It's one of those days when you find delight in quirky things! Was going through some of my old music books, and found my old S.S. Peter & Paul School music book that we used for Mass, at the time when the "spirit of renewal" swept through the land (and parched everything in its path).

Any "With Skins and Steel" fans out there?! That's the name of this melody edition (w/ guitar) booklet from the World Library of Sacred Music, written by Jack Miffleton. I remember singin' and strummin' these "heady" songs at Mass. I say "heady," because some of the poetic language was too theologically sublime for me to grasp as a child, and also now, as an adult. Example:

CRY ALICE

REFRAIN: Cry Alice! Cry Alice!
Verse 1: Cry for the years gone, the buried dead, a life pent up, a world confined to yourself. REFRAIN
Verse 2. Over a dark drink, warming your heart, Cry for the Alice who keeps you apart from your friends. REFRAIN
Verse 3: Cry for the laughter, the long rose gown, Cry for a world that has carrried you down to the living dead. REFRAIN
Verse 4: Cry for the past now, Cry for the pain, Cry for a life that was simply a game, and care again. REFRAIN

All these decades later, and I still don't know who "Alice" is! Was Alice the "one that got away on him?" Was the name simply a code word for some dope dereliction? And how exactly did Alice and Christ know one another?

Leafing through this booklet, the song "Well, It's a New Day" caught my eye because of its visually suggestive language:

Verse 1: A man can kill with a knife of steel, with a gun, a bomb or a lance, But there's a New Law, there's a New Law: A man can kill with a glance!
Verse 4: A sinful man lusts for power and fame, Women, wealth, and wine, But there's a New Law, there's a New Law: A man can lust in his mind."

At least I am now provided with closure, all these years later, because today I found an answer to a question I had been seeking, and which I had posed on Ben Yanke's "Terms to be forever forgotten" discussion here on this forum. Jack Miffleton's "But Then Comes the Morning" is the source of that haunting verse which I sang at our school Masses:

Verse 4: Look in his mother's eyes, Tears for the child in her arms, A few spoons of beans for the day, Rats crawl from holes in the walls, Forgive, Lord, forgive. It was night when we did what we did.