Alfie and the Meek

2 December 1997
By Jim Weller

The day after Thanksgiving, I listened to the National Public Radio program, Fresh Air, on KQED-FM. The host, Terry Gross, was interviewing the lyricist, Hal David, well known for his popular songs, especially those written for movies and with composer Burt Bacharach. When asked what song his own favorite might be, Mr. David unhesitatingly answered that it was the song, Alfie, set to music composed by Bacharach, for the 1966 movie of the same name.

I remembered especially liking this song myself, for its beautiful melody and touching lyrics. I can still hear it in its originally recorded version by Dionne Warwick - just as though it were playing aloud, in my head. I never saw the movie, but I gather it was the story of a callous and hedonistic playboy who, in his benightedness and irresponsibility, breaks young women’s hearts and otherwise variously does emotional harm in his daily affairs.

The song goes like this:

What’s it all about, Alfie?
Is it just for the moment we live?
What’s it all about, when you sort it out, Alfie?

Are we meant to take more than we give?
Or are we meant to be kind?

And, if only fools are kind, Alfie,
Then I guess it is wise to be cruel.

And if life belongs only to the strong, Alfie,
What will you lend on an old golden rule?

As sure as I believe, there’s a heaven above, Alfie.
I know there’s something much more,
Something even non-believers can believe in.

I believe in love, Alfie.
Without true love, we just exist, Alfie.
Until we find the love we’ve missed, we’re nothing, Alfie.

Where you walk, let your heart lead the way,
And you’ll find love every day, Alfie.

There is a deeply meaningful message of right relation to be made of this: Let us be willing to lend our loving-kindness on the collateral of hope and faith, without exacting a price in return. Let us seek to give more than we take, and to take but what we need. Let us seek to know the love that reunifies humanity with its Divine source and nature.

I am reminded of certain Biblical passages I first encountered long ago, as a boy in a children’s Bible study group.

Faith, hope, love; these three abide. But the greatest of these is love. II Cor. 13:13

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Mt. 5:3, 5

I didn’t suspect it when I was a youth first hearing his heartfelt lyrics, nor even at all later until I heard the reverence in his own commentary, but I think Hal David, in composing the lyrics for Alfie, must have had such pastoral meanings in mind, all along.

Scriptural teachings require considerable interpretation in order to be very meaningful for most of us living at this time, the beginning of the third millennium of the Common Era. The gospels and epistles of the New Testament as we know them now are couched in the archaic English of King James, having been translated at that time from the Latin Vulgate in which the original Koine Greek writings, set down ninety or so human generations ago, were preserved.

The important ethical and religious messages we have from the Christian and Hebrew Bibles have been held up as beacons of enlightenment for all times in Western civilization, but the standard texts call for plenty of semantic analysis and reformulation, particularly for those who approach them from a secular or non-sectarian viewpoint.

In Hal David’s words, there is “something much more” to be known than contemporary contrivance and artifice, “something even non-believers can believe in”. Something more essen¬tial, unconditional, eternal. Something, if you will, based in wisdom, as contrasted with craftiness and cunning. And where better to find wisdom, as latter-day heirs of Western civilization’s tree of knowledge, than in the testaments of the saints and apostles and prophets?

Blessed are the poor in spirit. What does this mean? Abject poverty is hardly a blessing, not by anybody’s standards, and dispiritedness, despair, and depression seem just the antithesis of anyone’s idea of beneficence. How can the first Beatitude be any kind of benediction?

I take poor in spirit to mean something like ‘in the spirit of humility,’ or ‘of simple spirit’ – in the sense that it is more blessed to forego or to share the excess wealth one might create, than to gain riches oneself, and that non-attachment to worldly goods is a worthier spiritual orientation than its alternative.

And who are the blessed “meek” of the third Beatitude? They are the harmless and defenseless souls, those who seek to demonstrate the human capacity for kindness and cooperation, instead of competition and dominion. They shall inherit the earth because it is their ways that promote reconciliation and renewal, instead of decadence, disintegration, and depletion.

The theological virtues of faith, hope, and love are the spiritual gifts characteristic of the truly “meek” and “poor in spirit” among us; and, as an overarching virtue, love is the greatest of these.

I believe in love, too, and that, by simply accepting the Divine grace that is forever offered to us, we shall know the spiritual blessings of faith, hope, and love, in living here and now – and truly inherit the earth, as it has been given us by the miracle of life, and enter the kingdom of heaven while we live, in reverence for the “wholiness” of life and being.

May it be so.

Amen.