Category Archives: Religion

Fiction, Religion, Reviews

‘Man and Wife,’ by Andrew Klavan

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And that’s how we really expose ourselves. Not in what we say but in the imagination we lay over the face of things. Because we can choose our words, strike our poses, but our delusions—no, these are wallpapered to our souls.

Andrew Klavan informs us in his autobiography, The Great Good Thing, that he once wrote a novel about Jesus. He’s not very proud of it; it was the sort of sophomoric story that young agnostics are prone to tell, once they’ve “figured everything out.”

But he wrote another novel about Jesus – in a sense. Man and Wife is not a Christian book, but its central character is a very evident Christ figure. And while the author did not quite understand yet when he wrote the book, you can tell he was asking the right questions.

Cal Bradley, the narrator, is a psychiatrist, chief administrator of a private mental facility in Connecticut which was originally endowed by his wealthy family. He’s good at what he does, but the real joys of his life are his wife and children.

His wife Marie came out of nowhere, it seemed, a simple-hearted, uneducated former waitress. She’s beautiful and she’s devoted to her husband, her children, and her church, joyfully serving them all. As far as Cal is concerned, she’s a miracle.

Then, one day while hiking near a local waterfall, Cal spies a woman who looks like Marie down in the gorge, talking to a strange man who seems oddly intimate with her. When he asks her about it, she cheerfully denies being anywhere near the place.

Meanwhile, Cal has admitted a 19-year-old man named Peter Blue to his facility. Peter is charged with striking his girlfriend, setting fire to a church, and assaulting a police officer. But the priest of the church begs Cal to help this boy. There’s something astonishing about his spirit, he says.

And Peter Blue does indeed seem remarkable. Not only is he a cooperative counseling subject, he exerts a healthy influence on the other patients. They follow him like disciples, and their symptoms are improving.

Only Peter Blue turns out to be connected to that same strange man Cal thought he saw with Marie at the waterfall. And Cal starts receiving threats, which he’s sure come from that same man. Is it possible Marie has been lying to him all these years? Can love and untruth exist together?

From a Christian point of view, Man and Wife offers a number of serious problems. But it should be remembered that author Klavan was working his way to faith when he wrote the book. The story is suspenseful and exciting and challenging; also moving and heartbreaking. I recommend it for thoughtful adults. Cautions for language and mature themes.

Religion, Uncategorized

Elevating depression

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Photo credit: John Price. Unsplash license.

First of all, for the record, I’m not depressed at this moment. I intend to write about depression, but I’m being theoretical, based on a rich store of personal experience.

My visit to the dentist this morning, so far as I know, did not prompt me to thoughts of depression. This was my new dentist, by the way. My old dentist (to personalize a corporate entity) started out very good, until the original guy retired due to his health. He sold it to another dentist, who sold it on to another dentist, and each new iteration proved more incompetent than the last, until it all descended (or so it seemed to me) into pure quackery and fee-seeking. So I broke with them at last and settled on a different practice, also in my town. This practice is so solid-appearing and reassuring that it comforts me just to drive there (and it’s only 2 blocks from my house. I could walk, but it’s January. Gimme a break).

This new dental practice is located in a brick building whose solidity has always pleased me. I thought it might be a surviving building from my town’s early years, but it turns out it was built by an architectural firm that has its offices upstairs from the dentist. Their building is their showpiece. Well done.

What took me to the dentist? I popped a crown yesterday afternoon, and they got me in to get it fixed this morning. My mouth is a museum of ancient dental work – you could teach a class on the evolution of oral surgery based on my X-Rays. (I recall a Jonathan Winters comedy special from my childhood. In one sketch he portrayed a movie star being interviewed in his Hollywood home. He broke into song at one point, and I recall one line – “I have 32 pearly white teeth, And one of them is AL – MOST MINE!”)

Anyway, they checked carefully to make sure there was no underlying decay (no problem), and then they glued it back in with the latest in high tech dental adhesive. And my new insurance (had to change it; my old company fled Minnesota, as all sensible companies do) covered most of the work.

I’m tempted to quit this post right here – it seems to me plenty long already. On the other hand, I promised you my insights on depression, and writing about my dodgy teeth makes for a poor topic, in my opinion. Depression is so much more festive.

