Today’s hymn is a spiritual that has been arranged by many musicians since it gained common ground over 150 years ago. The words easily apply to Palm Sunday, as demonstrated by the Scripture read at the beginning of this video.
Ride on, King Jesus, no man can a-hinder me.
no man can a-hinder me.
In that great gettin’ up morning,
fare ye well, fare ye well.
Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!
Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem!
Behold, your king is coming to you;
righteous and having salvation is he,
humble and mounted on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim
and the war horse from Jerusalem;
and the battle bow shall be cut off,
and he shall speak peace to the nations;
his rule shall be from sea to sea,
and from the River to the ends of the earth.
As for you also, because of the blood of my covenant with you,
I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit.
Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope;
today I declare that I will restore to you double. (Zachariah 9:9-12 ESV)
Our Lord comes in humility and cuts off the warcraft of his enemies. Should that apply directly to our public discourse, to our perception of the culture war?
Bach’s greater Passion has a lot of moving parts: two choirs, four soloists, a narrator, an orchestra, and an organist. And in last week’s performance [2019], there was also the audience, as Saint Thomas participated in the German Lutheran Good Friday tradition of singing congregational chorales surrounding the main musical event. Saint Thomas’s associate organist, Benjamin Sheen, played Bach’s prelude to Johann Böschenstein’s “Da Jesu an dem Kreuze stund” (“When on the cross the Savior hung”), and then the audience was encouraged to sing along in English.
Prayer: Can prayer make your anxiety worse? “My self-centered pity party lamented my situation always instead of rejoicing in the Lord always.”
Jesus: How is Jesus the Bread of Life?
Tapestries: Here is some beautiful tapestry work by Ukrainian artist Olga Pilyugina
Manhood: There’s a new book that claims it’s good to be a man, and it’s isn’t that the world still needs isolated rebels with personal agendas.
Photo: Rube & Sons Shell gas station, Kingston, New York. 1976. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
Let me just say at the outset that this may have been one of the best days of my life. I can’t give you details because that would be betraying a confidence, but a development happened in my life that ought to improve my happiness about 50%.
This development happened, I should tell you, soon after I determined for the first time to pray about it daily. Just sayin’.
I’ve been listening to Norwegian Christian radio on my cell phone, as I’ve told you. And because of that, today I thought I’d post a performance of Carolina Sandell’s famous hymn known in English as “Children of the Heavenly Father.” Very familiar to all us Scandinavians, but I believe it’s known to more benighted groups as well. The rendition above was done by the choir of Bethel College — but it doesn’t tell me whether it’s the Bethel College in Newton, Kansas of our own Bethel College (now University) here in Minneapolis.
I hesitate to mention it, but just as I sat down to post this, my Norwegian station played it. Gave me the shivers.
Have a blessed weekend.
I don’t spend a lot of time in urban fantasy, as you may have noticed. But you may have also noticed that I’ve grown fond of Dan Willis’ Arcane Casebook series, set in the 1930s New York in an alternate universe where the world runs on magic rather than oil and coal, and where it’s possible both to be a magician and a practicing Catholic.
Alex Lockerby is a runewright, who makes his living doing magic through drawing, then burning, complex mystical designs on paper. He started humbly but has now risen in the world, being in business with the richest sorcerer in America, and in a romantic relationship with Sorsha Kincaid, the most powerful sorceress in the country.
But as Hostile Takeover begins, Sorsha is in trouble. Someone has drawn an incredibly complex rune that’s draining her life-force away. What they’re using the energy for is a mystery, but it’s gradually killing Sorsha. If Alex and his mentor Iggy (who is actually Arthur Conan Doyle incognito) can’t unlock the rune and break it, Sorsha will die.
But that’s not all that’s going on. Alex has been approached by a young couple who are being bullied by thugs who want them to sell a historic property they own. Alex promises to figure out what’s going on and stop it. Also, a runewright who held proprietary rights to a rune that gave a technical edge to a radio manufacturing company has died mysteriously. The insurance company suspects he was murdered, but can’t prove it. That’s Alex’s job.
