All posts by Phil

Authors, Blogs, Socials, Music, Non-fiction

Ukraine Has Something to Fight for, and Other Links

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Poet George Herbert reminds us,
“That all things were more ours by being His;
    What Adam had, and forfeited for all,
    Christ keepeth now, who cannot fail or fall.”

Everything I naturally think as mine is Christ’s–my time, my skills, my ambitions, even my sin.

It’s been hard to pull my eyes away from the news since Thursday. I have sought more information than prayer, but my prayers are completed with just a few words. Lord, have mercy on both Ukrainians and Russians, and break of the arms of evil men. Call them to account for their deeds.

God save Ukraine: Before the invasion, many Ukrainians knew what to expect. “Ukraine has been prepared through this crucible of constant pressure that it’s much stronger than people think.”

“Putin’s aggression must not go unchallenged: The invasion of Ukraine should be met with persistence, patience, and confidence”

At 3:03 a.m. Saturday morning, the valiant Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recorded himself in Kyiv again, saying they would not lay down their arms. This Twitter threads has that video translated as well as the news that Melitopol had fallen. That report is being countered as I write this.

Here are other links you may appreciate.

Cal Thomas on a departed friend from the other side of the aisle.

H. L. Mencken: “People seem increasingly uncomfortable with our essentially contradictory nature.”

Black History Month: Here’s a book I’ve been wanting take up for a few years, because the author is a wise disciplemaker who knows his subject. Free at Last? The Gospel in the African-American Experience by Dr. Carl Ellis has been rereleased as a classic in cross-ethnic, gospel-centered reading.

Jazz Organist: This is not the way I’m used to thinking of organ music. LeDonne remembers jazz organist Dr. Lonnie Smith, who passed away last September. “Is this Mike LeDonne? This is Lonnie Smith and I’m playing at the Village Vanguard with Lou Donaldson and he tells me you have a nice B-3.”

Photo by Max Kukurudziak on Unsplash

Music

Origin of anthem “Hail to the Chief”

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U.S. Presidential favorite “Hail to the Chief” has its origin in Sir Walter Scott’s popular narrative poem, The Lady of the Lake. Here’s an image of the page with words put to song by James Sanderson for a 1812 stage adaptation of the book.

Posted to YourClassical.com, “Given its sheer availability and rousing pomp, it was only a matter of time before U.S. presidents became the ‘chief’ in the title. ‘Hail to the Chief’ was first associated with a chief executive on Feb. 22, 1815, … to honor George Washington.”

Music

Sunday Singing: The God of Abraham Praise

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“The God of Abraham Praise” is attributed to 14th century Italian poet Daniel ben Judah. The Trinity Psalter Hymnal adds two more verses (#4-5) that I haven’t seen before and are not recorded above.

1 The God of Abraham praise, who reigns enthroned above,
Ancient of everlasting days and God of love.
Jehovah! Great I AM! by earth and heav’n confessed;
I bow and bless the sacred name, forever blest.

2 The God of Abraham praise, at whose supreme command
from earth I rise and seek the joys at his right hand.
I all on earth forsake, its wisdom, fame, and pow’r,
and him my only portion make, my shield and tow’r.

Continue reading Sunday Singing: The God of Abraham Praise →
Authors, Blogs, Socials, Religion

Normal Christian Living, Giving Cover Credit to Translators, and Blogroll

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When people give detailed definitions of the normal Christian life, I feel something like bumping into a soapbox. Not standing on it yet, but kicking it as if accidentally, not knowing it was next to my foot. When we say all Christians should be doing something, like Bible reading and prayer, we should consider how our recommendations would be applied by different people past and present.

If you take a verse like Psalm 5:3, “O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice; in the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch,” and recommend a morning routine to all believers, consider how the field hand and the factory worker would be able to apply it. How would it work for the tired, young mother or the single mother with a couple jobs?

If our view of the normal Christian life fits mainly a middle class, white-collar lifestyle, we need to broaden our scope, so that our intended encouragement comes through and we don’t drive away those believers who aren’t like us. This goes for our definitions of manhood, womanhood, and modesty, to name a few hot topics.

