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Recent News... Just for Pope Gregory... |
2002-12-17 - 2:22 p.m. Jingle Bells Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity. Unexplained dreariness has been weighing down my spirit, making me wonder what victories I will leave behind. Perhaps, that is a question that can only be answered in an epitath. But epitaths come in many forms. John Pierpont died a failure. In 1866, at the age of eighty-one, he came to the end of his days as a government clerk. He graduated Yale as an educator. But he was a failure at teaching. Too easy on his students. So he turned to law. Again, failure. Too generous to collect fees, too concerned about justice. Then, he tried his hand at business, and failed, too liberal with credit, too generous with prices. The poetry he wrote parttime failed to bring enough royalties to make a living. Having failed as a poet, he became an ordained minister, but his position for Prohibition and against slavery set him at odds with his deacons, and he resigned. He was a failure as a minister. So he looked for other ways to make a difference, and ran for governor of Massachusetts as an Abolition candidate. He lost. He ran for Congress as part of the Free Soil Party. He lost. He was a failure as a politican. The Civil War saw him a volunteer chaplain of the 22nd Regiments of Massachusetts Volunteers. He quit in less than two weeks, when the task proved too much for his health. Seventy-six years old and he couldn't even make it as a chaplain. He wound up with an obscure job at the Department of Treasury where he finished his life as a menial file clerk. Why am I telling you about this man's sad life? Because, as Robert Fulghum wrote, "In one very important sense, John Pierpont was not a failure. Every year, come December, we celebrate his success. We carry in our hearts and minds a lifelong memorial to him. "It's a song. "Not about Jesus or angels or even Santa Claus. It's a terribly simple song about the simple joy of whizzing through the cold white dark of wintersgloom in a sleigh pulled by one horse. And with the company of friends, laughing and singing all the way. "Jingle Bells John Pierpont wrote Jingle Bells. "To write a song that stands for the simplest joys, to write a song that three or four hundred million people around the world know - a song about something they've never done but can imagine - a song that every one of us, large and small, can hoot out the moment the chord is struck on the piano and the chord is stuck in our spirit - well, that's not failure. "One snowy afternoon in deep winter, John Pierpont penned the lines as a small gift for his family and friends and congregation. And in doing so left behind a permanent gift for Christmas - the best kind - not the one under the tree, but the invisible, invincible one of joy." Epitaths come in many forms; Immortality in many ways. Wishing us all a season of small victories and invincible joy. Jingle bells! � � � 
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