By Benny Wade

Both the lyrics and the music are beautiful. They are also addictive because once you get the words and the music in your head they stick with you. You find yourself silently singing the selection.

I had not heard it for years nor did I remember all of the words until I looked them up on the Internet. The writer of the song and I have three things in common. We are male, natives of Georgia, who were born in 1939. The similarity likely ends there.

Ray Stevens began his musical career in the mid 1950s and for years he was noted for his funny songs including “The Streaker.” In 1968 Ray began to release serious material.

He wrote and recorded the poignant “Sunday Morning Coming Down” which Johnny Cash made into a mega hit. Ray’s biggest hit in the U.S. was the gospel influenced “Everything is Beautiful” which rose to the number one spot on the Billboard Charts in 1970.

One version of the song featured a children’s chorus from an elementary school in Nashville singing the chorus of the song. The group included two of Ray’s daughters. The chorus says: “ Jesus loves the little children,…..All the little children of the world……Red and yellow, black and white,……They are precious in his sight…..Jesus loves the little children of the world.”

The song was a cry for love and tolerance during a divisive period. It won a Grammy and for a time was the theme song for Ray’s TV show.

The lyrics speak of finding beauty in everything if we search for the beauty. He pictures the wonder to be found in nature scenes of summer and winter. He sings of the need to feel concern for others and to look beneath the surface in our relationships with people. The winsome melody combined with the words provides an uplifting vision of hope and optimism.

I concur with the intent of the song and with most of the verbal message. Stevens accentuates the value of human life and the wonders of the world in which life takes place. I believe Maya Angelou would embrace Stevens’s sentiments based on a portion of her autobiography: “I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings.”

In a time radically different from today Angelou and her younger brother spent several childhood summers living with their grandmother who owned and operated a crossroads country store in rural Arkansas.

Once after Maya became old enough to wait on customers her grandmother instructed her to wait on a group of women and men who came into the store each morning. Invariably when these customers came into the store they began a seemingly endless enumeration of complaining, moaning, groaning, griping, and grousing indicating deep displeasure and frustration with all aspects of their lives.

With the departure of the customers, Maya approached her grandmother and said, “Why did you want me to wait on those people?”

Her grandmother replied, “Tonight and every night thousands of people will go to bed and never wake up. Most of those people would give all they possess for just five minutes more of the life these people are always complaining about. I don’t want you to ever forget that.”

I first read that account in 1982. I pray I never forget it.

In Viktor Frankl’s inspirational “Man’s Search for Meaning” he quotes Nietzsche: “That which does not kill me makes me stronger.”