Sunday Singing: Lo! He Comes with Clouds Descending

“Lo! He Comes with Clouds Descending” performed by The Cambridge Singers

Today’s hymn comes from the great Charles Wesley (1707–1788) and is a reworking of an earlier hymn by John Cennick (1718–1755). Wesley gave it the title “Thy Kingdom Come.” It is considered one of the great Anglican hymns of all time. The text copied here is from the Trinity Hymnal and has a few more words than the recording above.

“Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” (Matt. 24:3)

1 Lo! he comes, with clouds descending,
once for favored sinners slain;
thousand thousand saints attending
swell the triumph of his train.
Alleluia! Alleluia!
God appears on earth to reign.

2 Ev’ry eye shall now behold him,
robed in dreadful majesty;
those who set at naught and sold him,
pierced, and nailed him to the tree,
deeply wailing, deeply wailing,
shall the true Messiah see.

3 Ev’ry island, sea, and mountain,
heav’n and earth, shall flee away;
all who hate him must, confounded,
hear the trump proclaim the day:
Come to judgment! Come to judgment!
Come to judgment, come away!

4 Now Redemption, long expected,
see in solemn pomp appear!
All his saints, by man rejected,
now shall meet him in the air.
Alleluia! Alleluia!
See the day of God appear!

5 Yea, amen! let all adore thee,
high on thine eternal throne;
Savior, take the pow’r and glory,
claim the kingdom for thine own:
O come quickly, O come quickly;
alleluia! come, Lord, come.

Rejected Book Tour and Reading Dante in Ukraine

An original limerick for your weekend.

In meetings at Kensington Cross 
For lingo I searched at a loss. 
One word—marinara 
Was all I could bear, uh, 
For the spots on my shirt were all sauce.

No shirts were stained in the composition of that limerick. Now, on to the links.

Memoir: Rob Henderson has a memoir releasing next month called, Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class. J.D Vance praised it for a “gripping” message. Others called it “extraordinary.” But major city bookstores don’t want to schedule tour events for him, even though he had tens of thousands of social media followers (over 137k on Twitter).

Sherlock Holmes: Getting the great detective into print was a challenge for Conan Doyle in that he hoped to publish one of the better markets. Historian Lucy Worsley, who has a new BBC series on the author’s relationship with his detective, says the first stories were rejected thrice.

The rejections scarred Arthur and made him slightly ashamed of his character, because he wanted to be a high brow writer. Nevertheless, he persevered because he was short of money, and he had a family to support, and he was also very, very hardworking, and energetic.

After Sherlock’s first two outings, both of which were lacklustre in terms of readership, his literary agent suggested a new magazine called The Strand, which was a mid-market magazine aimed at commuters, who were hustling and making a life for themselves in the busy throbbing urban world of London, in the 1890s, that Arthur struck gold.

Self-Awareness: We seem to be overly aware of ourselves, don’t we? But we aren’t yet schizophrenic. “The cult of the ironic, distanced observer, aware of his own awareness, unable to break out of his solipsistic construction of himself and his world, has displaced what is now seen to be the naive, immediate relationship with reality as it is felt. This point of view has developed its own orthodoxy, even if most of us go about our lives as though we were actually involved with things, events and people not entirely of our making.” (via Rob Henderson)

Enraptured: February 12, 2024, will be the 100th anniversary of the first public performance of George Gershwin’s Rapsody in Blue. World Radio had a segment on it earlier this month, discussing the piece and how it’s been altered in many recording.

Dante’s Inferno: Somewhere in Ukraine right now, my friend who publishes books orders printers in the bombed out city of Kharkiv to produce thousands of copies of Inferno. The trucks deliver weapons into Kharkiv. And, going back, empty, they decide to pick up thousands of copies of Dante’s Inferno.

“This is an image of war that happens as I write it: cars are bringing weapons into the besieged city that’s bombed daily, and they leave full of books.” (via The Book Haven)

Photo by Danya Gutan on Pexels.com

The city and the sea

Photo credit: Milad Fakurian. Unsplash license.

The city lies foursquare, its length the same as its width. And he measured the city with his rod, 12,000 stadia. Its length and width and height are equal. He also measured its wall, 144 cubits by human measurement, which is also an angel’s measurement. (Rev. 21:16-17, ESV)

Amateur theology tonight. (“I’ve had a thought,” he said, as readers sighed in disappointment and scrolled on.)

Way back in 2010, I blogged about how the Book of Revelation (21:1) says that in the Kingdom of God, the sea will be no more. That always troubled me, because I like having the sea around. I come from a long line of sailors and fishermen, and I find the ocean beautiful and romantic.

But I’d learned that for the ancient Hebrews, the sea symbolized chaos, the depths of despair, the place where there was no safety or certainty. The opposite of God’s order. The Old Testament uses the sea as a metaphor for death and Hell (as in the Book of Jonah). So there’s a strong case to be made that when St. John says in Revelation that the sea will be no more, he’s talking about chaos and disorder being wiped out.

