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.
Category Archives: Religion
‘The Early Lives of St Dunstan’
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.
‘Dear Lord and Father of Mankind’
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.
‘Jerusalem’
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.
‘Man and Wife,’ by Andrew Klavan
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.
Elevating depression
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.
Reading report: ‘Njal’s Saga,’ part 3
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.
Sissel: ‘Mitt hjerte altid vanker’
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!
‘God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen,’ and Gary too
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.
Sissel sings ‘Glade Jul’
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.