At the Gates of Heaven

My mother passed away the year before last.  She was a wonderful woman, taking into account the moral environment she was in.  She often led singing in church retreats and stuff, and was in some demand because she had picked up a lot of songs from Africa, Asia, Australia and the Middle East, which was considered a nice departure from the usual songs people were introduced to.

I was recently going through the junk in my piano stool, when I came across a photocopied page with the song At the Gates of Heaven, which would have been a perfect song for Helen to have taught her kids!

The basic idea is : At the Gates of heaven little shoes they are mending, for all the little barefooted babies who come in, so slumber my darling, slumber my baby, slumber my sweet, lulloo lullay.

The subtext is that scores of infants die, daily; they wind up in heaven, and it's come as you are, and they don't have shoes, so the people at the Gates have to outfit them.

These days, as Hamas unleashes terror in Israel, and Israel unleashes death on the Gaza Strip, we know that hundreds of infants are dying.  They're also dying in Syria, the Ukraine, Sudan, Russia—all over the world.  I'm not urging any particular loyalty.  But we ought not to isolate ourselves from this horror.  It is a constant,  ongoing massacre of the innocents. 

The Lullaby is thought to be of Spanish or basque origin.  It is sweetly sentimental, and the tune—which I don't know how to bring to you—is a gentle, happy tune.  Helen would have loved it. 

Kay