I'll Be Somewhere Listening --Eduardo J. Lango

Was there a mom like Hannah or perhaps a special religious mentor like Eli near this fellow? The words that are sometimes attributed to Eduardo J. Lango suggest that he did have a special mother or a faithful tutor, prompting him to say “I’ll Be Somewhere, Listening” sometime during the 20^th Century. He’s anonymous otherwise, at least to you and me. Was there something extraordinary about his ear (more unusual than the one shown here), or something about his listening ability that allowed him a greater perception than others around him? All one can say is that he was receptive, a willing tool with an openness to what the Holy One might say to him. His words have echoes of what a prophet-judge said and did centuries earlier as boy, as he was ushered into service in His kingdom. There must have been an epilogue in Eduardo’s story, a postscript that relates what happened in the time that followed his response to the voice he heard. We’ll hear about it someday, but for now that part is hidden.

Eduardo J. Lango has only his name and his words in “I’ll Be Somewhere…” available for our examination, but maybe what he authored gives us the essentials. We might deduce that Eduardo was someone with his spiritual antennae deployed in active mode consistently. Some versions of his poetry comprise three or four verses, but the refrain says no less than six times that he planned to be listening, in addition to ‘I’ll be listening’ occupying the last line of every verse. So, he evidently wanted that to be very clear. Whatever else might have been true about him, Eduardo wanted to be within earshot of God, convinced that He would speak his name. If he felt, as his biblical ancestor Samuel did when he was but a boy (1 Samuel 3), Eduardo did not want to be caught napping when He called out for him. Had his mother committed him in service to God, the way that Hannah did Samuel, because she perceived that his birth was a divine response to a barren mother? Could Eduardo likewise point to a spiritual guide, as Samuel did toward the priest Eli, the one who did in fact identify the Lord’s voice for the boy and direct him to answer the Holy One when He called a fourth time? It would be a pretty special bond between Samuel and Eli that would be tested, for the Lord gave the boy a message about his mentor and his house that was pretty grim. To his credit, Eli did not blame his young apprentice, although he and his own two sons would all die ignominiously years later (1 Sam. 4) to fulfill the message Samuel had heard. Was there something forbidding about a message that Eduardo heard too? It would say something pretty interesting about Mr. Lango if indeed he eagerly listened for God when a downbeat message was part of the deal. How closely might you or I listen if God told us something that was pretty difficult to hear?

Could it be that He needs to call out several times for those servants upon whom He can really depend, because the task is so often a difficult one? Eduardo Lango might have been one of those people, but we’ll have to wait to know for sure. One thing that Eduardo tells us though, as he writes in one of his verses, is that I should be glad. Eduardo must have been glad (v.2), knowing that God still was speaking to him. What would it be like, on the other hand, if He stopped speaking to you and me? If I were abandoned, all alone in the world, could anything besides that be more sad? Maybe Eduardo considered that too, but decided that He doesn’t stop calling out; instead, maybe I choose to stop listening at times. Is your ear tuned in to His frequency today?     

See the following site for all verses and the author’s name: https://hymnary.org/text/when_he_calls_me_i_will_answer#Author

See this site for the song’s attribution to the author, who is nonetheless virtually anonymous: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/l/a/n/lango_ej.htm

Kum Ba Yah – Anonymous

These words may summarize the most-often used phrase or similar words used by a praying person or group. Especially if you were a Boy Scout or Camp Fire Girl in the mid-20^th Century, you most likely saw a poster like this one (shown here) and sang this song around a smoky burning log one summer evening. Though they are most often vocalized in the original language, the message of “Kum Ba Yah” is nearly universal, as whoever wrote them sought the presence of the Almighty. ‘Come By Here’, we would say in English. We want Him to be near us, a not uncommon desire, because there’s lots of strife that civilized people have wanted to overcome or escape. Evidently, this unknown poet-author also sought Him during times of delight, too, perhaps believing He is the ultimate source of happiness.  

Was Kum Ba Yah the expression born of a black person living in the southeastern United States, someone who recognized or still practiced a Creole language-Caribbean heritage in the 1920s? Or, did it originate with its English title on the opposite coastline of the continental U.S., in Portland, Oregon in the late 1930s? Another version of the song’s evolution has it transiting the Atlantic Ocean as ‘Kum Ba Yah’ via a missionary family returning from Angola in the mid-1940s. Its origin mattered little to Boy Scouts or Camp Fire Girls who had adopted it as a popular campfire ditty by the 1950s. Was it the mixture of emotions expressed in the song’s verses that appealed to the Scouts when they chose to sing Kum Ba Yah around the fire? Maybe someone was happy or ‘laughing’ (v.2) about the day’s events in the woods or elsewhere in nature where the group was gathered. On the other hand, someone might as easily have been depressed or even ‘crying’ (v.3) about his/her immediate circumstances. Was its rendition around the fire the Scouts’ leaders determination to encourage some faith in the young people, when they sang that ‘someone’s praying, Lord’ (v. 4)? We could also assume that a group wanted to bond as friends when they sang ‘Kum Ba Yah’, to reassure each other that loneliness would be overcome among them. ‘Strength in numbers’, you might have heard them utter. ‘Lord’ was the most important part of that calculus too, sang as the object of the group’s directed energy, even as they were seeking His peace. Whoever first composed the words, ‘Kum Ba Yah’ signals that he/she had not yet been answered, yet trusted that He would respond after repeated entreaties. ‘Come by here’, he continues to call, no matter what condition he inhabits.

