Category Archives: Religion

Music, Religion

‘Behold a Host, Arrayed in White’

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I recall sitting in my office one day (I think it was a Saturday; I had to work Saturdays at the time) back when I lived in Florida, listening to the local Christian station on my radio. Suddenly I heard the strains of “Behold a Host, Arrayed in White,” (an English translation is at this link) and was astonished. This is not a hymn much known outside Scandinavian Lutheran circles, and down among the gators a lot of people had no idea what a Lutheran was, let alone a Scandinavian Lutheran.

The reason the radio station had that song, I later learned, was that they leased music from the University of Northwestern (St. Paul) radio network’s licensing library, and Scandinavian Lutheranism is pretty well known up in these parts.

In my mind, at least, “Behold a Host” is the preeminent Scandinavian choral hymn. My dad and my grandparents loved it. This recording has the Norwegian lyrics, whose first lines actually go “This great, white host we see, like a thousand mountains full of snow, before the Throne – who are they?”

It’s a reference to Revelation 7:13-17:

 13Then one of the elders answered, saying to me, “These who are clothed in the white robes, who are they, and where have they come from?” 14I said to him, “My lord, you know.” And he said to me, “These are the ones who come out of the great tribulation, and they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. 15“For this reason, they are before the throne of God; and they serve Him day and night in His temple; and He who sits on the throne will spread His tabernacle over them. 16“They will hunger no longer, nor thirst anymore; nor will the sun beat down on them, nor any heat; 17for the Lamb in the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and will guide them to springs of the water of life; and God will wipe every tear from their eyes.”

The text was written by Hans Adolph Brorson, a much-loved Danish pastor and hymn writer. The tune is, I believe, traditional, but this arrangement is by none other than Edvard Grieg.

This particular recording is of the choir of Augsburg College, Minneapolis, which happens to be my alma mater, though this performance was around 1945, somewhat before my time.

Music, Religion

‘O Love That Will Not Let Me Go”

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A hymn tonight, as is so often my lazy default on Fridays. I’ve posted a different version of the one before, but it never gets old. I can’t find a composition or publication date for “O Love That Will Not Let Me Go, ” but Wikipedia reports that its author, Rev. George Matheson, wrote it on the evening of his sister’s wedding.  It must have been a poignant moment for him, as he’d gone blind as a young man, and his sister had been his caretaker since then.

He wrote, “I am quite sure that the whole work was completed in five minutes, and equally sure that it never received at my hands any retouching or correction. I have no natural gift of rhythm. All the other verses I have ever written are manufactured articles; this came like a dayspring from on high.”

He himself had been engaged to be married once, but his fiancée broke it off when she learned he was losing his sight. In spite of his handicap, he became a very successful minister in the Scottish Presbyterian Church and a respected scholar, publishing several books and earning an LL.D. degree.

Matheson is also the author of my favorite hymn, “Make Me a Captive, Lord,” which I hardly ever sing anymore, because my church doesn’t seem to know about it, and everybody but me sings it wrong anyway.

Have a blessed weekend.

Religion

Inanities of mortality

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Photo credit: Fey Marin. Unsplash license.

Somebody said that we don’t know what we’re thinking until we write it down. Like most aphorisms, it’s probably only true in limited cases. But I want to think this thing through, and you’re my designated victims audience.

What I’ve had on my mind of late is death.

This is not, I hasten to add, my way of easing into grave news. There is no grave news. I’m doing okay, health-wise, for an old fat man, as my doctor told me a few weeks ago (I think those were his exact words).

But there’s been a lot of death in my life of late. I lost a friend in December, and another in January. Now one of the men in my Bible study group at church is in hospice; we went to see him Monday night. We’ll likely never see him again.

Also I lost an uncle last month. And another friend died earlier last year. (That one was complicated. We’d been very close at one time, but over the years he changed his opinions, and I felt he was using me more and more as an ideological punching bag. So I broke it off. Then word came that he was dying, and I agreed to one last phone call. It was civil, I left him with God’s blessing, and a couple days later he was gone. I’m sure I could have handled it better, but handling things badly is sort of my personal style.)

So it’s probably not surprising that I’ve had death on my mind. I’m disappointed to find that I’m not properly resigned yet to my mortality. I honestly thought I was. I assumed (perhaps judgmentally) that those intense people who live their lives with gusto were probably in denial. But I’ve always lived carefully. Measured out my life in coffee spoons. I have looked on the dark side. Gazed into the abyss. The Roman emperors, I seem to recall, had a slave who followed them about, muttering, “Remember, Caesar, thou art mortal.” I fulfilled that function for myself. “Remember, it can always get worse, and probably will,” has been my slogan.

