiful fool

Walter Cronkite pre-empted Disney one night
And all us kids were so upset
We thought that you were a trouble instigator
Marchin’ through our T.V. set

Oh you beautiful fool
Swimmin up stream, kickin’ up waves
Dreams weren’t meant to come true
That’s why they call ’em dreams
Oh you beautiful fool

To fight a fight without a fist all human instinct puzzles this
How dare you threaten our existence
Mahatma Gandhi, Jesus Christ, history repeats itself so nice
Consistently we are resistant to love

I saw you on the black and white
With Blacks and White’s applauding you
I saw you on another time
Without a sign of life in you

Oh you beautiful fool
Swimmin up stream, kickin’ up waves
Dreams weren’t meant to come true
That’s why they call ’em dreams
Oh you beautiful fool

 Written by Don Henry
Copyright © 1991 Sony Cross Keys Pub. Co. Inc. (ASCAP)

Published by Jay Voorhees

Jay Voorhees is a pastor, writer, and community activist located in Nashville, TN. Jay currently is the pastor of the City Road Chapel United Methodist Church in Madison, TN, and is engaged in helping to connect others to the example and teaching of Jesus Christ and to take seriously Christ’s call to love our neighbors in radical ways. Jay is the co-founder of The MethoBlog, a site that aggregates the writings of Methodist-related bloggers throughout the world, and is the former managing editor of The United Methodist Reporter. Jay has been involved in the United Methodist Church at both the local and national level since 1988. Jay is also the owner of Only Wonder Media, a boutique book and media publisher.

Published

One thought on “An Ode To the Beautiful Fool”

  1. Thanks Jay for the post.

    A Way Out of No Way

    Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

    When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds of despair, and when our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe, working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, a power that is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.

    Let us realize that William Cullen Bryant is right: “Truth crushed to earth will rise again.” Let us go out realizing that the Bible is right: “Be not deceived, God is not mocked. Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” This is for hope for the future, and with this faith we will be able to sing in some not too distant tomorrow with a cosmic past tense, “We have overcome, we have overcome, deep in my heart, I did believe we would overcome.”

    Source: Final speech to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, August 16, 1967, in I Have A Dream, edited by James Washington

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.