And it occurred to me today that the image used in the passage from Revelation at the top of this post, about the “city foursquare,” is in fact a contrasting image. They complement each other. The chaos (sea) has been taken away, and instead we have this huge, perfectly square city. Now, even though I was born to be a city boy, and I moved to the city as soon as I decently could in my life, the idea of a great big square city never appealed to me much. Sounds kind of Bauhaus, kind of Brutalist. Not much scope for green spaces. Most of us would have interior apartments, and one assumes the view and the ventilation wouldn’t be great.

But it occurred to me that, if the deletion of the ocean is metaphorical, that cube of a city is just as likely to be metaphorical. It means everything’s going to be squared away, put right.

This brings us into the realm of mystery. I think it’s beyond question that we are promised that at the very end of God’s story, all things will be made right. Sin and evil will be swept away. Wrongs will fixed. Injustices will be balanced. Tears will be wiped away. Nobody will have any reason to complain about the raw deal they got.

How that will work out, I have no idea. I absolutely reject Universalism. It’s a snare. But I do believe there will be Big Surprises.

A twist ending. That’s what you want in a good story. And as I’ve written here before, I think it’s all a good – no, a great — story.

‘A Knock at the Door,’ by Peter Rowlands

I’ve had a conflicted relationship with Peter Rowlands’ novels. I like his prose, and I very much like his characters. But I find his plotting a touch weak. In writing A Knock at the Door, he set himself a daunting plotting task. It was – mostly – successful.

Rory Cavenham is a web designer, temporarily out of work. He’s staying at a friend’s large house in England’s Cotswolds when on a rainy night a woman knocks on the door. She’s young and attractive, and soaked to the skin. He’s reluctant to let her in, but she seems to have no one else to help her, so he does. To his astonishment, she claims to believe the year to be 1972. Her name, she tells him, is Rebecca. She is adamant that she doesn’t want to go to a hospital or talk to the police.

Rory turns to the internet (something Rebecca doesn’t understand), and soon learns that there was indeed a girl named Rebecca who disappeared in 1972 – a convicted murderer who escaped from a psychiatric facility. But how could she turn up fifty years later, little older than when she vanished? He also discovers another missing woman who could be her, who supposedly died in a fire a couple years back. But, oddly enough, that woman was a documentary researcher who’d been researching the original Rebecca’s story…

And when uniformed thugs show up to try to kidnap Rebecca, the whole thing starts spinning out of control,

I was often reminded of my own novel, Death’s Doors, as I read A Knock at the Door. The author navigated the same kind of plot situations, where a time-traveling newcomer has to be guided – and to some extent protected – through and from culture shock. The mystery of Rebecca’s identity was a compelling one, and kept me reading with fascination.

Rory, our hero, is a good character, but artistically weak in that he commits the sin of acting naively, in exactly the same way, on more than one occasion.

The final resolution – really a series of resolutions – didn’t, in my opinion, quite live up to expectations. It was emotionally satisfying, but less so in dramatic terms. In short, it fizzled a bit – not entirely, but the bang wasn’t quite what I hoped for. Also, I did see it coming, at least to some extent.

Rebecca’s culture shock was handled reasonably well, but in her surprise at how the world has changed, she fails to mention something that would surely have been remarked on by a true time traveler – the major demographic changes in England since 1972. I can understand why an author would feel it necessary to skip that part, but it weakened plausibility a little.

Still, all in all, A Knock at the Door was an enjoyable story.

‘The Fabled Falcon,’ by Neil Howarth

As I work my way through the backlog of free books I’ve been acquiring through online deals, I found that I’d arrived at two books in a row about art experts. The last one was Aaron Elkins’ A Glancing Light (review a few inches down), which I liked quite a lot. I liked Neil Howarth’s The Fabled Falcon too, at the beginning, but my enjoyment faded as the story proceeded.

Darius Fletcher (known as “Fletch,” not to be confused with Gregory McDonald’s American “Fletch” character) is a former soldier and a former convict. Now he’s a professor of art at the (fictional) Canterbury University in England. His college is funded by the slightly shady Bancroft Foundation. Fletch is a little shady himself, providing occasional help to an art forger friend, but he genuinely loves art in itself.

One day while he’s lecturing, he looks out at his audience and sees a man there who is not a student. That man turns out to be dead. Fletch recognizes him, though – he’s Francis, a young man with whom he recently worked on an archaeological dig on Malta. Francis had confided to him that he’d discovered something fantastic – a signed painting by the master Caravaggio, who only signed one other known work.

Though Fletch is briefly detained by the police, the Bancroft Foundation quickly secures his release, and sends him off to Malta to find out what’s happened to Francis’ discovery. What he doesn’t yet know – but will soon discover – is that this treasure is being sought by competing sinister, ruthless, and deep-pocketed interests. Teaming up with a beautiful Russian Interpol agent, Fletch does his best to stay one step ahead of them, following cryptic clues to uncover ancient secrets.

If all this suggests to you parallels with Dan Brown and Indiana Jones, you’re not wrong. For this reader, the book steadily lost credibility as mystical and supernatural elements began to intrude – implicitly, at least. I probably would be okay with it if those supernatural elements were Christian, but here the flavor is explicitly Gnostic.

