"O BEULAH LAND, SWEET BEULAH LAND"

"O BEULAH LAND, SWEET BEULAH LAND"

OLD SOUTHERN GOSPEL SONG
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My seven-year-old mind, somehow being as  
good as a movie camera, recorded the big wide
marquis at the State Theater---that time in 1941
---a fateful year-- and I can still see it now...

The announced movie was "SERGEANT YORK." 
The letters were the biggest there ever were on
the State's marquis. Little boys went to the
Lyceum Theater on Saturdays where you really
got your dime's worth, with a double feature, a
serial, a Looney Tunes, and  maybe a Sing-Along
with the bouncing ball over the words. So I didn't
see the movie in 1941.

But I did see "SERGEANT YORK" when I was
ten (and wet the sights on my BB gun, with my
thumb, as Alvin York did, and went "gobble,
gobble, gobble" before I shot the Nazis in my
T.O.---our neighborhood.) And I've seen the movie
maybe seven or eight times since.

Cut to Sunday morning, September 14, 2014---
it's coffee time and the BP ("Beloved Pianist"
has to leave for church choir practice--early.
She says: "It's been a busy week and I'm out
of ideas for offertories; then to me: "You got any?" 

I had been humming an old gospel song around
the house all week and I blurted out---"Why don't
you play "Beulah Land."  "I don’t think they’ll know
it," she said. (It is likely in NO church hymnal today.)

I said: "Oh, they've all seen "SERGEANT YORK."
Remember the very end of the movie, with Joan
Leslie eagerly leading Gary Cooper through the
Tennessee woods....

BUT...getting caught up in the memory of WWI
times (a hundred years ago, this year), the 
memory of that much-honored American hero,
Alvin York--from Tennessee, I couldn't stifle 
myself. (I am so tired of all the foreigners in
Washington that it did my heart good to tell
BP this story, of a real American, in simpler 
times....)

Alvin York, you remember, was a rip-snortin'
young Tennessee fellow, who worked hard,
played hard, hung out and got drunk in back-
woods bars. At times, his little brother had to
go fetch him home...drunk as a skunk.

Now one night, during a terrible storm, he was
out drinking in this rough bar, somewhere in the 
woods; there may have been a fight, I can't 
remember, Anyway, Alvin York, starts to stagger
home...lightning hits a tree next to him...he is
stunned and gets up out of the muddy road...
and it's pouring rain...and addled as he is, he
slides along in the muck and suddenly the
far-off music, from down at the little country 
church, an old gospel song is wafting out on the
damp night air: "GIVE ME THAT OLD -TIME
RELIGION, GIVE ME THAT OLD-TIME
RELIGION..."

The church is having a revival meeting. The
lightning may have cleared Alvin's mind.
He staggered in the door, dripping water, and
Walter Brennan, the storekeeper/preacher is
leading the little congregation, (and suddenly
with great gusto, when he sees Alvin) "IT WAS
GOOD FOR OUR MOTHERS AND FATHERS..."
and stabbing his finger, like a pointer at Alvin
York---"IT WAS GOOD FOR PAUL AND SILAS,
IT WAS GOOD FOR PAUL AND SILAS.....

All this time, wide-eyed Alvin is moving so slowly
toward the front of the church, mouth half-open...
later evidence in York's life indicates that God
came into Alvin's heart during that twenty-five
foot shuffle down the aisle. His heart was 
changed. We would call it: "the new birth."

Then WWI came and Alvin York was drafted.

Now York, in all sincerity, did not want to kill
any Nazis, when he arrived in France. He
believed killing was wrong. Until he found
himself on the front lines, in the trenches, and
the German machine guns were wiping out
his unit terribly fast. His friends were being
slaughtered.

He suddenly got riled. "Gobble, gobbled," as
he did countless times a turkey shoots, and
the German soldiers stuck their heads up,
just like the Tennessee turkeys, and pow!
Grabbing rifle after rifle, American or enemy,
and emptying them, never missing, Sergeant
York put the FEAR into the German army in
his sector, and they surrendered, 132 of them

He marched them in, armed with only a cap-
tired German Luger. Seeing a Colonel, or
whatever, Sergeant York marches the prisoners
up to him, salutes, and says: "Suh, I have a few
prisoners here...I'd be a mite grateful if'n you
could take them off my hands." 

"How many have you got, Sergeant?" York: "Well,
suh, I reckon there's about 132 head."

The Sergeant became an American hero. He had
always been "poorer than Job's turkey," but when
he returned to Tennessee and his attractive wife,
played by Joan Leslie...she took him by the hand,
leading him through the woods, saying: "Alvin,
Alvin, come see what the people of Tennessee 
have given us!"

And as they break into a clearing, THERE in front
of them---a beautiful brand-new home...a gift...

The well-selected background music begins to 
play for the man who killed, in the final moment,
to save his comrades---a song symbolic of heaven---

"I've reached the land of joy divine,
And all its beauties now are mine;
There shines beyond one blissful day,
For all my cares are gone away.

O Beulah land, sweet Beulah land!
As on thy highest mount I stand,
I look away across the sea
Where mansions are prepared for me
And view the shining glory shore
My heaven, my home forevermore."

The gospel hymn writer is Edgar Page Stiles
(1836-1921) The text was set to music by John R.
Sweeney (1837-1899)

The hymn derives from the King James version of
Isaiah 62:4; "Thou shall no more be termed
Forsaken; neither shall thy land any more be
termed Desolate; but thou shalt be called
Hephzibah and thy land BEULAH, for the Lord
delighteth in thee....

The idea the hymn presents that Heaven can
be seen from Beulah land, comes from John
Bunyan's "PILGRIM'S PROGRESS" in which
he states "Therefore, it is, I say, that the Enchanted
ground is placed so nigh to the land Beulah and
so near the end of their race"  (i.e. Heaven.)

*******30*****
BY MIL

09/14/14