California Dreamin’ and Getting down on My Knees to Pray
I am so much a child of my time in many ways! There is music from the sixties that when I hear it, it sends a nostalgic chord running through my heart and my mind.
One such song is The Mamas and Papas “California Dreamin’.” The tune is so evocative of the utopianism of that era. The words are simple although the middle stanza puzzles me. It runs thus:
I stopped into a church
I passed along the way
Well, I got down on my knees
(Got down on my knees)
And I pretend to pray
(I pretend to pray).
You know the preacher likes the cold
(Preacher likes the cold)
He knows I’m gonna stay
(Knows I’m gonna stay)
California dreamin’
(California dreamin’)
On such a winters day.
What to make of the pretense in prayer? The song is about the dilemma the subject faces about telling his or her beloved about going to L.A. Stopping into the church might be for direction or guidance. But why then the pretense to pray, especially when the sixties were all about transparency and honesty?
I had gotten down on my knees to pray many times when I was growing up a Roman Catholic. But it was all a pretense.
But I shall never forget the time in February 1974 when I got down on my knees for real and asked the Jesus Christ to be my Saviour and Lord. That was real.
Nostalgia is good as far as it goes but it won’t save you from the wrath to come. Reader: have you ever gotten down on your knees to pray to the true God through the Lord Jesus?
This entry was posted on Monday, December 24th, 2007 at 1:01 am and is filed under Poetry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
December 24th, 2007 at 12:55 pm
Curmudgeon, a moderator on the “Ask a Teacher” forum at UsingEnglish.com may have something in his answer to the question, “I wonder why the preacher likes the cold weather?”:
“The preacher likes the cold because it makes people stay in church longer as it is warm in there”.
[Source: http://www.usingenglish.com/forum/ask-teacher/55463-california-dreaming-2.html
It may be that street people and others seek the warmth of the church when the doors are open during a cold New York winter, and that this warms the preacher’s heart to have an expanded audience.
However, it may have more to do with a visit by composers Papa John and Mama Michelle Phillips to St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City in 1963 a few days prior to their writing these words. See National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition” for July 8th, 2002, “California Dreamin’”, by Susan Stamberg at http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/patc/californiadreamin/index.html.
One web site actually had the lyrics as “…began to pray…the preacher lights the coals…”! [Source: http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=2016 However, I watched several videos of The Mamas and The Papas performing this song listening and watching their lips carefully. Even though I can understand how someone could come up with these words, the lyrics stand as you have them!
Whether they, or any of the Aquarius “love, joy, peace” generation, actually pretended to pray is open to question. John and Michelle may have observed this happening at St. Patrick’s rather than doing it themselves.
Having observed the falseness and hypocrisy of this generation firsthand, I would suggest that it was more about “looking out for #1″, or “whatever makes me feel good”, rather than transparency and honesty. My own extreme exposure to this pretense is one thing the Lord used to open me up to the claims of Christ in 1973.
By the way, Papa Denny died on January 19th. Papa John and Mama Cass were already gone, John in 2001 and Cass in 1974. Mama Michelle turned 63 on April 6th.
I really got a chuckle out of reading a respected Church historian considering the interpretive issues of “Californa Dreamin’”!
Soli Deo gloria,
John T. “Jack” Jeffery
February 10th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
I get the same feeling about that song — the same feeling I get watching Gidget or The Monkees with my 8 year old son. . .it was the ideal of the California experience that charmed me. . .the truth of it was, to put it bluntly, quite nasty. . .California was a utopian experiment that, naturally, failed to live up to its image! Besides, baby boomers would great at “feelin’ groovy”, but they’ve been a scourge on 2 younger generations. . .glad I was born at the very tail end of it. . .