The Pulpit Speaks: May 26, 1956

An article written by my father, the Rev. C. Thomas Paige, as it appeared in the Tri-State Defender on the date shown.

DO YOU EVER TRY TO SING?

We all should try to sing sometimes. There is something about singing that brings about a relief that nothing else can do. In the same way of thinking, there is something else that goes on within you that just can’t be explained when we find ourselves unable to sing.

It has been my custom to put my two parakeets out on the front porch each day that they might be able to enjoy the beautiful sunshine and fresh air. One night I did the inevitable: I left them out there. During the course of the night, one of the neighborhood cats got in the cage and deprived me of the female bird. It was sad enough to find the cage the next morning half opened and the bird gone but it was even sadder to see that remaining bird sitting there on his perch – songless. Nothing is more pathetic than a songless bird. The same trend of thinking will make us draw a similar conclusion concerning a man. Nothing is more pathetic than a man without a song. There is something about us created by nature that makes us want to sing. Men and birds are expected to sing. They are naturally endowed to sing. Sometimes, it is nothing short of pure noise but it gives him a release from some inner tensions known only to himself. He bursts into song.

URGE HAS GONE

On many mornings those two birds had made my soul feel good — the early morning was filled with a fragrance known only to the man who rises early. The beautiful sun had little pearl-like symbols peeping from the blades of grasses and petals of flowers. The many birds had the air filled with music and then I could hear my birds joining in that great chorus and it just made life seem worthwhile. But now he doesn’t sing anymore. The thing that made him sing is gone. The urge to sing has left him and now in the early morning, when all about him is filled with joy, he sits on his perch, unmoved by the things that are going on about him.

Man needs something to make him sing. He needs a wife of whom he is proud. He needs a son or daughter or probably both to make life worthwhile. He needs something to dispel from his life the gloom that naturally accumulates with the drudgery of a day’s work. He needs something to lift him up when he comes to the end of the day.

The poet has well said “Without a song the day would never end, without a song a man ain’t got a friend, when things go wrong life ain’t no good no how without a song.”

There is something in a song that puts worthwhileness into life. There is something in a song that gives man a floating power that otherwise he never would have. Being the type of creature he is, “man likes to crow.” He likes to boast of his achievements. He likes to feel that he is appreciated. He likes to feel that someone is benefiting from his labors. But it must not stop there. He likes to feel that someone is mindful of the sacrifices he makes daily. Then he can sing his song.

AWAITING THE END

That little parakeet that remains in my house has lost his stimulus to sing. For him, the one thing that gave his life meaning is now gone.The companionship he once knew, the joy of building nest after nest and living in expectation, and all the rest of the joys he had once known are now gone. He comes down off of the perch when he gets hungry or thirsty but soon returns to it to once again bury his head in his feathers and pass away the hours, which to him now must seem long and dull.

So it is with the man who has nothing to make him sing, the man who has nothing to bring out the joys of living. Nothing is more tragic in life than to see people who have reached the stage in life where they realize that all that has not been done will not be done. They stand around with folded arms, waiting for the end to come. Yet there are many people whom I know are just like that. The most fruitful years of their lives have long since passed and now childless by choice and unhappy, they look out on the bleakness of like and are ready to cry out “Oh, what’s the use?”

CAN BE SWEETER

The bleakness now in the lives of many people need not to have been. The fact that many people are relegated to living lonesome lives minus the joys brought on by fatherhood, motherhood, friendship, and assurance is the result of lives that have been far too self-centered.

A man who can stand on the brink of death and look back to see the many lives that he has altered, the many lives that he has saved, or the many joys that he has brought into the lives of people who are now grateful to him can afford to sing. But there are those of us who can’t sing, not because we haven’t had an opportunity to do something worthwhile, but because even in the presence of the opportunity, we failed to be the good Samaritan. Life may be ever so sweet to us when we center it around ourselves but it can be far sweeter when we live, move, and have our being with the other man in view.