Sunday Playlist - 5/23/2021

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzrVlXh4mc1OxPKTec-Xg0yvUaK6OX8vF

This week's list is more thematically unified than usual. "When the storms of life are raging, stand by me." Weeks and weeks of music could swirl around that idea, so perhaps it's one we'll come back to. Just as the virus begins to abate in the US, it surges elsewhere. Every truce in the Middle East seems tentative, and every lull in the violence of our own country seems temporary. When the disciples shook Jesus awake in their fear, after calming the storm, Jesus asked them why they were afraid. I don't think that he was being facetious. He understood fear and would experience it himself. Rather, he seems to be questioning whether fear does anything to calm the storm. What, he implies, calms the soul in the midst of the storm? Here again I think that Jesus and the Buddha had something in common--recall how the Buddha crossed the flood by neither fighting it nor ignoring it. "The storm is passing over, hallelujah! Be still my soul."