Category Archives: Religion

Music, Religion

‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’

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First of all, I feel I should warn you (the horror!) that it’s possible I may not be posting tomorrow. I am scheduled for minor surgery involving my vision, and will just have to see whether I’m in shape to work a computer or not.

I would appreciate your prayers if you think of it, but they assure me it’s a common procedure and the risks are low. (At least that’s how I choose to interpret it.)

So, tonight – another Christmas carol. Not Sissel, I’m afraid. She doesn’t seem to have done this one. There are performances by the Heretic Tabernacle Choir, but I don’t want to give them more business than I already have done. There are English choir versions, but the English sing it to the wrong tune (I believe that was a major reason for the unpleasantness of 1776).

At last I found a nice one by the Hillsdale College Choir. That will do.

I remember that when I was a kid, my first favorite Christmas hymn was “Away in the Manger” (erroneously believed, at the time, to have been written by Martin Luther). It’s a kid’s carol, and one of the first songs I ever learned by heart.

Then, some years later, I remember, I decided I preferred “O Little Town of Bethlehem.”

I’ve gone on to other favorite Christmas hymns since that time, but I still favor the Little Town, in a general way.

It was written by Phillips Brooks (1835-1893), an Episcopal priest who eventually became bishop of Massachusetts. (According to Wikipedia, he introduced Helen Keller to both Christianity and Annie Sullivan.) He said he wrote it after visiting the Holy Land, and Bethlehem on Christmas night.  I recall reading an anecdote that after his death, a little girl in his congregation is supposed to have said, “How happy the angels will be to have him in Heaven!”

Music, Religion

‘Mitt hjerte alltid vanker’

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It’s Advent season, coming up on Christmas. I have my Christmas tree lit, and some candles are burning away like the billy-o, and I’m going to share another Sissel Christmas clip, because that’s what I do.

I believe Sissel has said this is her favorite song out of all her repertoire. I especially like the arranger’s hat tip to Grieg in the instrumentation.

Music, Publishing, Religion

Another update, and Sissel

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I’m sure you’ve spent the whole day wondering how my project of uploading The Year of the Warrior for Amazon (paperback) went this morning. I thank you for your concern, but (as is so often the case) I overestimated my capacity.

What actually happened was that I spent my whole session doing some final tweaks on formatting – I had to create a table of contents, for one thing. MS Word has this utility for creating tables of contents, and it’s pretty slick once you’ve figured it out. Then I fixed my page headings and numbers, which I should have done before creating the table of contents. Because adding the page headings changed the word capacity of each page, so all the numbering changed, and I had to update the table. Also, I had to go through the whole thing and find places where I’d inadvertently created unnecessary blank pages by not keeping my page breaks tight. Which, of course, changed the page numbers again and required another table update. Several, in fact.

I’ll try to upload tomorrow. I’m thinking I’ll probably be able to upload it on my own account, rather than piggybacking on Baen’s listing. The main problem with that is that I won’t have my reviews to go with it. The reviews are many and – surprisingly – largely favorable.

I’ll  probably have to beg my fans to put up new reviews. (Hint, hint.)

The video above is, of course, the immortal Sissel Kyrkjebø, doing the Norwegian Christmas hymn, “Deilig er Jorden” on Norwegian TV in 1991 (with English subtitles). The melody will be familiar to you. We call it “Beautiful Savior.” It generally surprises Americans (it surprised me) to learn that “Beautiful Savior” is a Christmas hymn in Norway.

I’ll also draw your attention to the way the Christmas tree is decorated. In Norway, it’s customary to take the silver garlands and run them straight down from the tree-tip to the base. The intention, I think, is to suggest the rays of the star (or angel) at the tree-top.

We Americans tend to wind our garlands around the tree. I’ve always assumed the intention is to mimic the way snow lies on fir tree branches.

Music, Religion

Mahalia Jackson: ‘Just As I Am’

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I thought of Mahalia Jackson tonight, for some reason. I don’t think she’s much remembered anymore, but in the Ancient Days she was the most acclaimed and respected gospel singer in the world. Here she sings “Just As I Am.”

The hymn is an English one, written by Charlotte Elliott (1789-1871) who spent much of her life as a semi-invalid. The story is that she said to the Swiss evangelist Henri A. Cesar Melan one day that she did not know how to come to Christ. He replied, “Come just as you are!”

Authors, Religion

‘The Thurber Carnival,’ by James Thurber

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In the early years of the nineteenth century, Columbus won out, as state capital, by only one vote over Lancaster, and ever since then has had the hallucination that it is being followed, a curious municipal state of mind which affects, in some way or other, all those who live there.

