Stanek weekend video: Mumford & Sons’ “Timshel”
by Hans Johnson
Popular British folk rock group Mumford & Sons has a song called “Timshel” which many feel has a supportive, decidedly pro-life bent. It was inspired by a friend who was dealing with an unplanned pregnancy.
The favorite novel of lead singer Marcus Mumford is John Steinbeck’s East of Eden. In it is a philosophical discussion of the story of Cain and Abel: that the Hebrew word “timshel” as addressed to Cain by God means “thou mayest” overcome sin. Thus, humanity has a profound privilege and responsibility in possessing free will.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=984eY9Yeqb0[/youtube]
They won the Grammy for last year’s album of the year. See live performances of this song here, at the 2011 BRIT Awards, and also here.
Email dailyvid@jillstanek.comwith your video suggestions.
[HT: xalisae]
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
I have read that “timshel” may also be translated as “take courage.”
I have always thought that this song seemed to be written for a pregnant woman who is feeling alone and just wondering “what comes next.”
Actually the first time I heard this song some years ago it made me cry. I didn’t really know why and I still don’t. I guess that it just made me feel every moment in my life where I’d ever felt scared and alone, made me feel all of it at once; and it made me wish that someone had stood with me – not “helped” me, not “saved” me, just simply stood beside me, as an equal.
I also really like the line, “You have your choices, and these are what make a man great, his ladder to the stars.” I think that it is such a great way to say that the hard times are the times with potential for greatness, that there are right choices and wrong choices, and making the right choices – sometimes the hard choices – can be a path to a sort of heroism. It reminds me of something that MK used to say, when she heard of someone – say, a guy named Tom – doing something awful. She would sometimes say, “And to think, he could have been Saint Tom instead.” I always thought that was a really touching way to illustrate the totally divergent paths our choices can take us on, and the idea that everyone has within them the capacity for choosing what is right, for greatness.
I have always thought that (although there is some profanity) lots of the songs on this album seem overtly spiritual and implicitly religious. I assume everyone has heard the album a million times over by now but just in case it’s still new to some, here is a song that has one of my favorite lines of all time (plus it also quotes Shakespeare which is fun): “Love, it will not betray you, dismay or enslave you, it will set you free – be more like the man you were made to be.” It’s a lesson too many people learn too late. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujv3c0TqLRk
There is also a song called Roll Away Your Stone, and I really don’t see how anybody could think that one is anything BUT religious in its lyrics.
KEIM CENTERS ROCK!