Rest in Peace, Pete Seeger

Pete Seeger died today.  Here's his obituary if you want details.  He was 94.  What an amazing soul.  Here's an awesome interview he did on Beliefnet.  If you don't have time to read the whole thing, here are my favorite quotes:

"I feel most spiritual when I’m out in the woods. I feel part of nature. Or looking up at the stars. [I used to say] I was an atheist. Now I say, it’s all according to your definition of God. According to my definition of God, I’m not an atheist. Because I think God is everything. Whenever I open my eyes I’m looking at God. Whenever I’m listening to something I’m listening to God."

"I’ve decided that if there’s a human race here in one hundred years, it will be because we learn how to participate with each other, even though we may disagree about many things.  I’ve often thought, standing onstage with 1000 people in front of me, that somebody over on my right had a great-great grandfather who was trying to kill the great-great grandfather of somebody off to my left. And here we are all singing together. And wouldn’t it surprise all those great-grandfathers if they could see their great-grandchildren  singing together? They’d probably say, 'Why did we fight so hard?' Good question!  We all go to different churches or no churches, we have different favorite foods, different ways of making love, different ways of doing all sorts of things, but there we’re all singing together. Gives you hope."

"When Toshi and I had our first child who died when it was only six months old, I was in the army, my father wrote me and said, 'I don’t think I could cheer you up in the usual way. But remember this, that something good that has happened can never be made to unhappen.' That’s a nice way of putting it, don’t you think? Something that has happened can never be made to unhappen."

-- Pete Seeger, "Pete Seeger's Session," Beliefnet interview by Wendy Schuman

Rest in peace, Pete Seeger.  What a stellar soul you are!