Let me scurry on to other things.

Translation: There’s a move to add the names of translators to the covers of the books they brought into another language.

Ordinary Life: Matt Rhoades writes about the Holy Spirit working in ordinary life. “We live day to day, not miracle to miracle. And there’s something wonderful about these ordinary days and years spent between the high points. “

Kindness: Jared Wilson says kindness promotes the Gospel. “When was the last time you classified preaching as kind? Do you think, by and large, preaching today could be characterized by kindness?”

Generations: Min Jin Lee talks about many things in this New Yorker interview, including generational differences particularly among immigrants. “The real disconnect is between the first and second or third generation, especially if the second or third generation has done sufficiently well. We’re not interested in just survival anymore. We’re interested in meaning, and that quest for meaning has just as many difficulties, if not more intangible difficulties, than just survival.”

Photo: Post Office, New Ulm, Minnesota. 1981. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Authors

Conservative Humorist P. J. O’Rourke Has Died

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“Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.”

— P. J. O’Rourke

Author P. J. O’Rourke died yesterday evening. John Podhoretz called him possibly “the nicest man I’ve ever known.”

“It isn’t an exaggeration to say that P.J. was, for a long time, the only cool conservative writer in America.”

Our friend (I say perhaps too presumptively, as if we are actual friends or that I have friends at all), and in case you missed it, let me repeat, our friend Anthony Sacramone points to an awakening moment for him in the pages of O’Rourke’s Republican Party Reptile. “I’m not alone! You can be an anti-communist and funny!”

Music

Sunday Singing: Be Still, My Soul

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“Be Still, My Soul” performed by the Norton Hall Band

Catharina Amalia Dorothea von Schlegel, an 18th century German, wrote the original of this marvelous hymn, “Be Still, My Soul.” The tune is “Finlandia,” originally a tone poem by the brilliant Jean Sibelius of Finland.

1 Be still, my soul: the Lord is on thy side;
Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain;
Leave to thy God to order and provide;
In ev’ry change he faithful will remain.
Be still, my soul: thy best, thy heav’nly Friend
Through thorny ways leads to a joyful end.

Continue reading Sunday Singing: Be Still, My Soul →
Blogs, Socials, Coffee, Tea, Drinks, Publishing

A Bright Age for Dropouts Drinking Coffee and Reading Defunct Lit-mags

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One of my daughters likes spicy food but doesn’t eat it much. She’s willing to try anything hot, and this week it was a dried Carolina Reaper, the world’s hottest pepper. I urged her to prepare for eating it by reading what she could find online, but no, she just scarfed it up and downed a milk shake as a counter measure. She told me she was going to do it but not when she would, so I didn’t know she had until she came to us at 1:30 a.m. to ask for help with sharp stomach pain. She threw up a few minutes later, which I understand is a normal response to eating these peppers.

So what are we linking to today?

Local Coffee: Some poor businessman failed to read the room when launching plans to remodel an Arby’s in Livingston, Montana, into a Starbucks. The community has a number of local coffee shops, like Chadz on N. Main and Eastside Coffee in the historic district, and the Livingston Business Improvement District don’t want Big Coffee to put a squeeze on them.

The Bright Ages: On the latest Prufrock podcast, Micah Mattix talks to the authors of a medieval history that focuses on many of the details we ignore about the Middle Ages. “It was, for the most part, seen as neither a virtue nor a vice that a city or region would contain various people from various places speaking various languages. It was a fact.”

Kudos to Mattix’s revived Prufrock newsletter, which you can subscribe to through the website of Spectator World.

Dropping Out: Hippies and drop outs were afraid, in part, of societal brainwashing and the mind-control everyone was talking about in the 60s. They wanted to know and live their true selves. (via Arts & Letters Daily)

Closing Shop: Literary magazines are being shut down. (Via Arts & Letters Daily)

Racism: A popular anti-racist author claims, “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.” That’s how you fight bad discrimination, friends. You fight it with your own discrimination.

Photo: Newman’s Drugs, Lake Huntington, New York. 1976. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Fiction, Reviews

Does the Old Man Lose to the Sea?