It occurred to me recently that I was something of a hypocrite in my musical ministry years. Not intentionally, or so I tell myself. I was just singing Christian music with my friends. I could hardly make up my own lyrics. (Except we did; we wrote most of our own stuff. And I did the lyrics. Never mind.)

But, as I recall it, a majority of those songs were about how joyful and happy we were to be Christians. (And there is nothing at all wrong with that.)

But in my own case, I wasn’t very happy and joyful. I’ve never been that kind of Christian. Everybody else’s testimony seemed to be, “Jesus saved me and filled me with joy!” (Perfectly legitimate, too.)

But my actual testimony was more like, “Jesus kept me from killing myself. Without Him, I don’t think I would have grown up.”

That’s not a contemptible testimony, I contend. It just doesn’t lift the spirit a lot. You don’t sell a lot of records with that kind of message (or you didn’t in those days).

“Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are varieties of ministries, and the same Lord,” says St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 12:4-5.

There’s a place for depressed Christians too. That’s my testimony, and I’m sticking to it.

Fiction, Religion

Reading report: ‘Njal’s Saga,’ part 3

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Gunnar defends his house.

Chapter 106 of Njal’s Saga relates one of those weird, disorienting tales that pop up here and there in the sagas, tales that remind us how very foreign these characters are to our modern world. It takes place three years after the Althing has voted to accept Christianity as the national religion. Njal, the saga hero, plays a major role in the deliberations.

There’s a man called Amundi the Blind. He’s an illegitimate son of Njal’s son Hoskuld, and has the misfortune to be blind. His father was murdered by a man named Lyting, and the sons of Njal prosecuted a case against him, winning substantial compensation. But Amundi the Blind was not a party to the lawsuit, and received nothing.

Amundi attends the Thingskalar Assembly, one of the regional Things, and Lyting is there. Amundi has himself conducted to Lyting’s tent, goes inside, and asks him what he’s going to pay him for his own loss. Lyting laughs at him. Amundi says “I don’t find that just before God…. And now may God settle matters between us.”

He turns to leave, but just as he reaches the tent door, his sight is suddenly restored. He rushes back into the tent and buries his axe in Lyting’s head. Then, as he passes out through the threshold again, his blindness returns forever.

This bizarre story is related by the saga writer without comment. Since it immediately follows the conversion narrative, and since Amundi appeals to God and is answered with a “miracle,” the implication would seem to be that God granted him his revenge. Yet the saga writer, writing (probably) in the 13th Century, is too smart to say something like that right out. It’s just part of the story – make of it what you will.

Which is good advice for all saga readers.

A strange atmosphere descends on the saga after the conversion. Murderers, and those getting revenge for murders, all now consider themselves Christians, but don’t seem to be quite sure how the new faith ought to impact their lives.

The sons of Njal, having been deceived, have wickedly murdered a man named Hoskuld, a family friend who was actually Njal’s foster son. As the men seeking vengeance for Hoskuld surround Njal’s house and realize they can’t beat the family in a fair fight, they make up their minds to burn them in their house. Their leader, Flosi, says, “There are two choices, and neither of them is good: one is to turn back, but that would lead to our death; the other is to bring fire and burn them inside, and that’s a great responsibility before God, for we’re Christian men.”

The question of how Christians deal with vengeance was in fact the central theme of a splendid trilogy called Bodvar’s Saga, by the Norwegian writer Vera Henriksen. Sadly, it’s never been translated into English. I once actually wrote to the publisher myself, offering to do the job, but they didn’t respond.

Music, Religion

Sissel: ‘Mitt hjerte altid vanker’

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Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. My greeting to you (I probably won’t be posting tomorrow) is this number from Sissel, a Danish hymn by Hans Adolph Brorson. Mitt Hjerte Altid Vanker has an earlier Danish melody, but this Swedish tune has become more popular, for reasons that will be apparent when you hear it.

It’s in Norwegian, of course, so I’ve gone to the trouble of translating the verses Sissel sings here for you. There are in fact 11 verses, but only 3 are used here. This version does a little mixing, combining lines from two different verses (and out of order too!) at the end.

But it works.

