Track 27 – Amazing Grace

“Amazing Grace” was written by a slave-trader named John Newton (1705-1807), an admirer and student of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Newton was bringing a boat of slaves across the Atlantic Ocean from England to the United States to sell for the man that hired him. During the voyage, in the middle of the night, beneath a full moon, he looked across the moonlit humanity in that boat and decided that what he was doing was wrong.  So he turned the boat around and went back to England where he was promptly fired, and his decision to return caused him much pain and suffering.

The message I always get from “Amazing Grace” is that each of us has a boat in our lives that we can turn around. No matter how difficult the decision seems at the time, it is never too late. This song is dedicated to all of those people who have turned their boats around to do what is right, rather than what is convenient or economic. May we always have the courage to follow our passions and do what is right, good, and just, no matter how hard that seems or how old or set in our ways we get. “We’ve no less days . . .” to change our ways . . . “than when we first begun.”

I did the 5:00 Saturday Mass for 33 straight years, the last 22 with the Cathedral Folk Choir at the Christ the King Cathedral in Lexington, Kentucky. At the end of my 50^th birthday concert, we sang “Amazing Grace” and ended the song and the evening with the entire group of attendees singing the first verse of the song “a cappella”.  Since the Christ the King Cathedral Folk Choir was there, they all came up and led us in the singing of that final song. This is a live clip from the concert that ends with my saying “Thanks” and concluding the evening. So, it also seemed like a good song to conclude this album. “Thanks!”