And yet I find myself resistant to assimilating the fact that I’m in my 70s, approaching the actuarial horizon for most of my family. I had a vague idea, I think, that I’d probably drop dead after I finished the Erling books, like Pres. Grant, who finished his autobiography (which paid off his debts) just days before dying of cancer. (It’s a good book, too. Very succinct and efficient in style. He wrote like he fought. You’d almost think it was written post-Hemingway.)

But here I am, my great project completed, trying to find a way forward with an even more ambitious (but hopefully shorter) work. I’m planning as if I’ll live forever. Caesar’s slave whispers to me, and I give him an elbow in the gut.

I am, in short, in denial. That offends my sense of myself.

On the one hand, the Bible tells us to number our days. On the other, we’re told to cast no thought on the morrow. Am I living my best life, looking on the bright side? Or am I deluding myself?

I have no internal instrument for judging this.

I suppose I could pray about it, but that sounds kind of extreme.

Music, Religion

How not to be a child

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Thing noticed this morning in devotions, as I work my way through Luke 18:

Surprise, surprise. The next section carries on the same theme (asking boldly vs. humility) developed in the previous sections:

The Rich Ruler

18And a ruler asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 19And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. 20You know the commandments: ‘Do not commit adultery, Do not murder, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother.’” 21And he said, “All these I have kept from my youth.” 22When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “One thing you still lack. Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” 23But when he heard these things, he became very sad, for he was extremely rich. 24Jesus, seeing that he had become sad, said, “How difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! 25For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” 26Those who heard it said, “Then who can be saved?” 27But he said, “What is impossible with man is possible with God.” 28And Peter said, “See, we have left our homes and followed you.” 29And he said to them, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothersb or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, 30who will not receive many times more in this time, and in the age to come eternal life.”

What have we learned up to now?

That Christianity calls for a) boldness, but b) humility.

We further established that this pattern is embodied in children. Nobody will enter the Kingdom of God unless they become like children.

Now in comes the Rich Ruler (they always called him the Rich Young Ruler when I was a kid, but maybe that was in one of the synoptics).

The Rich Ruler is the opposite of a child. He thinks he’s got it all together. Has he kept the Law? You bet. Been there, done that, got the tee-shirt.  What else do I need?

Jesus tells him he needs to sell everything he owns, give it to the poor, and follow Him.

The point, I’m convinced, is not that we earn salvation through poverty (though some Christian socialists seem to think so). It’s that the Rich Ruler needs to become a child again. He needs to put himself in a helpless, dependent position where Christ is all he has.

Which he can’t bring himself to do.

The answer he should have given was to say, “I can’t do that! Help me!”

Then he’d be a child. Then he’d be saved. We can hope he reached that point, later on.

Above, Sissel Kyrkjebø with the Oslo Gospel Choir, in a fairly awesome arrangement of a song appropriate to the topic.

Religion

Of death, and of children

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Image credit: Royal Academy

Bad and good things today. The good came first, but I’ll discuss it last.

Today, in the course of carrying out a routine task, I learned that a friend of mine had died last month. He was a member of my Viking group – not one of the regulars, but he showed up from time to time, and the two of us generally talked. But it was only at our last event, Viking Fest Minnesota last fall, that we discovered we shared very similar religious and social views. It may seem strange to know a guy for years and never learn that, but we generally keep off such topics at our events. Try to avoid kicking up divisions in the group. But lo and behold, Paul turned out to be One of Us. So we had a good talk. I looked forward to having more such talks.

Now that won’t happen.

He was almost two decades younger than me.

Receive him into glory immortal, O Lord.

Now to the positive stuff.

If you scroll down this page a few inches, you’ll see my meditation from the other day on some verses from Luke 18. I was pondering the contrast between the parable of the Importunate Widow and the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector.

I saw the point of the first parable as encouraging chutzpah – ask boldly; don’t be shy.

And I saw the point of the second as calling for humility.

Which seemed contradictory to me. I don’t know how to reconcile the two things in my own life.