My heart is e’er returning
There where my Lord was born;
My thoughts forever yearning
In wonder at that morn:
My longing finds its home there,
My treasure gleaming bright --
My faith finds rest alone there,
That blessed Christmas night!
But ah! How to express it,
Things wisdom cannot know,
That God – no soul could guess it
Would e’er descend so low:
That He, the praise of Heaven,
The great eternal Word,
Into a stall was given
Our humble, infant Lord.

Oh come! My soul is sighing
Your work in me begin!
To Heaven’s heart I’m crying,
Come, Lord, and enter in! –
My heart, your blood has bought it,
It is no alien ground –
In flesh you came and sought it
Be here forever found!

Music, Religion, Uncategorized

‘God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen,’ and Gary too

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I seem to be thinking of old carols this Advent season, so today I figured I’d look at a genuinely old carol (as opposed to that counterfeit antique, Wenceslas, that I covered a few days ago). I’m thinking here of God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen. According to Wikipedia, we know of an early version of this carol from the 17th Century, though the version we sing today comes from an 1833 collection produced in England by William Sandys.

Now right off, I find myself on the wrong foot about some of the words. I’ve always sung it as “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” (more about the comma placement below). But according to the Wikipedia article, “In fact, ye would never have been correct, because ye is a subjective (nominative) pronoun only, never an objective (accusative) pronoun.” I, with my rough-and-ready workman’s grasp of English grammar, had no clue about this. (Oddly, the title on the YouTube clip above has it wrong, but the sing-along lyrics get it right.)

The most common misunderstanding about the song has to do with the meaning of the words, “God rest you merry, gentlemen.” Modern people assume the comma should go after you – “God rest you, merry gentlemen,” with “merry” describing “gentlemen.” But that’s because we’ve forgotten the idiomatic phrase, “rest you merry.” Shakespeare uses it in a couple of his plays, “As You Like It,” and “Romeo and Juliet.” It originally meant “God rest you [grant you to be] merry [peaceful and happy].”

Personally, I’ve been needing a little comfort and joy lately. One week ago tonight (Friday), my friend Gary Anderson passed away after a long illness. Gary was a founder and longtime central figure in my Viking reenactment group (that’s him on the right with me in the photo above). He was sort of a walking photo opportunity, an artist’s dream of a Viking, our most public face and voice.

He was a wounded and decorated Vietnam combat veteran. He was a professional Santa Claus in season, for many years. He was a dyslexic who taught himself to read. He came on strong, rather frightening me when I first met him, but he proved to be a stalwart and faithful friend. Another friend and I visited him a couple times during his last months, the final time about three weeks ago. Death is Grendel, a mighty foe, but it had to beat him to the ground before it took him. He never gave up. He went out as befits a Christian Viking.

Music, Religion

Sissel sings ‘Glade Jul’

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Tonight, because it’s not Christmas without a few hymns from Sissel, we have Glade Jul, the Norwegian version of “Silent Night.”

The Norwegian translation does an interesting thing with the lyrics. It pulls the whole story into the present – or pulls us into the past, back to the first Christmas. The Norwegian lines of the first verse go (more or less, my translation):

Happy Christmas, Holy Christmas. 
Angels descend unseen. 
Hither they fly, with leaves of Paradise, 
Where they behold what God has accomplished. 
Secretly they walk among us; 
Secretly they walk among us.
Music, Religion

‘Good King Wenceslas’

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Tonight’s Christmas carol ushers us into a historical period in which I’m more or less at home (the early 10th Century, in which my current Work In Progress is set), though not so much as far as the turf is concerned. I’ve always assumed that Good King Wenceslas was a medieval English Christmas song, passed down through generations.

And that’s just what its author intended. The lyrics were in fact written in 1853 by an Englishman named John Mason Neale. This insidious semi-papist was a member of the Oxford Group, that Victorian and Edwardian movement that sought to turn the Anglican Church away from Pietism, back to its Roman Catholic roots. He set out to write a song that would honor a saint, sound medieval, and sing well. The tune he chose was “Tempus adest floridum,” (The Blooming Time Is Here), a 13th Century Latin hymn to spring. It worked brilliantly, and became a classic. I’m fond of it.