I like these books. I like the characters. The writing’s pretty good, and the world-building fun. I recommend Hostile Takeover, along with the rest of the series. No very objectionable material, not even bad language.
Nothing to review tonight. I have a sudden break in translation work (it only began this afternoon, and if recent history is any guide it won’t last long. As I fervently hope it won’t).
The video clip above (in Norwegian, but much of it is without dialogue) is from a 1939 Norwegian movie called “Gjest Baardsen.” For some reason it occurred to me to write a little about this character tonight. I am by no means an expert on the man, but I’ve read a little.
Gjest Baardsen (1791-1849) is sometimes called the Robin Hood of Norway. But in fact Jesse James would be a closer historical parallel (though his legend admittedly has a more Robin Hood-ish flavor).
Gjest already had a long rap sheet in 1827 when he was sentenced to life imprisonment in Akershus Fortress in Oslo (a major tourist attraction today for many reasons. I’ve been there, but not as long as Gjest stayed). During this imprisonment he did something visionary and memorable – he wrote his autobiography. In this book he portrayed himself as a clever rogue and a defender of the common folk, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor (as you can see in the clip above). A historian named Erling T. Gjelsvik published a serious biography in 2000. His conclusion was that in real life, Gjest stole from pretty much anybody who didn’t lock up their possessions well.
Not a real surprise.
He was pardoned in 1845, and supported himself until his death in 1849 by selling his books.
As a phenomenon of the 19th Century, however, Gjest is interesting. He was contemporary with my great hero, Hans Nielsen Hauge the lay preacher. Although it would be hard to imagine two characters more different from one another, there are similarities in their cultural impact. Both were common men who became famous through taking advantage of their literacy and the expanding publishing industry. A burgeoning, literate public was hungry for reading matter aimed at them. Those whose hearts were set on higher things read Hauge. The more carnal turned to Gjest Baardsen. And many, no doubt, read both.
Eventually, books like Gjest’s would be parents and grandparents to innumerable paperback novels, tabloid newspapers, blogs, and reality TV. But Gjest was, in one country, a sort of a grubby pioneer.
Dorothy L. Sayers was one of the founders of the British “Detection Club,” a group of mystery writers. They enforced certain rules on their membership, including one against allowing their detectives to solve crimes through “jiggery-pokery.” Jiggery-pokery included spirits, magic, and psychic powers.
The rules of detective writing have changed since then (like all the rules), so that now and then we do encounter a mystery book where psychic powers play a part. However, it doesn’t work in practice to make those powers too effective. That ruins the whole point of a mystery. When a “real” psychic appears in a mystery, their gift is generally obscure, constituting a puzzle in itself.
That’s the case with Jack Lynch’s Die for Me, another in his Pete Bragg series. San Francisco PI Bragg, who flourished back around the ‘80s, gets a call from Maribeth Robbins, a woman he’s only encountered once before – over the phone. On the very last day of his newspaper career, then-reporter Bragg took a call from a profoundly depressed Maribeth. He realized he was talking to someone suicidal, and stayed on the line with her until she’d calmed down. Then he referred her to counselors. That call, she tells him now, saved her life. Today she’s a psychic, but a low-key one. She avoids publicity and the media.
She’s learned that Bragg has become a private eye, and she wants to talk to him about a vision she’s been having. She sees a rural location where – she is certain – several bodies are buried. These people were recently murdered and one of them, she thinks, is a child.
It’s pretty vague evidence to go on, if it can be called evidence at all. But Bragg teases some further details out of her, and then gets a pilot friend to fly him and a friendly medical examiner to a particular area along the California coast. In Jack London State Park they find a spot that matches the description. And the M.E. notes that the vivid green color of the grass could well be a sign of burials.
They land and examine the place, and immediately call the county sheriff. This is indeed a burial site. Just as Maribeth feared.
The story that follows mixes Bragg’s involvement with the case with his struggles in his relationship with his girlfriend, who’s increasingly distant. In the end he’ll face a showdown with a hostage-taking killer, in the ruins of Jack London’s house.