Can someone survive without a ‘kumbayah’ from time to time? Does anyone really want to be alone? What happens when someone is a loner, our culture has warned us repeatedly over the last several years? That is someone to earmark as potentially violent, an explosion awaiting the cork’s removal from the bottle, a deadly fuse waiting to be lit. I need companions, friends who will be there to listen and commiserate or joke with me. This song’s composer had discovered the most important companion, however. He’s someone I may find through other corporeals, for sure. And, even He needed human companionship when He was here. Could that be why He created you and me, too? Think about it.               

See this site for all the verses: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/k/u/m/kumbayah.htm

See this site for information about the song: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumbaya

We'll Understand It Better By and By -- Charles A. Tindley

Ever wonder how the sermons of Charles Albert Tindley may have sounded? You don’t have to speculate too much what he might have said to comfort and inspire the listeners in the Philadelphia church where he spoke one Sunday in the first decade of the 1900s. “We’ll Understand It Better By and By” (also known as “When the Morning Comes”), he advised and urged his hearers. To exercise patience in the face of adversity was no small concession for many who heard him at the time. Nevertheless, he well knew of what he spoke, because he’d been there himself, struggling especially in his early life against slavery and its effects. And though he’d come a long way, Charles wasn’t content when he could see that the surrounding culture still wore heavily upon people. And so, he recommended an alternative perspective, one that he trusted would transport them all to another plane.

Charles Tindley was both a preacher and musical poet-composer, a multi-tasker who eventually crafted several dozen songs, many of which were also thematically linked to his sermon topics. By the time he was 53 years old in 1904, he’d experienced plenty to provide sermon topics and musical words that would become hallmarks of his life. Perhaps it was the circumstances of someone in the Philadelphia church that spawned his words about endurance in “We’ll Understand…”, but he also reportedly recalled one Sunday morning the bible episodes in which Jesus’ closest comrades, the 12 Apostles, likewise needed patience. ‘Why can’t you make haste to set up your kingdom, and save us?’, you can imagine Tindley may have said, in paraphrasing the Apostles who tried to coax Jesus. Did Tindley think that a song might make his message resonate just a bit more? Every one of his four poetic verses begins with a recitation of difficult circumstances, but ends with the song’s title words. Don’t forget to endure until the end, so that you’ll understand it better as you look in the review mirror, he says. Charles didn’t try to deny there were ‘howling tempests’ (v.1), ‘barren lands’ (v.2), ‘dark trials’ (v.3), and ‘hidden snares’ (v.4) along the path, for he’d seen his share of those. Poverty-stricken, lacking a formal early education, and orphaned as a youngster – these were all realities of Charles’ early life. Yet, they failed to stop this young man from learning on his own, working, sometimes without pay, and eventually becoming a janitor at the church where he’d later become a minister. Many years lay between his beginning and where he found himself by 1904 when he spoke the words about ‘understanding’ and the ‘by and by’.  

Charles’ 1904 sermon-song was something he must have replayed many times over in the nearly three decades that followed until his death in 1933. Even so, he wasn’t one to casually stand by and watch the suffering of people, or to stay quiet when he thought injustice needed an opponent. He persuaded business people and elected officials in the Philadelphia area to help those in need of jobs, housing, and food. He also opposed social events that perpetuated racial bigotry, even at the risk of physical harm to himself. For Tindley, perhaps looking backward in the ‘by and by’ was best contemplated remembering the compassion he could show others. Tindley was evidently taking a page from some other historical figure’s playbook – urging others to look heavenward with hope and patience, while also taking action to help others aching because of social prejudice. Any idea who that other guy was?          

     

See more information on the song story in this source: The Complete Book of Hymns – Inspiring Stories About 600 Hymns and Praise Songs by William J. Petersen and Ardythe Petersen, Tyndale House Publishers, 2006.

Brief information about the author is here: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/t/i/n/tindley_ca.htm

Also see this link, showing all the song’s words: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/w/e/l/u/welunder.htm

See author’s biography here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Albert_Tindley