On top of that, there was a definite Hollywood approach, not only in the Fighting Girl Boss character of the Interpol agent, but also in the hero’s tendency to quickly heal from injuries and come back battle-ready.

So all in all, I was disappointed with The Fabled Falcon. It was heretical and implausible (but I repeat myself).

My invaluable opinion on a Nobel-prize winning book

I’ve written a review of Norwegian author Jon Fosse’s Nobel-prize winning novel, Septology. It was posted today by Ad Fontes here.

‘A Glancing Light,’ by Aaron Elkins

In the last few decades the field of art thievery had developed well beyond the crude old days when paintings had usually been stolen and then held for ransom. Now, with the prodigious rewards offered by insurance companies, nasty ransom demands had become unnecessary. You could be more decorous. You merely stole the piece of art, waited awhile, and then turned it in for the insurance reward. All you had to do was come up with some reproachless way of “finding” the object in question and getting the word to the insurance company.

I have read at least one novel by Aaron Elkins before, and I reviewed it favorably. Nevertheless, his name is one of those that remains vaguely familiar in my mind, but I can’t quite place it. Maybe A Glancing Light will help me remember in the future.

The hero of A Glancing Light (this is the second book in a series) is Chris Norgren (extra points for the Scandinavian name!) a curator for a Seattle art museum. Chris is preparing for a trip to Bologna, Italy to arrange for an upcoming exhibition. He gets a request to evaluate a couple paintings that showed up unexpectedly in a shipment for a low-rent art importer. One of the paintings he dismisses as a fake. The other turns out to be one of a group of paintings stolen in a recent major art heist.

Arriving in Italy, Chris is treated to a welcome dinner by a group of friends. Afterward, he sees one of them being attacked by thugs. Chris rushes to help him. He escapes serious injury himself, but his friend is permanently crippled. Chris is certain this has something to do with the aforementioned art heist, but when he goes to see Bologna’s chief artistic crime cop, he’s not impressed with the man – and the feeling is mutual. The information he has to share is dismissed, and he is ordered to stay out of the whole business.

As you can guess, he will not follow that advice. Before he’s done, he’ll have cause to regret the.

The tone of A Glancing Light is (appropriately) fairly light. Chris is not one of those omnipotent amateur detectives who’s always one step ahead of the police, which makes him all the more believable. And the book is educational too.

I very much enjoyed A Glancing Light.

Sunday Singing: At the Name of Jesus

“At the Name of Jesus” sung by the congregation of First Plymouth Church in Lincoln, Nebraska

Today’s hymn a regal song of praise that ends with the promise of his soon return. “At the Name of Jesus” was written by English writer Caroline Marie Noel (1817-1877). She spend many years in sickness and took up writing devotional poetry for herself and other invalids she could send them to. This song was one of those published in 1861 in a book called, The Name of Jesus and Other Verses for the Sick and Lonely. The majestic tune was written for these verses by the great Ralph Vaughan Williams.

“. . . at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil 2:10-11 ESV).

1 At the name of Jesus ev’ry knee shall bow,
ev’ry tongue confess him King of Glory now.
‘Tis the Father’s pleasure we should call him Lord,
who from the beginning was the mighty Word.

2 At his voice creation sprang at once to sight,
all the angel faces, all the hosts of light,
thrones and dominations, stars upon their way,
all the heav’nly orders in their great array.

3 Humbled for a season to receive a name
from the lips of sinners unto whom he came,
faithfully he bore it spotless to the last,
brought it back victorious, when from death he passed.

4 In your hearts enthrone him; there let him subdue
all that is not holy, all that is not true:
crown him as your Captain in temptation’s hour:
let his will enfold you in its light and pow’r.

5 Brothers, this Lord Jesus shall return again,
with his Father’s glory, with his angel train;
for all wreaths of empire meet upon his brow,
and our hearts confess him King of glory now.

Had the Crew Dealt in Books They Would Have Gone Broke

An original limerick for your weekend.

A ship with a creative crew
would trade in Newport and ports new
their haphazard wares,
their slapdash and spares,
for the loan on their ship had come due.

Live within your means, readers, and stay ahead of any judicious loans you take out. And now, on with the links.

2023 Books: Bookseller and podcaster David Kern offers “eight novels published in 2023 that I’ve been handing to people because they remind me why I love novels in the first place.”

And more recommendations, this time of the spy-thriller nature from John Wilson—”more than enough regional and global conflicts to keep spies and spymasters busy and readers turning the pages.”

Writing in the Woods: The writing life can take many forms, like when a friend lets you live in a cottage on their land for a summer.

Writing about Magic: During the Renaissance, the practice of and the writing about magic produced mixed results. “Renaissance magicians were often bookish.” Sounds like Mr. Norrell.

Photo by Hector John Periquin on Unsplash

Sissel sings ‘Amazing Grace’

This is my favorite arrangement of John Newton’s “Amazing Grace.” The singer, of course, is Sissel. There are several videos of her doing this hymn on YouTube, but none of them have exactly this arrangement (Andrae Crouch wrote it, I believe), and not exactly in this quality.

Have a graceful weekend.