I don’t believe in ESP. If it exists, I consider it probably demonic. But suspending my disbelief on that point, I very much enjoyed Die for Me. It was an engaging and engrossing story that kept me turning the pages.
One thing that dated it, I thought (and being dated is no drawback in a book for this reader), was the treatment of feminism. Bragg encounters a female police detective back when such creatures were a rarity. He demonstrates his openmindedness in his conversations with her, but those conversations are cringe-inducing by the standards of the 21st Century. I think that’s because back then we thought feminism was really about fairness, not just about finding ways for men always to be in the wrong.
Anyway, Die for Me was a pretty good, old-school mystery, and I enjoyed it. Recommended unless ESP is a deal-breaker for you.
As for the flat itself, whatever had gone on here, it was highly unlikely that the weapon used was a cat, as there was nowhere near enough room to swing one.
Caimh McDonnell’s series of comic mysteries featuring bibulous police detective Bunny McGarry can well be called ground-breaking, if only for its extension of the category “trilogy” to include a series that’s up to six books now (not to mention the “Bunny in America” side-series). The latest is Firewater Blues, and it’s as inventive and hilarious as all the others.
Nevertheless, I’m done with them. Reasons at the end of this review.
Firewater Blues is a sort of prequel, occurring before A Man With One of Those Faces, the first in the series. Bunny is still with the police force at this point, though on a “sabbatical.” He’s grown disillusioned with the force, and is considering a change.
Then he encounters Rosie Flint, a young woman he once helped out. Rosie is a computer genius and very obviously somewhere on the Autistic scale. Which means she absolutely refuses to have anything to do with the regular police, due to the way they treated her the last time around. But she trusts Bunny… sort of. She has a boyfriend now, and he’s disappeared. On top of that, she’s convinced somebody has been following her. Already agoraphic, she’s terrified of a world of dangers.
Bunny agrees to help, and begins uncovering disturbing clues. Something very big is going on, and poor Rosie is in the middle of it. Bunny will approach the case with his usual blunt object methodology, and many heads will get knocked together before – with the help of a pack of renegade nuns and a twelve-year-old truant – he finds the answers. Not all of them comforting.
Author McDonnell is a genius, and Firewater Blues combines slapstick, crude jokes, and clever wordsmithing with moments of genuine poignancy. This is an excellent, funny book, if you can handle the language.
However (at least for this reader) this is where the author finally came out so plainly with his politics that that element overcame the entertainment. There’s never been any question where Caimh McDonnell stood on the political spectrum, but (it seemed to me) he came out swinging this time. He even went so far as to trot out the old chestnut that “political correctness is just another name for politeness.” (Yeah, pull the other one. What could be more polite than calling everybody you disagree with Hitler?) I’m sure author McDonnell doesn’t want my conservative, fascist money anyway.
In any case, it’s stopped being fun and I’m done with it. But you may be more tolerant than I am. I can recommend it as a really funny, well-written book.
I don’t know how many congregations sing this gospel song by Connecticut Methodist Jefferson Hascall, but Hymnary.org claims it has been published in 183 hymnals since 1860. This tune is not the original, but the meter of the lyric is so common, you could sing it any number of ways. William Batchelder Bradbury gave us the current tune, entitled, “The Land of Beulah,” published in 1862.
1 My latest sun is sinking fast,
my race is nearly run;
my strongest trials now are past,
my triumph is begun.
Refrain:
O come, angel band,
come and around me stand;
O bear me away on your snowy wings
to my immortal home.
O bear me away on your snowy wings
to my immortal home.
Thursday was the anniversary of the completion of Paris’s iconic ironwork project, The Eiffel Tower, named for the owner of the company that proposed and assembled it by March 31, 1889. They were aiming to have it up for the 1889 World’s Fair to be part of the centennial gala of the French Revolution. Philadelphia held a similar one in 1876.
The architect proposed using large stone monumental pedestals at the base and glass halls on every level of the tower. It’s final, simplified design was constructed in 18,000 parts in Eiffel’s factory about three miles away. The measured every piece carefully and mathematically configured the lattice work to minimize wind resistance. Two and half million rivets hold together the 1083-foot tower.