So what about the real King Wenceslas (full disclosure – I’m getting all this from Wikipedia. You could do as well yourself, but I’m putting it all in one place for you)? Well, first of all, Duke Wenceslas I of Bohemia (ca. 907-935) was not a king in his lifetime, though the title was bestowed on him posthumously by the Holy Roman Emperor. In spite of all the illustrations you’ve seen showing him as an old man with a white beard, he in fact died very young – before he was thirty, as you’ll see from his biography dates.

Wenceslas’ grandparents were the first Christian rulers of Bohemia. His mother, Drahomira, accepted baptism to marry his father, but apparently her heart wasn’t in it. After his father’s death, his grandmother Ludmila served as regent – until she was murdered by Drahomira, who then went on to persecute Christians. Wenceslas was brought to power in a coup against her.

He spent his short reign struggling against various enemies. The Magyars attacked from the east, and on the West, the Franks, the Saxons, and the Bavarians gave him trouble. He made it a policy to ally his Bohemian church more with Rome than Constantinople.

In September 935, Wenceslas was treacherously murdered by assassins paid by his brother Boleslav “the Cruel,” who had invited him to a feast. Boleslav is said to have delivered the killing blow himself. After Wenceslas’ death, legends of his sanctity spread, and he became patron saint of the Bohemians and Czechs, as he is today. (Saint Olaf of Norway would later follow a similar script.)

One of the Wenceslas legends says that it was his practice to leave the palace every night, accompanied by just one of his chamberlains, and go out, barefoot, to distribute charity to the poor. The carol immortalizes a variation of that story in which they set out on the feast of St. Stephen (Dec. 26) in heavy snow. The chamberlain (“page” in the song) complains that he hasn’t the strength to plow through the drifts any longer (I don’t know if he was allowed to wear shoes on these errands or not), and Wenceslas tells him to just walk in his tracks – and behold, it’s warm enough in those spots to melt the snow, enabling him to proceed in comfort.

“Wherefore, Christian men, be sure – wealth or rank possessing – ye who now will bless the poor  Shall yourselves find blessing!”

Which, when delivered by a Christmas caroler, was an obvious hint that it’s cold out here and some hot food – or, even better a hot drink – would be welcomed and pleasing to God.

Music, Religion

‘Away in a Manger’

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Tonight, “Away in a Manger.” It’s a Christmas hymn I tend to overlook – because it’s expressly for children and not very sophisticated. In my own personal history, it was the first Christmas carol I ever memorized. I remember (probably erroneously) singing it to my grandmother and an aunt or two (using the melody in the clip above) while riding in a car at night at Christmastime. But I moved on to songs that had more going on under the surface.

When I was a kid, I often heard “Away in a Manger” referred to as “Luther’s Cradle Hymn.” Everybody knew it was a translation from Luther. Turns out it wasn’t, though. Luther did write a Christmas hymn for his children, but it’s called “From Heaven Above To Earth I Come,” and can be found in any Lutheran hymnal. Nothing in his works resembles “AIAM” at all. It is, as someone has pointed out, not his kind of thing. If he’d written it, he’d have thrown in more theology. He was not a man to let a chance to catechize people go to waste. Sentimental he was not.

The origins of “AIAM” are in fact quite mysterious. According to Wikipedia, its earliest known appearance was on March 2, 1882 in the “Children’s Corner” of an anti-Masonic paper called The Christian Cynosure. Within a few months it had appeared in a couple other publications, always identified as “Luther’s Cradle Song.” This is rather perplexing. Somebody actually wrote the thing, but they gave credit to the Reformer. Why?

It’s been suggested (again, I get this from Wikipedia) that it may have originated in a forgotten children’s Christmas play, in which Luther sings the song for his children. Maybe somebody took the script literally, and reprinted it cutting the play’s author out. Nobody seems to have sued for copyright infringement, in any case.

The immortal author Lars Walker refers to “AIAM” in his novel Troll Valley, complaining that, because the song describes “the little Lord Jesus asleep in the hay,” many people draw the erroneous conclusion that hay is stuff for animals to sleep on. This is wrong, because a manger is a feed trough, and hay is for eating and belongs there. What animals sleep on is straw, another agricultural product altogether.

