REV. LAUREN R. STANLEY Christmas carol has advice for today

Growing up, one of my favorite Christmas carols was "Do You Hear What I Hear?" -- the song about the night wind and the little lamb and the shepherd boy and the mighty king, telling of the child who shivers in the cold and who will bring us goodness and light.
It was, I thought, one of those grand old classics that had been around for a thousand years.
So it was with surprise that I opened the paper recently to see that the writer of that carol, Noel Regney, had died.
And it was with greater surprise that I learned that Regney had written this carol in October 1962, during the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
In those tense days, when much of the world lived in sheer terror that nuclear missiles soon would be raining down upon them, Regney was inspired, according to his obituary, "by seeing two mothers with their smiling babies in strollers on the sidewalks of New York."
A plea for peace
The carol's final stanza includes a plea for peace, a plea that resonated so strongly with the populace that within a week of its release, the song had sold a quarter-million copies.
Oh, how meaningful that final stanza seems right now, in these days that seem as tense!
"Said the king to the people ev'rywhere
"Listen to what I say!
"Pray for peace, people ev'rywhere
"Listen to what I say!
"The Child, the Child
"Sleeping in the night
"He will bring us goodness and light
"He will bring us goodness and light."
In October 1962, as President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev faced off over nuclear missiles that had been placed in Cuba, the world began to wonder about the sanity of Mutually Assured Destruction, the policy that basically made sure each side had more than enough nuclear weapons to destroy the other side many times over.
Would those weapons be launched? And would we really destroy each other? Which is why, I think, the song sold out so quickly. The plea to "pray for peace, people ev'rywhere" resonated with a world standing, it seemed, on the edge of destruction.
On the brink, again
Forty years later, we seem to be standing on another brink of war, a war that could leave millions of people dead, if, as the Bush administration says, Saddam Hussein truly does possess weapons of mass destruction, and if, as the Bush administration claims, Saddam is willing to use them.
We need to heed the king. We need to "pray for peace, people ev'rywhere," because it is the smartest, strongest, best thing we can do.
The U.N. inspectors are canvassing Iraq, seeking evidence of weapons that both the United States and Great Britain contend exist. The Iraqis have turned over 12,000 pages of documents contending they don't have ANY of those weapons. Somewhere in between those two asssertions lies the truth, of course.
But will we have the patience to wait to find that truth?
Or will the United States go against years of its own history, and start a war based on the idea that Saddam MIGHT start one first?
As truly scary as October 1962 was -- and just ask anyone who lived through it; they can tell you exactly how they felt then, even 40 years later -- December 2002 is even scarier. Because we have more weapons. And deadlier weapons.
Our best gift
As we wait to celebrate the birth of The Child, who will bring us goodness and light, praying for peace everywhere -- not only in Iraq, but all over the world -- is our call and the best gift we can give back to the God who created us in love and asks us to live in that love.
The goodness and light that this child, this Prince of Peace, promises to bring us, will only be achieved if we first heed the words of that carol's wise king: "Pray for peace, people ev'rywhere."
XThe Rev. Lauren R. Stanley is an Episcopal priest.