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I read Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea with friends last month. It was my first time. We found the essential story of catching a prize-worthy fish fairly gripping. I’ll summarize it quickly with spoilers.

Santiago is a poorer-than-most Cuban fisherman whose sail resembles a flag of defeat. The community has decided he is unlucky for catching nothing over the last 84 days at the start of the novella. But what is he going to do–sit on the beach and starve? With the encouragement of a neighbor boy who is as a grandson to him, he goes into the sea again, intending to go farther than all the other fishermen. He does so and hooks a gorgeous and enormous Marlin that takes him the rest of the story to pull in.

The thousand times that he had proved it meant nothing. Now he was proving it again.

Christians will notice the explicit Christ imagery in the story’s second half. Santiago is wounded with stripes on his back and pain like a nail through the hand. In the final pages, he carries his mast on his shoulder toward his hut and stumbles. He lies in his bed, arms outstretched, palms up. What does this mean, because the old man doesn’t redeem himself or anyone else? Perhaps the old man’s suffering and endurance is meant to be the ultimate a man can give.

His suffering is the cost of pursuing something great. He challenges a noble beast, his equal in some respects, and conquers it. He makes mistakes along the way and considers whether some of them are actual sins (though he claims to disbelieve in sin), but he achieves his goal nonetheless.

Continue reading Does the Old Man Lose to the Sea? →
Music

Sunday Singing: O, The Deep, Deep Love of Jesus

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“O, The Deep, Deep Love of Jesus”

Englishman Samuel Trevor Francis (1834-1925) gave us this hymn. It’s one of the hymns I feel I’ve always known. The tune is Welsh.

O the deep, deep love of Jesus!
Vast, unmeasured, boundless, free,
rolling as a mighty ocean
in its fullness over me.
Underneath me, all around me,
is the current of thy love;
leading onward, leading homeward,
to thy glorious rest above.

O the deep, deep love of Jesus!
Spread his praise from shore to shore;
how he loveth, ever loveth,
changeth never, nevermore;
how he watches o’er his loved ones,
died to call them all his own;
how for them he intercedeth,
watcheth o’er them from the throne.

O the deep, deep love of Jesus!
Love of ev’ry love the best:
’tis an ocean vast of blessing,
’tis a haven sweet of rest.
O the deep, deep love of Jesus!
‘Tis a heav’n of heav’ns to me;
and it lifts me up to glory,
for it lifts me up to thee.

Authors, Blogs, Socials, Religion

The God-Man Jesus, Philosophical Deadends, and Social Media

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Some people would have us believe that Jesus never claimed to be God, but you cannot read the Gospels thoughtfully and come to that conclusion. Christ Jesus made authoritative claims about Scripture and the people around him. He said, you have heard it said … but I say to you. Well, who is he to be claiming such authority of the text and its traditional interpretation? A crowd took up stones at least twice, because they knew what he was saying. “The Jews answered him, ‘It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God'” (John 10:33).

But maybe appealing to the reaction of the crowds is deeper in the weeds than we need to go. Jesus’s teaching ministry was not lightweight moralism that could sound true to anyone. He called for repentance and the coming of the kingdom of God.

“A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher,” C.S. Lewis said in Mere Christianity. “He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God.”

Let me jot down some blogroll links.

Social Media: Chris Martin has been writing a newsletter about social media for a while. Last summer, he wrote, “Social media and the internet are being used to perpetuate sin in ways that some sermon series on ‘technology and the gospel’ isn’t just going to fix.” In November, he said censorship isn’t the big problem with social media among Christians; it’s the way this technology is discipling us.

Martin released a book this month on this topic, called Terms of Service: The Real Cost of Social Media.

Johann Georg Hamann “gives us a way forward from both the deadends of modernism and the deadends of postmodernism.” Hamann calls us ultimately to the Bible.

Trending: Merriam-Webster reports a sharp increase in searches for the definition of infrangible, which means “unbreakable, not able to be separated into parts” or “not to be violated.”

Trueman: “As the medieval world granted tremendous spiritual power to its priesthood and indulged its sins because of that, so we do with our celebrities.”

Photo: Paul’s Market, Franklin, New York. 1976. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.