Today’s hymn begins our approach to Easter, which is the last Sunday of the month. “None Other Lamb” was written by the marvelous English poet Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830-1894). She didn’t write it as a hymn but as a poetic response to Revelation 5.
“And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming with a loud voice, ‘Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?’” (Revelation 5:2 ESV)
1 None other Lamb, none other name, none other hope in heav’n or earth or sea, none other hiding place from guilt and shame, none beside thee!
2 My faith burns low, my hope burns low; only my heart’s desire cries out in me by the deep thunder of its want and woe, cries out to thee.
3 Lord, thou art Life, though I be dead; love’s fire thou art, however cold I be: nor heav’n have I, nor place to lay my head, nor home, but thee.
“Steal Away to Jesus” performed by Mahilia Jackson and Nat King Cole in 1957
Let’s stay with spirituals this week before shifting to Easter-related songs soon. (Easter is the last day of the month this year.) Here’s an endearing spiritual about leaning on, following, and slipping away to the Lord Jesus.
“And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.” (John 14:3 ESV)
Steal away, steal away, steal away to Jesus! Steal away, steal away home, I ain’t got long to stay here.
1 My Lord, He calls me, He calls me by the thunder; The trumpet sounds within my soul; I ain’t got long to stay here. [Refrain]
2 Green trees are bending, Poor sinners stand a trembling; The trumpet sounds within my soul; I ain’t got long to stay here. [Refrain]
3 My Lord, He calls me, He calls me by the lightning; The trumpet sounds within my soul; I ain’t got long to stay here. [Refrain]
Our theme this month has been spiritual warfare, and today’s song departs from that. It’s a traditional spiritual with a straight gospel message. Run to the city of refuge while you have the chance.
“And Samson said, ‘Let me die with the Philistines.’ Then he bowed with all his strength, and the house fell upon the lords and upon all the people who were in it. So the dead whom he killed at his death were more than those whom he had killed during his life.” (Judges 16:30 ESV)
Music tonight, as is so often the case with me on Fridays. Way back in the 1970s, I acquired an album by the late Roger Whittaker, entitled “Folk Songs of Our Time,” sadly no longer available as such. It was a loose collection, featuring some numbers that weren’t strictly folk songs at all. “Folk,” of course, is a nebulous category. It can mean a song genuinely passed down mouth to mouth through generations, or merely a song written last week in the folk style.
Anyway, I grew quite fond of the album, and the song, “The Ash Grove,” was one of my favorites. Mr. Whittaker sings it above, though I’m not sure it’s the same arrangement.
The song evokes the unmistakable air of antiquity. According to Wikipedia, it was originally a Welsh song, and was first published by the harpist Edward Jones in 1802. But a similar tune is found in John Gay’s “The Beggar’s Opera” (1728), and that tune has in turn been traced back to a Morris song called “Constant Billy,” published in 1665.
In my own imagination, I suspected it was a heathen song. The ash tree has deep folkloric significance – I have a little book about British tree superstitions down in my basement somewhere. In my novel, The Year of the Warrior, I give Father Ailill a mad, homicidal heathen slave who likes to sing “a song about an ash grove.” The original lyrics as we have them were by Jones in Welsh, of course, and they’re actually about a man mourning his lost love.
A good folk tune never escapes the hymn writers. “The Ash Grove” is well-known in churches as the tune to “Let All Things Now Living,” and “Sent Forth With God’s Blessing,” as well as a few others less familiar.
Today’s hymn was written by Rev. George Matheson of Glasgow, Scotland (1842-1906). He published several works of prose and poetry while serving as a parish minister. His most popular hymn is “O Love, That Wilt Not Let Me Go.” “Make Me a Captive, Lord” was published in 1890. The tune was written in 1862 by George William Martin of London.
“Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation. When his breath departs, he returns to the earth; on that very day his plans perish.” (Psalm 146:3–4 ESV)
1 Make me a captive, Lord, and then I shall be free; force me to render up my sword, and I shall conqueror be. I sink in life’s alarms when by myself I stand; imprison me within Your arms, and strong shall be my hand.
2 My heart is weak and poor until it master find; it has no spring of action sure — it varies with the wind. It cannot freely move, till You have forged its chain; enslave it with Your matchless love, and deathless it shall reign.
3 My power is faint and low till I have learned to serve; it lacks the needed fire to glow, it lacks the breeze to nerve; it cannot drive the world, until itself be driven; its flag can only be unfurled when You shall breathe from heaven.