This morning (having been kept from my devotions yesterday) I came to the passage that follows. And once again, context matters. Jesus Himself answers the conundrum he posed. It goes on like this, Luke 18:15-17:

Let the Children Come to Me

15Now they were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them. And when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them. 16But Jesus called them to him, saying, “Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. 17Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.”

And there, I think, is the answer, the truth that squares the circle. Who can be importunate like the Widow, and humble like the Tax Collector, all at the same time?

A child. Children ask without shame, and are humble by necessity. “Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.”

So all I need to do is become like a child.

The actual problem remains as difficult as it was before, but at least I can articulate it now.

Religion

Of tax collectors and widows

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Photo credit: Getty Images. Unsplash license.

Today the sun shone most of the time, and temperatures moderated in my embattled town. I went to the eye surgeon for a follow-up examination, and everything looked good. I also did not encounter any neo-secessionist rioters en route, which pleased me.

In my morning devotions, I read the passage below from Luke 18. Actually, just verses 9-14. I did 1-8 last Friday. But, in considering the context, I noticed for the first time that Luke jams two very contrasting parables right next to each other, thus:

The Parable of the Persistent Widow

1And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart. 2He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man. 3And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Give me justice against my adversary.’ 4For a while he refused, but afterward he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God nor respect man, 5yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.’” 6And the Lord said, “Hear what the unrighteous judge says. 7And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? 8I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

The Pharisee and the Tax Collector

9He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt: 10“Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayeda thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ 13But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ 14I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”

I’ve always been fond of the Tax Collector in the temple. In fact, my personal “conversion” (we Lutherans believe we’re converted at baptism, but some of us also believe you can have a renewal of your baptism when you’re old enough to understand the life of faith) followed a sermon on this parable. I was about 12 year old. As a guy who suffered from “low self-esteem” (a concept not yet invented at the time), I could identify with that beaten-down guy.

But just before that parable (I noticed today), you’ve got the outrageous story of the Persistent Widow (or the Unjust Judge). This is one of those parables that confounds our left-brain impulse to make every parable an allegory. Jesus is absolutely not saying that God is like an unjust judge. He’s just practicing hyperbole, telling an exaggerated story to make a point. You might call it a kind of a joke – “Even a crooked judge can be worn down by constant petitions. Certainly our good Heavenly Father will respond much faster than that!”

In other words, this parable commands us to approach God with what the Jews call “chutzpah.” Jewish people are famous for being bold askers. Their parents (generally) raise them to be like this. “What can it hurt to ask?” they say. “The worst they can do is say no.”

This is not something I learned in my Norwegian home. Precisely the opposite, in fact. It’s something I need to ponder, tax collector in the temple that I am.

Music, Religion

‘Heyr þú oss himnum á’

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Our friend Dale Nelson sent me the link to the Icelandic hymn above.

I have no idea what it says, but it’s really lovely. (I suspect the title means, ‘Hear Us From Heaven.’ I should probably check with Jackson Crawford.)

Have a good weekend.

Non-fiction, Religion, Reviews

‘The Early Lives of St Dunstan’

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I don’t expect this review will sell many copies of The Early Lives of St Dunstan, edited and translated by Michael Winterbottom and Michael Lapidge. The book is expensive (I got it as a gift from a generous friend), and it’s pretty specialist stuff. Invaluable for me, though, as I am thinking out my coming book on King Haakon the Good of Norway.

The calculation goes like this: Haakon was raised at the court of King Athelstan of England. Athelstan was a patron of Glastonbury Abbey, a major center of learning at the time. So it makes sense that he would have sent Haakon, along with several other princes he fostered, to Glastonbury for training (I’m assuming Haakon was literate). Dunstan was known to have been trained at Glastonbury around the same time. Ergo, it’s artistically plausible that they were schoolmates. Glastonbury’s reputation as a center of spiritual power and mystery adds a numinous atmosphere, irresistible to the fantasy writer.

The Early Lives of St Dunstan consists of two translations of Latin hagiographies (saints’ lives) of Dunstan, from the late 10th and early 11th centuries, along with extensive notes and explanatory information. Such books were commonly written in the Middle Ages, for liturgical use in church during the saints’ festivals.

Being early hagiographies, written within living memory of the subject himself, these two “Lives” are surprisingly prosaic compared to what one might expect. There are many legends about St. Dunstan, but the miracles in these accounts are relatively prosaic. Both describe what sounds like an incident of somnambulism during his boyhood, in which he left his bed and climbed onto the church roof, then came down unhurt, without any memory of what he’d done. There are stories of his harp (he was a noted musician) playing by itself as it hung on a wall. Various accounts of prophetic dreams and visions and answered prayers. Falling stones that just missed him. Not a lot of healings.