Music, Religion

‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’: not a secret code

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Above, a fine rendition of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” done by Hayley Westenra and some guys I never heard of.

I was thinking about Christmas music today. I’ve posted a number of Christmas hymns here over the years, but not a lot of secular carols. I thought, “I should post a fun, secular Christmas song, and talk about it.” Then I asked, “What is my favorite secular Christmas song?” And I realized I have no idea.

I don’t think of the secular Christmas songbook the same way I think of the hymns. Aside from a couple that I hate (like “Little Drummer Boy,” which I’ve denounced here before), I like them all pretty equally, as familiar, mostly interchangeable elements of the season’s background music. The songs have pleasant associations. I’d date them, but I don’t want to marry any of them.

There’s a story that keeps going around (I haven’t seen it yet on Facebook this year, but I expect it’ll show up) that says the song was originally a super-secret, underground memory aid to help Catholics in teaching their children the catechism, back when Catholicism was illegal in England. This story is completely false, and won’t sustain even a few seconds of dispassionate interrogation, let alone a persecutor’s thumbscrews. (I’m not denying the persecution, though. I can sympathize, even as a Lutheran.)

Let me say this clearly: Two random numbered lists don’t assist each other in any way. Mnemonics mostly rely on matching first letters – as in repeating “Good Boys Do Fine Always” to help one remember the whole notes in the treble clef (or something. I remember the mnemonic, but I’ve forgotten what it’s supposed to remind me of). The gifts in the “Twelve Days” bear no resemblance to the theological points they’re supposed to recall. It’s like saying, “Here’s a list of Holy Roman Emperors to help you remember the state capitols of the US. See, here’s Number One, Charlemagne – he corresponds to Montgomery, Alabama.”

“The Twelve Days of Christmas” is an example of what’s called a “cumulative song” according to Wikipedia (and since this isn’t about politics, I figure I can trust them here). Cumulative songs are songs played as games, where people sit in a ring (ideally) and each person in turn repeats what the previous singers have sung, and then adds an item of their own. The next singer has to do the same, adding yet another item to the list. When someone forgets, they usually have to pay a forfeit, such as being kissed or taking a drink.

Such games used to be popular in the days before electronic entertainment, and I myself am old enough to remember playing such a game (though I forget its title; need a mnemonic here) on a long bus ride to Bible camp in North Dakota.

Such feats of memory no doubt will astonish future generations – and probably a generation or two that’s around now.

Have I mentioned that I used to be able to recite “The Cremation of Sam McGee”?

Music, Religion

Bach’s latest hit, and discipleship

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At that very time He rejoiced greatly in the Holy Spirit, and said, “I praise You, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants. Yes, Father, for this way was well-pleasing in Your sight. “All things have been handed over to Me by My Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.”

 Turning to the disciples, He said privately, “Blessed are the eyes which see the things you see, for I say to you, that many prophets and kings wished to see the things which you see, and did not see them, and to hear the things which you hear, and did not hear them.” (Luke 10:21-24, NASB 1995)

The music at the top is one of the recently discovered pieces that are thought to have been composed by Johan Sebastian Bach, whom I once heard Dr. Oswald C. J. Hoffman describe as “the second greatest Lutheran in history.” I guess there’s some dispute about authorship, but I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt. Bach’s whole ouvre could have been forged by Mendelssohn, and how would I know?

My devotions this morning were on the passage printed at the top of this text. What struck me was how different this speech is from a lot of what the Lord says about discipleship. (Or at least how I perceive what He says.) I tend to go the same way as Jordan Peterson, who is a legalist and is always discussing it in a cautionary way. “Have you really thought about what that means, ‘taking up your cross’?” Peterson asks. “It means suffering. It means dying. Are we really prepared to do that?”

Which is fair enough; He’s quoting the Lord Himself.

But Christ is in an entirely different mode in this passage. He’s looking at these guys He’s chosen – guys He’s chosen for suffering and ostracism and death – and He’s telling them how lucky they are. He’s given (and is giving) them something that outweighs all that suffering and death to such a degree that they’re not even worth considering.

I certainly believe we should talk about – even stress – the cost of discipleship.

But I’m pretty sure I under-stress the joy of the knowledge of Christ. Which is not surprising, considering my personality.

But I need to work on it.