Hearing the Shenandoah

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shenandoah-river1

“Oh Shenandoah, I long to hear you…” American Folk Song, traditional

What is it about hearing a river? This past spring I stood next to the flooding Mississippi in St. Paul, Minnesota; the sound was positively forbidding. But perhaps there is something even more awesome in the quiet, unhurried flow of a river in summer. Like the Shenandoah that lies outside my window, and down the hill.

No one knows for sure the context of the lyrics of the great song. One thing is clear: someone is in love; and the love is intertwined with that rolling river. The words, and melody, capture a longing—a longing that somehow we all seem to share. Especially when we hear that song, or that river.

Fouled by industrial excess, haphazard housing development, and the carelessness of too many of us who recreate there, the Shenandoah nonetheless continues to be itself. A feast for the eyes, and for the ears, it still speaks to us.

Oh Shenandoah; I do indeed long to hear you. Would that we could hear you better.

 

Sissel and Paddy Moloney perform Shenandoah.

Originally posted at Bacon from Acorns

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John A. Cuddeback is a professor and chairman of the Philosophy Department at Christendom College in Front Royal, Virginia, where he has taught since 1995. He received a Ph.D. in Philosophy from The Catholic University of America under the direction of F. Russell Hittinger. He has lectured on various topics including virtue, culture, natural law, friendship, and household. His book Friendship: The Art of Happiness was republished in 2010 as True Friendship: Where Virtue Becomes Happiness. His writings have appeared in Nova et Vetera, The Thomist, and The Review of Metaphysics, as well as in several volumes published by the American Maritain Association. Though raised in what he calls an ‘archetypical suburb,’ Columbia, Maryland, he and his wife Sofia consider themselves blessed to be raising their six children in the shadow of the Blue Ridge on the banks of the Shenandoah. At the material center of their homesteading projects are heritage breed pigs, which like the pigs of Eumaeus are fattened on acorns, yielding a bacon that too few people ever enjoy. His website dedicated to the philosophy of family and household is baconfromacorns.com.

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