Later on, his legend grew. Traditionally, he’s been remembered as the bishop who caught the devil’s nose in a pair of tongs (he was a blacksmith too). The poem (which I lift from Wikipedia) runs:

St Dunstan, as the story goes, 
Once pull'd the devil by the nose 
With red-hot tongs, which made him roar,
That he was heard three miles or more.

Another legend says that the devil once came to his smithy to have his cloven hoof re-shod. Dunstan nailed on a plain horse’s shoe, which hurt the devil badly. He only agreed to remove the shoe when the devil promised to never again enter a building with a horseshoe nailed over the door – which is, supposedly, the origin of the lucky horseshoe superstition.

I cannot say the two lives of Dunstan were great entertainment. You know how annoying it can be in Christian books, when the writer lapses into preaching? These authors had no storytelling purpose at all; preaching was their sole purpose. It gets pretty sanctimonious.

But useful for my purposes. For instance, Dunstan seems to have had a lot of trouble with slanderous enemies throughout his lifetime, which got him repeatedly expelled from bishoprics. I think I can assume from this that the man may have had a small problem with tact. I can use that.

Below is a famous picture from an old manuscript, believed by many to have been painted by Dunstan himself, as a book illustration. The large figure is Christ, but the kneeling monk in the lower right-hand corner appears to be Dunstan. A self-portrait. All the stories say he could draw.

Music, Religion

‘Dear Lord and Father of Mankind’

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I am bubbling with opinions on public issues in my state today, so I’ve decided to express none of them. I’m painfully aware that I’m actually fairly ignorant of a lot of things that have me upset, so I’ll do you (and my soul) the courtesy of just stifling myself. For the present, anyway.

Instead, I post the old American hymn, “Dear Lord and Father of Mankind.” Oddly, most of the videos of the hymn available on YouTube use the tune “Repton,” which the English churches prefer. But I like the American tune I’ve always sung, a tune called “Rest,” by Frederick Charles Maker.

The text is a superior one because, unlike so many hymn writers, its author, John Greenleaf Whittier, was an actual poet, and a good one. He was also a Quaker. The text is in fact an excerpt from a longer work called “The Brewing of Soma,” a poem about an ancient Indian custom of brewing a drink called Soma, on which worshippers got drunk in an effort to make contact with the divine. Whittier goes on to tell the reader that we ought to seek God through higher methods – peace and patience and rest in faith.

I’m not a great admirer of Quaker theology, but they have something to tell me.

Music, Religion, Writing

‘Jerusalem’

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Above, a hymn much better known in England than on this side of the pond (though I doubt it’s sung much in schools there anymore), “Jerusalem,” a musical setting of William Blake’s poem. It’s been called England’s second national anthem.

It’s based on the legend (how ancient the legend is seems uncertain) that claims that the first Christian in Britain was none other than Joseph of Arimathea, the character from the gospels who gave up his tomb for Christ’s burial. According to the legend, Joseph was involved in the tin trade, with connections in Britain. Supposedly he was also Jesus’s uncle, and took Him along on one of his business trips to the barbarian island. Later, after the resurrection, he is supposed to have gone there as a missionary, founded the church at Glastonbury, and thrust his staff into the earth, where it budded to become the famous Glastonbury Thorn (which was, according to my reading, in fact a Middle Eastern variety of tree). We Protestants cut it down during the Reformation, but cuttings have been taken, and some survive.

(Another legend, by the way, says Aristobulus, St. Paul’s associate mentioned in the Epistle to the Romans, was the first missionary to Britain.)

I’m studying Glastonbury right now, because it will play a part in my Haakon the Good book. It’s a matter of record that King Athelstan raised a number of foreign princes at his court; this is one of the facts that make the story of Haakon’s fosterage with Athelstan plausible.

And Athelstan was a strong patron of Glastonbury Abbey, promoting it as a center of learning. Among the clerics educated there was the famous St. Dunstan – whom I intend to incorporate into the story.

I also had a strange, stray thought this morning, which I managed to snag with my little metaphorical net before it flew away. I thought of a way to suggest that a character is an angel, without actually saying he is an angel. I think it’s kind of clever, though it will probably pass over most readers’ heads.

Now I’ll have to figure out a place for an angel in the story.