Amazing Grace, sung by Carl Ellis with over 200 bagpipes
John Newton’s 1779 hymn is sung the world over. I believe some congregations sing it every Sunday. My congregation sings it after every communion, which we celebrate on the first Sunday of each month. Despite all of that singing, it’s still a good hymn for the new year.
The Hartford Selection of Hymns (1799) offers these three verses as 4-6, which may be where the most of the variations come in (they are not in the video above either).
The Lord has promis’d good to me, His word my hope secures; He will my shield and portion be, As long as life endures.
Yes, when this flesh and heart shall fail, And mortal life shall cease; I shall possess within the vzil, A life of joy and peace.
The earth shall soon dissolve like snow, The sun forbear to shine; But God, who call’d me here below, Will be forever mine.
Not a bad lillejulaften (little Christmas Eve, as they call it in Norway). No great accomplishments chalked up, but I got a couple things done that I’d been putting off. Faced a minor appliance crisis – I learned it was a false alarm, though the diagnosis cost me a little. Still, I was expecting much worse. And I got paid for some translation, which always brightens a day.
“In the Bleak Midwinter” came to mind for a song tonight. Sissel sings, of course. Based on a poem by Christina Rossetti, it’s bald-faced anglicization of the Christmas story. Whether Jesus was born on December 25 or not (I like to think He was, just to annoy people) it certainly wasn’t in a snow-covered landscape. But our Christmas celebration isn’t only about the first Christmas (though it must be about that primarily). It’s also about the long tradition of commemoration we enjoy in the Christian tradition. Legends included. And in a tertiary way, about the traditions of our own tribes, whatever they may be. My tribe is Scandinavian, and we make kind of a big thing out of Christmas (for reasons I discuss in my novel Troll Valley).
Tomorrow I’ll bake pumpkin pies. No holiday is guaranteed, but this Christmas looks to beat last year’s all hollow, at least for this jolly old elf.
“Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain; Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign. In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.”
This marvelous arrangement is not for congregational singing like I’ve been posting on Sundays. This composition comes from English composer Richard Allain, recorded by conductor Dominic Ellis-Peckham with the London Oriana Choir.
The Azusa Pacific University Men’s Chorale in 2009
“Of the Father’s Love Begotten,” was originally a Latin poem by Aurelius Clemens Prudentius (AD 348-410), titled “Corde natus ex parentis.” It was translated by in the 1850-60s by J. M. Neale and H. W. Baker and paired with the Latin plainsong melody of “Divinum mysterium.”
Verse three of the lyric copied here is omitted in the video above.
1 Of the Father’s love begotten ere the worlds began to be, he is Alpha and Omega, he the source, the ending he, of the things that are, that have been, and that future years shall see evermore and evermore.
2 Oh, that birth forever blessed when the virgin, full of grace, by the Holy Ghost conceiving, bore the Savior of our race, and the babe, the world’s Redeemer, first revealed his sacred face evermore and evermore.
I come before you tonight a beleaguered man. Not unhappily beleaguered. I have paying work to do, and that’s always cause for rejoicing. But I’m looking at a big job here – bigger than I expected. What I’ve got is a full-length feature film to translate. I haven’t done a lot of those, and I’ve never done one all by myself before. (I’ve done a whole miniseries, but that’s different.)
A full film script, in case you’re interested, runs a little under 100 pages in this case. My rough reckoning is that I can translate two pages per hour. So we’re talking about better than a week’s work here, figuring eight hours to the day. And then I’ll have to proofread and polish.
Money in my pocket. Merry Christmas.
In lieu of a book review or anything interesting to say, I post the one, the only Sissel Kyrkjebø above, singing “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.” She’s accompanied by a heretic choir and orchestra, but on the other hand they use the old “Born to raise the sons of earth” line, unaltered by political correctness. That does my heart good.
“God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” has no known author or melody smith. It’s listed as a traditional 18th century carol and appears in many hymnals with many variations in lyric. The recording above uses five verses that seem mostly familiar and a little unfamiliar. I don’t think I’ve ever sung the fourth verse offered here or this verse I see in Hymns for a Pilgrim People:
“Fear not, then,” said the angel, “Let nothing you affright; This day is born a Savior Of a pure virgin bright, To free all those who trust in Him From Satan’s pow’r and might.”
A line of severe storms with a chance of tornadoes is pressing in on my area of the world. It’s not raining here now, but it likely will by the time I publish this post. The storms have already prevented a roofing project I had planned to participate in this morning, which isn’t good (because that roof isn’t going to patch itself) but may be good for me, because I felt more worn out than usual after a church Christmas dinner last night. I mostly washed dishes, but lifting trays of 25 glasses into a dishwasher is moderate-level lifting and I’m just a puny office worker.
Anyway, nobody cares about that.
In this week’s World Opinion, Hunter Baker urges us to pray for the overturning of Roe and a better understanding of human life.
World Radio has released all four episodes in a long story on the abuse and recovery of the key witness against a wicked Mississippi church leader who abused many children over many years. It’s a story that reveals important truths many of us can use in our own communities. I’ll link to the first episode. You can find the rest by searching the website or your podcast app.
