At the close of many an evening at the Episcopal church camp I attended in Rhode Island in the late 1950s, we gathered in a barn chapel for vespers, prayers of thanks for another day, and often closed with a gentle singing of the most seductively peaceful hymn ever composed.
“Now the day is over,” it begins, in a lilting, soft melody.
Night is drawing nigh, Shadows of the evening, Steal across the sky.
The hymn’s “sweet musical cadence,” wrote a Christian admirer, “invites calm worshipful prayer.”
I’m not sure why, but my memory of it from some 65 years ago bubbled up from some deep cortext hiding place as I read an account of the 9/11 memorial service today in New York, where Kamala Harris and Donald Trump seemed to warmly shake hands in a momentary suspension of their disgust for each other.
As well they might, at such a solemn moment, replicated at Shanksville, Pa., and the Pentagon, where hundreds more souls perished in the total of 2,977 who were murdered 23 years ago. The pain persists among the survivors, the families and friends who lost loved ones, of course, and intensely in nooks like the New York Fire Department, which lost 343 “firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, civilian employees — and the chaplain of the department” on September 11, 2001, according to the NYPD. Another 377 “have died from fatal 9/11-related illnesses in the years since the attack, according to the department, more than 16 times the number who died in the line of duty as they responded to the attacks (23).”
Add to that the thousands of U.S. and allied military service members and counterterrorism agents of the CIA and FBI—not to mention innocent civilians—who died or were grievously wounded in the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria triggered in large measure by the 9/11 attacks—all honored in various ways today.
Now the day is over.
Comfort ev’ry suff’rer, Watching late in pain
But threats remain, decades later. “The lights are blinking red” for another oncoming terrorist spectacular, say well informed former senior defense and CIA officers.
Those who plan some evil, From their sin restrain, the hymn prays.
In a thoughtful essay published today, former CIA operations office Douglas London wondered whether, or how much, the U.S. strategy of “decapitation strikes” against terrorist leaders has paid off.
“The capability is an invaluable tool, but just one in a necessarily holistic approach,” he wrote. “Its overuse could bring diminishing returns and wreak dangerous, generational consequences akin to those stemming from our support of the Mujahideen against the Soviets in Afghanistan.”
Or as The Band put it in “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”:
He was just 18, proud and brave
But a Yakeee laid him in his grave, I swear by the mud below my feet.
You can't raise a Kane back up When he's in defeat.
And so we all pray:
When the morning wakens Then may I arise Pure, and fresh, and sinless In Thy holy eyes There are many, many lovely versions of Now the Day Is Over available online. I like this unadorned one, which aligns with my ancient memories of vespers in the barn chapel. No chorale is listed.