I had read bits of it already. I remember finding “The Night the Bed Fell On Father” hilarious when I was a boy. So I looked forward to reading A Thurber Carnival.

To be honest, I found it less funny, and more troubling, than I expected.

James Thurber is a classic American humorist, one of the founding fathers of The New Yorker. Some of his pieces, especially the story, “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” have become classics. Even legends.

As I worked my way through this collection of essays, stories, and cartoons, I was surprised how dark I found it. Not overtly – there was no obvious self-pity on display here. But I thought I felt the presence of a bitter spirit behind it all.

James Thurber, born in Columbus, Ohio, suffered the loss of an eye in a game of William Tell as a small boy. For the rest of his life, he lived with the fear – then the certainty – that the other eye was going to fail. He lost his sight entirely in the end, a terrible fate for a man of letters. For this reader, that unspoken fear seemed to form a background to everything. Here is not the lightness of Robert Benchley. Here is a humorist cracking wise on the scaffold.

Or so it seemed to me.

Or maybe it’s just that I’m not bright enough to appreciate the sophisticated gags.

Anyway, it’s a classic. You should probably read it. You might enjoy it more than I did.

I should perhaps warn that there’s some casual racism, characteristic of the time but not vicious, in descriptions of black people.

Authors, Fiction, Religion

A friend interviewed

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Dale Nelson, retired professor of English at Mayville State University, North Dakota, is a good friend of mine and one of the more frequent commenters on this blog. He is also a presence in the world of Inklings and fantastic fiction scholarship.

Linked here is a recent interview he gave to the Fellowship & Fairydust web site. The interview actually comes in two parts. This is the first, and deals mainly with horror literature.

A second segment, more about the Inklings, is coming soon. I’ll post that too.

Music, Religion

‘Day By Day’

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It’s been a while since I’ve posted any Sissel Kyrkjebø music. Here we have a Swedish hymn called “Day By Day.” (Not to be confused with the song “Day By Day” from the musical “Godspell.” Which is… a different song.) This is Sissel at the start of her career, when she was singing on Norwegian television.

It was written by Carolina (Lina) Sandell (1832-1903), a beloved Swedish hymn writer. Even we Norwegians loved her hymns. She started writing, we are told, in part to deal with her shock after watching the drowning death of her father. The Swedish evangelist Carl O. Rosenius featured many her hymns in his services, which increased their popularity.

The lyrics go (in English):

Day by day, God’s gracious love surrounds me
As a balm to soothe my troubled heart.
Countless cares and worries that confound me
Fade away or quietly depart,
For His heart is kind beyond all measure,
And He comforts us as He knows best.
Ev’ry day, with all its pain and pleasure,
Mingles tears with peace and rest.

Day by day, the Lord is ever near me,
Granting loving mercies for each hour,
And my care He gladly bears, and cheers me
With His counsel pure and holy pow’r.
I’ll not fear for what may come tomorrow,
Though the path ahead I cannot see.
He assures that in all joy or sorrow,
“As thy days, thy strength shall be.”

Help me rest in quiet consolation.
Help me trust Thy promises, O Lord.
When I’m faced with daily tribulation,
Help me find the strength to live Thy word.
Then, dear Lord, when toil and trouble find me,
Hold me steadfast in Thy pow’rful hand.
Day by day, Thy strength will bear me kindly
Till I reach the promised land.

This, I might mention, is not the translation I’m familiar with. I blame the liberals.

Religion

‘Video Vikings and Christian Conversion’

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I now have an article available for your perusal over at the Acton Institute’s Religion & Liberty Online.

Video Vikings and Christian Conversion
Religion, Uncategorized

In a Viking church

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A fragment of a wall painting from my ancestral church at Aakra, Norway.

Here’s something one of my Facebook friends brought to my attention. The Viking Museum at Ribe, Denmark, has unveiled its recreation of what they think a 9th Century Viking church in Denmark would have looked like. It is not – as you can see – exactly what you’d expect. And by you, of course, I mean me.

I’ve never bothered to describe Father Ailill’s church in detail in my Erling books. I assume it was built of wood, and I conceived of it of being similar to the average Viking house. In Hailstone Mountain, I describe it as having at least one tapestry hanging on the wall. It has an altar in front. Pews were not used in those days. I’ve kept it vague.

But here come these Danes now with their bright painted walls. I’m reminded of the church at Åkra, near Skånevik, Norway, an ancestral church of mine I visited two years ago. (Picture above.) It’s not as old as the Viking Age, but pretty old. There was one place where restorers discovered a bit of wall painting underneath a door frame, over the top of the sacristy door. They left that section of frame hinged, so you can lift the piece of wood and see the painting below. They believe it showed a scene of Samson killing the lion.

