This is the script of this morning’s Pause for Thought on BBC Radio 2’s Breakfast Show with Scott Mills.
You know, I’ve had better weeks. Liverpool got thrashed at Anfield, I got ready to say farewell to Leeds when I retire (this weekend), and then Jimmy Cliff went and died.
I met him once. It was at the BBC and he was friendly and generous of spirit. I loved his voice and it’s impossible not to love reggae, isn’t it? But, what I remember most was the title of one of his songs – and I can’t even remember if he actually sang it on the day: ‘Wonderful World, Beautiful People’.
Now, you don’t have to look very far to realize that the world can be grim and that some people are anything but beautiful. A great friend of mine is the Archbishop of Sudan and he is over here at the moment. Sudan has been a slaughter field for three years and when I visited Port Sudan last year I heard some appalling stories. Some people are truly awful and they do awful things – things I can’t say out loud this morning. And for some people the world is an ugly place.
So, is it naïve – or even cruel – to sing about a wonderful world and beautiful people? Well, that’s reality, isn’t it? Beauty and horror live alongside each other. Joy and pain can’t be separated. The world is a glory and a mess – at the same time.
This is why, every day, I read some poems from 3000 years ago. The Psalms bounce from joyful praise to lament, from hopeful longing to fearful misery, from musical excitement to an empty silence. And, if I am feeling fine and read a miserable Psalm, then I don’t move quickly on: I discover in the words the experience of someone else who is in a different place … and that invites me to empathy … gives me a vocabulary for when my joy has gone. The Psalms are brilliant.
Anyway, I think it’s sad that Jimmy Cliff has died, … but wonderful that his music lives on. And when I retire on Friday I’m going to listen to more and more of it.
