Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

• Mark 12:29-31

“‘Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.

• Leviticus 19:18

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

• John 13:34-35

“There was a boy
A very strange, enchanted boy
They say he wandered very far
Very far, over land and sea
A little shy and sad of eye
But very wise was he

And then one day
A magic day he passed my way
And while we spoke of many things
Fools and kings, this he said to me
“The greatest thing you’ll ever learn
Is just to love and be loved in return”

The greatest thing you’ll ever learn
Is just to love and be loved in return”

• eden ahbez, Nature Boy

This song marked the transition of Nat King Cole from a jazz trio singer, who also played the piano, to a mainstream ballad singer.  It was rare in those days for a black performer to be popular in the white communities, but this song thrust Nat King Cole into that spotlight.

But the history of the songwriter is very interesting.  He was one of the first “hippies” long before there were such things.  The composer was the son of poor Jewish parents in New York.  Times got so bad that his parents had to put their children up for adoption.  He was adopted by a family in Kansas.  When he grew up, he played piano and led a dance band.  But then he moved to California and worked at a health food establishment.  The health food place was run by people of German descent who followed the Wandervogel concepts.  George changed his name to eden ahbez, known only as ahbe among the nature boys that were formed from a Wandervogel group.  The song was probably penned while living in a cave.  The Wandervogel main concept was a rebellion against industrialization, thus they wandered and ate off the land, ahbe becoming a vegetarian.

So, before the Beatniks and Hippies, there were the Nature Boys.

The composer, ahbe, took the song to Nat King Cole.  Unable to reach the singer, the song was given to Cole’s valet.  Once Cole had written an arrangement and performed it, he had his manager search for the composer, since ahbe did not put his name on any of the papers.  Once it was recorded, ahbe gave away most of the money.  Then he was sued by a Yiddish performer in New York, claiming that ahbe had heard the tune in his youth.  The lawsuit was settled out of court, but really, the tune is very close to a piece of classical music, a piece written by Antonín Leopold Dvořák.

The song is haunting, and it seems wonderful, but two things are missing.

While ahbe never capitalized his name, saying that only the “Creator” should be allowed to do that, the song says nothing of loving God.  Thus, God’s perfect love is missing. Without God’s perfect love, that being loved in return becomes demanded.

God loves us while we are yet sinners.  In other words, God loves us before we recognize Him as the Creator, before we love Him in return.

This song reminds me of so many philosophy essays that I have written where the ancient philosopher came so close to understanding Christianity, hundreds of years before Christ, just to fall short.

But one thing is true.  The greatest thing that you can ever learn is to love God, for He already loves you in return.

Here is Nat King Cole singing Nature Boy.

Yet, twenty years later, there was a revolution among the hippies in California.  They figured out what was missing in the song, and the Jesus Movement started.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.