Viewing the construction for a few weeks before completion, journalist Emile Goudeau wrote, “One could have taken them for blacksmiths contentedly beating out a rhythm on an anvil in some village forge, except that these smiths were not striking up and down vertically, but horizontally, and as with each blow came a shower of sparks, these black figures, appearing larger than life against the background of the open sky, looked as if they were reaping lightning bolts in the clouds.”
More on the 1889 World’s Fair from Marc Maison.
Beauty: Where would we be without beauty? It enlivens the heart; we value it, even if the beautiful thing isn’t useful–putting aside the inherent beauty of some useful, well-designed things.
Symphony: Robert Reilly says, “There is a steadiness in Haydn’s music, a sense of normalcy. At the same time, it is filled with wonder at what is—at its goodness.” Haydn was told his sacred compositions were too cheerful; he replied that his heart leaped for joy at the thought of God. As an example, here’s a performance by the Chiara String Quartet of Haydn’s “Seven Last Words of Christ.”
Sounds: Cambridge’s word blog is talking about rustling and howling type words.
Isaac Adams: “The race conversation often feels like talking to each other at the Tower of Babel. We may be trying to build together, but we’re frustrated and speaking past one another.” Adams’s book, Talking About Race, intends to inspire healthy conversations on this subject and bring us together.
Gene Veith: The popular Lutheran blogger is moving to a subscription model at $5/month.
Photo by Karina lago on Unsplash
This is a book I mistook for a promising novel by a Christian writer. Having finished it, I still consider it a promising novel (the author has gone on to write several and seems to be doing well). I’m not so sure about the Christianity. Though Preacher Finds a Corpse (awful title) is not exactly anti-Christian either.
Evan Wycliff grew up in Apple Center, Missouri, and then went away to Harvard to study theology. Then he studied astrophysics. Then, after a personal tragedy, he went home again, where he now works as a bill collector for a car dealer and now and then preaches in local congregations. Hence his nickname, “Preacher.”
His return allowed him to reconnect with his boyhood best friend Bob, though they haven’t actually spent much time together. Nevertheless, Evan is shocked when, one morning when he’s on his way to join some buddies on a turkey hunt, he finds Bob’s dead body waiting on the path. Bob has apparently shot himself to death with a pistol.
Evan is not a serious suspect in the case. In fact, the sheriff quickly closes the case, but confides to Evan in private that he wouldn’t mind having someone look a little closer at it. Bob’s financial affairs had been in disarray. A farm he’d been renting to a friend was about to be taken over by the government, and Bob had told the friend not to worry – he’d prevent that from happening. Only now he can’t. And Bob’s beautiful wife, who’s set to inherit all his property, seems less than devastated. And what is it with the property, anyway? Why is there no clear title? Why is an area there fenced off by the military?
Evan will poke around in his low-key way, digging up some history, and some people will feel threatened. Physical attack and involuntary commitment to an institution are just some of the challenges Evan will face. But in the end the truth will out.
I found Preacher Finds a Corpse a promising book in terms of narrative. Evan is a layered character, and the other characters are complex too. I thought the prose a little weak – the author needed to move the story along faster. He’s probably figured out how to do that by now.
The plotting was weak, I thought, in the sense that everything turns out to be less than the reader expects. The conclusion was kind of flat. Another problem was that one surreal plot element – Evan having conversations with the imagined spirit of his dead fiancée – doesn’t start happening until half-way through the book. If you’re going to add that kind of mystical element, you need to establish it earlier in the story.
But my main problem was theological. Evan is supposed to be a popular supply preacher in the small-town churches around Apple City. But, judging by the topics he preaches on, he’s only marginally orthodox (or not orthodox at all). He tells the people in the pews that “God is all there is” (pantheism). He questions whether human souls in Heaven possess personality. I have trouble believing small town preachers would put up with that sort of thing. However, I suspect the author means well. I think he wants us to like these people because they’re open to “original” ideas.
Preacher Finds a Corpse wasn’t awful. But I didn’t like it enough to go on to the sequels.