4 My will is not my own until to You it’s given; it must its earthly crown resign if it would reach to heaven; it only stands unbent, amid the clashing strife, when on Your bosom it has leant, and found in You its life.
Yet another reviewless night. My reading has been sharply curtailed, and it looks to be thus for a while, due to a pile of work (some of which I’m even getting paid for. So I’ve got that going for me). Today was also my annual appointment with my thoughtful Tax Professional, always an ordeal. People as poor as I am shouldn’t have such complicated taxes (multiple tiny income streams are to blame). I’m pretty sure I’d vote for a flat tax.
So I post music again. The song above, Les Bicyclettes de Belsize, is outside my usual, Norwegian-oriented repertoire. It’s just a song I’ve loved ever since it came out, during my college days. I did not know, and have only recently learned, that it’s the theme for a short film. I watched the film on YouTube, but I’m not going to link to it here, because I suspect it’s copyrighted and will soon be pulled. Furthermore, I found it kind of disappointing. It’s a short musical with but one memorable song.
I must have been misled by my own mood when I first heard the song; I always assumed the film would be bittersweet. It’s not. It’s dumb and cheerful, a rather banal story about young people dressed in what we used to call “mod” clothes. Boy falls in love with girl. Boy and girl are separated. Boy and girl find each other again. That’s about it.
In spite of the French title, it’s an English movie and an English song. If you’d like to hear the English-language version, Engelbert Humperdinck had a pretty big hit with it. It’s easily located.
The singer here is Mireille Mathieu, a French artist I’m amazed I never heard of. Incredible voice. According to Wikipedia, she’s a devout Roman Catholic and stands fully 5 feet tall.
Today’s hymn is another from the great Isaac Watts. “Stand Up, My Soul; Shake Off Your Fears” was written in 1707 and paired in some hymnals with the traditional German tune “Mendon.”
“For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” (Gal 5:1 ESV)
1 Stand up, my soul; shake off your fears, and gird the gospel armor on; march to the gates of endless joy, where your great Captain Savior’s gone.
2 Hell and your sins resist your course; but hell and sin are vanquished foes: your Jesus nailed them to the cross, and sang the triumph when he rose.
3 Then let my soul march boldly on, press forward to the heav’nly gate; there peace and joy eternal reign, and glitt’ring robes for conqu’rors wait.
4 There shall I wear a starry crown, and triumph in almighty grace; while all the armies of the skies join in my glorious Leader’s praise.
I’m fairly sure I’m losing my mind. You read about it often in artists’ biographies – at the end of their lives they descend into some kind of mania, growing obsessed with astrology or spiritualism or organic food or bitcoin or something. “He was always a little oversensitive, a little unstable,” friends will report. “But at the end he seemed to lose all touch with reality.”
Of course, in the cases of many of those artists, that fatal condition had something to do with syphilis or alcoholism or drugs. And last time I checked, I don’t have a problem with any of those. No, my descent into unreason can only be blamed on my home-grown neuroses and manifold phobias.
All the verbiage above constitutes my quaint method of introducing an idea I’ve conceived, one that’s just silly enough to embarrass me. But that doesn’t make it wrong.
What if the Kingdom of God is a musical comedy?
You may recall my recent theological speculations. In one line of thinking, I posited the theory that the created universe is a Story.
In another, I suggested the universe is Music.
And I asked myself, “Is there any way to fuse those two ideas into a single, Grand Unified Theory?
And then it hit me. What if the universe is a Musical Comedy? That would be perfect! (The argument works for ballet and opera too, I suppose, but I’m a little lowbrow for those metaphors.)
I’m not a major fan of the musical stage – though I once played Mordred in an amateur production of Camelot, and was, it goes without saying, brilliant. But I’ve seen a fair number of the older, classic productions – The Sound of Music, My Fair Lady, etc. They can be pretty enjoyable.
But one thing that always troubled me was the moment – so common in musicals – when people are conversing in a normal way, and then somebody suddenly bursts into song, and a few moments later the whole crowd is singing and dancing in intricate choreography. (I embedded a clip of that sort above, a scene from the Marx Brothers’ film, “A Night at the Opera,” featuring Allan Jones with Harpo and Chico.)
I always had trouble with that moment. There are points – occasionally – in real life when people do burst spontaneously into song. Back when I was in a musical group, my friends and I sometimes even did it in harmony. But nobody ever started a chorus line.