In any case, I do have quibbles. The brightness of the photos in the article should not be taken to indicate what churchgoers saw in the Viking Age. The building would have been illuminated mostly by lamps. There would have been a lot of shadows. The brightness of the images would have been necessary in part (I think) to make them visible at all in the general gloom.

Speaking of light, I’m curious about the windows in this reconstruction. My own understanding is that glass windows, in that period, were rare and extremely expensive. I expend quite a few words, in my work in progress, The Baldur Game, in having Father Ailill describe, on a visit to England, how amazed he is to see a modestly large glass window in the palace at Winchester. And Erling is quite proud of one small window in one of his halls. I imagined no windows at all in Ailill’s church.

However, the people at Ribe are experts. They undoubtedly know a lot more than I do. (Though I’m not sure Norwegian churches would necessarily have followed Carolingian fashion.)

In any case, those windows look pretty extravagant to me. I wonder what archaeological evidence there is for them.

Religion

When a storm is a rock

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Jesus Calms the Storm – Fresco by Silvestro Pistolesi in the clerestory of the Church of the Transfiguration at the Community of Jesus. Creative Commons attribution-Share alike 4.0.

And when he got into the boat, his disciples followed him. And behold, there arose a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by the waves; but he was asleep. And they went and woke him, saying, “Save us, Lord; we are perishing.” And he said to them, “Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?” Then he rose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm. And the men marveled, saying, “What sort of man is this, that even winds and sea obey him?” (Matthew 8: 23-27, ESV)

My Heaven-sent translation work continues. I had a good day yesterday and got a little ahead of my quota. This is good, because I translated nothing on Saturday (and I don’t write for money on Sundays if I can help it). I need to translate 100 pages each month for the next five months to deliver on time. I’m 50 pages in now, and the month isn’t half over yet, so I’m doing just fine.

But it never hurts to run ahead of schedule. Impress the client, and if I finish sooner, I get my final payment sooner.

The laborer, as the Good Book says, is worthy of his hire.

Speaking of the Good Book, I was struck by the passage printed above during my devotions last week. I wrote about the Sermon on the Mount not long ago, and now I’m in the early passages that follow the sermon. I’ve read the Bible a number of times since I was a kid, but I never noticed until recently how much context means.

I wrote about it in my earlier posts – how counterintuitive Jesus’ teaching is (none of these thoughts are original to me, of course. I’m coming to them from the back of queue). The bottom line seems to be, “Build your house on a rock.” But what’s the rock like? It has nothing to do with a good job, or saving money, or investing in bonds or real estate. The rock Jesus is talking about seems to be solidly anchored in mid-air. Invest in Heaven. Step out onto the stormy waves – that’s your real security.

And Jesus demonstrates this in Matthew 8:23-27. Immediately after He delivers the sermon, He’s confronted with human chaos – he meets a leper, the very embodiment of disordered health. He heals the leper. He heals a centurion’s servant – the centurion, interestingly, doesn’t need to observe Jesus performing the miracle; he believes without seeing, earning approval. Then Jesus heals Peter’s mother-in-law, and then he’s mobbed by a multitude of “many who were oppressed by demons.” That’s the disordered state of the world – exactly what He’s been preaching against; exactly what He came to fix. Then a couple of disciple wannabees show up, offering to follow Jesus, but with reservations. Jesus puts it on the line – it’s all or nothing. They can’t handle the apparent insecurity and back off.

 And then what does Jesus do? He gets into a boat and starts across the Sea of Galilee.

I think I’ve written about this before. I allude to the theme frequently in The Baldur Game (it’s coming, it’s coming!). The Jews thought of the sea (any sea) as Chaos, as Sheol, as Hell. The place of maximum insecurity, maximum danger. The opposite of the Rock we’re supposed to build our houses on. And Jesus just sets out to sail on it. Not only that, but He’s headed for the Decapolis — pagan territory, where demons dwell.

And as they’re crossing the Sea (or lake), a storm blows up – which I understand is common on Galilee. And the disciples are terrified, and (one assumes) they’re running the sail down and bailing and rowing like mad…

And Jesus is sleeping like a baby. They wake Him, and He says, “Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?” And he snaps His fingers (so to speak) and the storm turns over on its back like puppy wanting its belly scratched.

What Jesus is saying, I think, is “Buckle up, boys, this is what it means to build your house on a rock.”

The church, I think, is built by people who see faith as an adventure. It withers under people who see it as a job of work.