The estate of George Orwell has been looking for someone to write a sequel to 1984, telling the story from Julia’s point of view. Now author Sandra Newman will put it together. The Guardian states, “It is the latest in a series of feminist retellings of classic stories, from Natalie Haynes’s reimagining of the Trojan war A Thousand Ships, and Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls, a version of the Iliad from the perspective of Briseis, to Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet, which centres on the life of Shakespeare’s wife, and Jeet Thayil’s Names of the Women, which tells the stories of 15 women whose lives overlapped with Jesus.”
Arsenio Orteza writes, “Those seeking proof that everything old is new again need look no further” than a couple new releases from Warner Classics boasting a 3D orchestra and spatial audio. I’ve also heard this year’s shopping trends have Hot Wheels, Barbies, and board games at the top of the list.
Sarah Sanderson read Tolkien’s “Leaf by Niggle“ recently. “I too find myself living in an age of anxiety. Tolkien worried that the Nazis would drop a bomb on him before his work was done. I ‘doomscroll’ my national, state, and local COVID numbers daily.”
Mary Spencer attempts to find romance in romanticized Midwestern winters. “He looked at her and she blushed. At least, he thought she blushed. It could have been windburn.” [This post is on McSweeney’s, so let me add that I’ve come across hilarious posts on McSweeney’s before and have not linked to them here because at some point they got nasty. This post only veers toward that territory, so I’m sharing it, but you may see what I’m talking about in headlines to other posts.]
Photo: Fairyland Cottages, Detroit Lakes, Minnesota. 1980. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
“O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” was a 12th century Latin hymn brought into English by John M. Neale of London. The Latin words come from an 8th century poem. This makes another commonly sung hymn with ancient roots.
Something triggered a memory today. I told my parents, over apple pie at Dollywood, that Jonathan Edwards had suggested the Lord had risen in the East and could possibly return in the West, even America. I don’t think he was suggesting it would happen, just that it could and would flow with the pattern of history. The main reason I remember that is the impression of impressing my parents with this detail from Edwards. A small thing. Both of them passed away in the last few years; now the holidays are different.
Pastor and author Tim Keller has been fighting pancreatic cancer for over a year. It’s now at stage IV. On Twitter Friday afternoon, he said, “It is endlessly comforting to have a God who is both infinitely more wise and more loving than I am. He has plenty of good reasons for everything he does and allows that I cannot know, and therein is my hope and strength.”
In The Atlantic this year, Keller wrote about his faith growing in the face of this struggle. Speaking of earlier in his life, he said, “Particularly for me as a Christian, Jesus’s costly love, death, and resurrection had become not just something I believed and filed away, but a hope that sustained me all day. I pray this prayer daily. Occasionally it electrifies, but ultimately it always calms:
“And as I lay down in sleep and rose this morning only by your grace, keep me in the joyful, lively remembrance that whatever happens, I will someday know my final rising, because Jesus Christ lay down in death for me, and rose for my justification.”
Writing at Age 91. We don’t know what time or days we have…. what was I saying just now? Oh, never mind.
Do you like reading poetry? Does it matter if you enjoy it or is it a professional exercise? “I can only think that a large-scale revulsion has got to set in against present notions, and that it will have to start with poetry readers asking themselves more frequently whether they do in fact enjoy what they read, and, if not, what the point is of carrying on.”
Writing is ridiculous, bound to fail; even success feels like failure. “Some people doubt themselves far too much, others not remotely enough.”
Researchers have concluded contemporary worship songs are going stale quicker than they used to, for reasons they can’t explain. “The average arc of a worship song’s popularity has dramatically shortened, from 10 to 12 years to a mere 3 or 4.” I don’t want to suggest these are only the most consumeristic churches, but in my church circles, we sing old songs–maybe a new melody or arrangement, but the lyric is still several years to centuries old. What I’m sharing in our new Sunday post is the kind of singing I hope you have in your churches.
Photo: Wellsboro Diner, Route 6, Wellsboro, Pennsylvania. 1977. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
I think I’m actually in denial about Christmas this year. I need to get started with my cards and newsletters, and I need to get my tree up. I used to get right on those things the day after Thanksgiving, but this year it seems like a lot of work.
Still, it’s not too early to post a Sissel Christmas song. This is the young Sissel, way back in 1987, on Norwegian TV but singing in English for your convenience. I don’t think I’ve heard anyone do this song better.
My cold lingers, which it would be surprising if it didn’t, because it’s only been a few days. I have an idea this one will hang on, though. Had to do my annual eye appointment this morning. I arrived at the usual place, and behold, it was deserted. Lots of room in the inn.
I had a vague memory that they’d announced they’d moved. Again. This clinic changes venues more often than Nathan Detroit’s crap game in Guys ‘n Dolls. Thanks to the miracles of modern technology, though, I was able to find the right location on my cell phone, and I still had time to make the appointment.
The new place is a medical complex. With signs for various clinics and services. But none for my ophthalmologist.
The address was right. I double-checked. I got out of my car and went to investigate.
By the door, one of those three-foot stand-up yellow plastic signs, saying my eye clinic was inside.
This seems to me a rather cruel thing, to have a vision clinic with no visible sign. Like playing blind man’s bluff with an actual blind man.
But I did get in. Verdict: My eyesight has deteriorated slightly, but only slightly. My cataracts (every old person has them) have advanced marginally, but not enough to call for Steps to Be Taken yet.
Also finished my translation job and submitted it.