But what if the problem isn’t with the musicals, but with the fallen world?
How often have you experienced a sublime moment in life, when your feelings surpassed mere words? When only song and dance would really have been sufficient to adequately celebrate what was going on?
Maybe that was what the world was meant to be like. Maybe Adam and Eve were doing taps and high kicks in the Garden of Eden (perhaps with animals backing them up, as in an old Disney film). Maybe that’s one of the things we lost at the Fall, and we enjoy musicals now because we’re longing for our unfallen state?
It’s just a theory, of course. But let me add this kicker, which I consider weighty indeed –
The American musical comedy was invented, in part, by P. G. Wodehouse. That would make Wodehouse a kind of prophet.
Am I a Soldier of the Cross performed by Apryl Dawn
Today’s hymn is an old favorite. The great Isaac Watts (1674-1748) wrote this meditation on the Christian life in the modern world. The tune above is not one from your hymnal. It’s an excellent pairing with a traditional Irish tune, which I think of as “The Foggy Dew” but is used in many songs. Do you sing this song at your church?
“Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus” (2 Tim 2:3 ESV).
1 Am I a soldier of the cross, A follower of the Lamb? And shall I fear to own His cause, Or blush to speak His name?
2 Must I be carried to the skies On flowery beds of ease, While others fought to win the prize, And sailed through bloody seas?
3 Are there no foes for me to face? Must I not stem the flood? Is this vile world a friend to grace, To help me on to God?
4 Sure I must fight if I would reign; Increase my courage, Lord; I’ll bear the toil, endure the pain, Supported by Thy word.
5 Thy saints, in all this glorious war, Shall conquer, though they die; They view the triumph from afar, And seize it with their eye.
6 When that illustrious day shall rise, And all thine armies shine In robes of victory through the skies, The glory shall be Thine.
Nothing to review tonight. I’ve had the misfortune to start reading two books in a row that I had to give up on due to lousy writing. Too painful to finish, even for the base pleasure of shredding them in reviews. And a third, which I just started, is looking a little dubious… (Fortunately, I got these books free or at very low cost through online deals, so my cost was minimal.)
I had a topic all teed up for blogging about, though. Entirely trivial and haphazard. And then I watched the video above, and it sparked some actual thoughts.
I do love Once Upon a Time in the West (except for the massacre at the beginning). It’s a case study in what you can achieve through blending visuals with music. The movie has been called operatic, and its effect has been lodged under my skin ever since I saw it in a theater back in 1969, when it was new. It’s even affected my novel writing – I try to mix poetry in with my big dramatic scenes, striving for the same kind of sublimity.
But it occurred to me to wonder about Charles Bronson’s character, known only as “Harmonica.” In the scene you see above, Jill (Claudia Cardinale) makes it about as obvious as she can (I think even I would have picked up on the hints) that she wants him to stay with her. But no, he’s gotta be on his way. Gotta ride off into the sunset, in the tradition of the Western hero (I think it has something to do with Manifest Destiny). Sergio Leone was explicitly doing homage to Western movie traditions here, and riding off alone, like Shane, is definitely part of that tradition.
But – in terms of this story – why? Why is Harmonica leaving? Up to now, his whole life has been devoted to a single goal – getting his revenge on the evil Frank (Henry Fonda). Now he’s finished that job. He’s got the whole rest of his life before him. Here’s an opportunity to get in on the ground floor of building a railroad town. Not a bad job. Not to mention THE MOST BEAUTIFUL GIRL IN THE KNOWN UNIVERSE throwing herself at him. Why not stick around a day or two, just to see if it could work out?
I suppose Cheyenne (Jason Robards) explains it, when he tells Jill that men like Harmonica have got something inside them – “something about death.” Maybe Harmonica has killed too much. Maybe he’s got PTSD, and has lost his sense of belonging anywhere.
Then I pondered epics in general. In epic terms, I think we could say Harmonica is already dead. It’s the epic hero’s job to die at the end, like Beowulf. Like Hector. The very concept of the epic involves a battle with death – a battle no man can win. Epics teach us how to die.
And that’s a mythopoeic thing. The epic hero, in a dim and reflected way, foreshadows the great Hero of the Gospel. The epic hero may have no virtues at all except for courage – like Harmonica and Siegfried the Dragon Slayer – but his iron refusal to let Death break his spirit anticipates Christ passing through Death and finishing the job at which all the others have failed – killing the Great Enemy.
