(This day’s post may seem a little odd.  I am taking an online course on writing for a blog.  Today’s assignment was to free write, just keeping typing what comes into our heads about three songs that are important to us.  So please enjoy these ramblings.)

My three favorite songs, the important one’s, the ones that mean something for my life.  The first song is from my childhood; “Snoopy and the Red Baron!”  It was a silly little song, sung by a pop rock group, whose name I cannot remember.  It is important, because I had just received my first phonograph record player, nd the song was on my first 45 record.  What pains me even as I am writing this, is that there will be readers of this post, who will be asking: “45?” “phonograph?” “What is a record player?”  It is amazing how much the technology of music has changes over the past 50 years!  The second song is a Church song, a hymn passed on the prayer “Peace Prayer of St. Francis.”  IT is a hymn that encapsulates all of the Franciscan ideals, service, seeking peace, emptying oneself for others, reacting in opposite way from what the how the world would react to a wrong.  What is ironic about this hymn and prayer, is that Franciscan scholars agree that Francis of Assisi never wrote these words, that it was written in the 20^th Century.  The final song is a hymn also, the “Salve Regina.”  It is an ancient Marian hymn, a hymn asking for Mary’s intercession on our behalf.  It is a hymn that is sung in most monasteries after Night Prayer, the last prayer in the evening, usually in a darkened chapel, before the monks or nuns go back to their bedrooms.  Many religious orders will chant this hymn as a deceased member of their community is being taken to their final resting place.  When I was in formation to become a Deacon, the head of the program set as a goal for my class to be able to chant this hymn by the end of year.  It was and is a means of bringing all of us together, something that we could identify with as being part of the fraternity of Deacons.

Those are the three songs that come to mind right now; there have been others when I hear them, that will bring me close to tears, but I cannot remember the titles.  So these three will have to do!