Tom Prasada-Rao is a gifted songwriter, a spiritual guru, and a brave soul who experienced a tough battle with cancer last year, and continues treatment, even during this pandemic. I am grateful to consider TPR a friend, and of course had to delve into this cool phenomenon. Here is but an overview of those who have passed his powerful song along the pipeline: Mary Gauthier, Ellis Paul, Margo Hennebach & Mark Saunders, Karl Werne, and so many more. The lyrics are included in the song link, but I am reprinting them below because they deserve repeating... 💙
Some people die for honor
Some people die for love
Some people die while singing
To the heavens above
Some people die believing
In the cross on Calvarys’ hill
And some people die
In the blink of an eye
For a $20 bill
Some people go out in glory
(Yeah) with the wind at their back
Some get to tell their own story
Write their own epitaph
Sometimes you see it coming
Sometimes you don’t know until
You run out of breath
With a knee on your neck
For a $20 bill
Brother, I never knew you
And now I never will
But I make this promise to you
I’ll remember you still
Take, eat - let this be our communion
It’s time to break the bread
Do this in remembrance
Just like the good book said
Sometimes the wine is a sacrament
Sometimes the blood is just spilled
Sometimes the law
Is the devils’ last straw
The future unfulfilled
Like the dream they killed
For a $20 bill
by Tom Prasada-Rao 5/28/20 Silver Spring MD
Also, referencing the history of my graphic above, this... yet one more example of this adminstration's racism.
SONG: $20 Bill (for George Floyd) by Tom Prasada-Rao (Tom's voice is whisper-like while he's speaking, but when he begins singing, at about the one-minute mark, you can hear him clearly... :-)
BOOK: Hands Up, Don’t Shoot by Jennifer E. Cobbina
POEM: truth by Gwendolyn Brooks
And if sun comes
How shall we greet him?
Shall we not dread him,
Shall we not fear him
After so lengthy a
Session with shade?
Though we have wept for him,
Though we have prayed
All through the night-years—
What if we wake one shimmering morning to
Hear the fierce hammering
Of his firm knuckles
Hard on the door?
Shall we not shudder?—
Shall we not flee
Into the shelter, the dear thick shelter
Of the familiar
Propitious haze?
Sweet is it, sweet is it
To sleep in the coolness
Of snug unawareness.
The dark hangs heavily
Over the eyes.
QUOTE: "There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they're falling in." ~ Archbishop Desmond Tutu
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