“How Can I Keep From Singing?” by Keith & Kristyn Getty
“How Can I Keep from Singing?” is an anonymously written hymn that began appearing in hymn books in the mid-1800s. That’s the report from my standard source on hymns, Hymnary.org. Some attribute it to Robert Lowry, but I see details suggesting he only arraigned the words with a melody and did not claim to have composed the whole work.
The video shared here is by modern hymn writers Keith and Kristyn Getty, who have spent years encouraging Christians to sing their faith in meaningful modern songs as well as traditional and ancient hymns. Ours is an ancient faith. Let’s join the faithful musicians of the past in singing of that faith and “catch the sweet, though far-off hymn that hails a new creation.”
I’m still in a holiday frame of mind, so instead of pushing to get this post together for Saturday morning, I slept super late, tried to jump start the oldest of our cars, took the trash to the landfill (which I have done most Saturdays), and played around the whole afternoon. Taking trash and recycling to the county landfill is a chore I picked up years ago when our pickup service was increasing in price and my income was, if I remember right, nothing. I’ve been telling myself I can afford a service again, but we haven’t signed up yet. Even with trash pickup, we’d still have to take our own recycling to one of the area collection points, because that additional service is a bit much.
So many fans have asked me about this, I felt I could no longer put them off. A heart of kindness, that’s what I have. Here are a few links to better reading.
Reading through Bibliotheca, “an elegant, meticulously crafted edition of the Bible designed to invite the reader to a pure, literary experience of its vast and varied contents.”
Beauty in nature and art: “Fragrant grass, who knows who planted you,/ Already spread in several clumps there by the terrace?”
Charles Lamb: “‘[Y]ou never know exactly when [Charles] Lamb is speaking seriously.’ … The same applies to such Lambian literary cousins as Laurence Sterne, Max Beerbohm and P.G. Wodehouse – writers many readers will never get.“
Come my little Robert near— Fie! what filthy hands are here! Who that e’er could understand The rare structure of a hand, With its branching fingers fine, Work itself of hands divine, Strong, yet delicately knit, For ten thousand uses fit …
Photo: Look Sharp Barber Shop sign (painted 1969 Volkswagen), Yuma, Arizona. 2003. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
Another cold day, into which I did not venture out at all. This is one of the marks of prudence and maturity. (I’ve been prudent and mature on winter days since I was about nine years old). I had translation work to do, and that’s what I did. I’m not yet half-way through reading Nansen’s book (the thing is long, I tell you. Conveys the true polar night experience).
So what shall I post? I noodled around on YouTube and discovered the clip above. It’s Sissel, of course, with the Heretic Tabernacle Choir, doing the first verse of the original version of a hymn I expect you know – “How Great Thou Art.” It started out as “O Store Gud” (O Great God) in Swedish. The writer was Carl Boberg, a lay minister in the Mission Covenant Church of Sweden. He wrote it in 1885, after watching a storm and its aftermath. Later he sold the rights to his church body.
In 1930, Stuart K. Hine, a British Methodist missionary in the Ukraine, heard a Russian version (translated from a German version) of the hymn being sung. He started using it in his services, then began composing a free English paraphrase of this translation of a translation. He also began adding verses of his own, in response to needs he discerned among the people he worked with.
During the winter of 1932-33, the Hines were forced to leave Ukraine because of Stalin’s diabolical Holodomor forced famine (one hopes some of the millions of victims found comfort in his hymn as they died). In 1939, World War II forced the Hines to return to England, where they settled in Somerset and ministered to Polish refugees. It was at that stage that his final verse, “When Christ shall come….”, was added.
The song in his version (Swedish-Americans already had their own, less singable translation) was apparently first introduced to the United States at a conference in Stony Brook, New York, in 1951. But J. Edwin Orr of Fuller Seminary discovered it being sung by a choir in India. He introduced it at a conference in San Bernadino, California in 1953. Manna Music bought the rights, and George Beverly Shea started singing it at Billy Graham’s crusade in Harringay, England, in 1954. And the rest is hymnody.
What do I think of Hines’ translation? I’ve got to say, I do a fair amount of song translation in my script work. And I’ve learned to kiss literal sense goodbye. If you can transpose some of the original images and turns of phrase, you’re doing great. For the rest, always prefer rhyme, meter, and singability to literal faithfulness. What you need to try to do is convey the subjective experience. That’s the best you can do. More than that is madness.
I’ve sung more faithful translations of this hymn once or twice. I must confess, they did not move my heart.
Wikipedia has the whole story of “How Great Thou Art” here.
Fridtjof Nansen and crew members download Windows 1 from the Cloud, 1894.
A notable day this was. Finally got something done I’d been wanting to do all week. It cost me money, but if ‘twere done, then ‘twere best ‘twere done quickly, as the bald guy said.
I decided I needed a new laptop on Monday. The keys on the old one were stuttering, doubling random letters, which means your work load rises about 50% when you subsist by the keyboard as I do. But I got sick, as I’ve mentioned, and languished at home, doomed to work (work still came in) on my desktop computer, which really isn’t that bad. But I hate messing up my procedures, you know? It’s one of the perquisites of old age, being stuck in your ways.
Today I felt better, and decided this would be it. It was one of the coldest days of the year (the year being six days old), but I figured that would keep the other shoppers at home (I was mistaken, of course. This is Minnesota, where people jump in icy lakes for fun). My reading of Fridtjof Nansen seemed fitting, because just getting ready to leave the house on a day like this is a little like outfitting an Arctic expedition. (OK, just a little, but sometimes our temperatures are comparable to temps Nansen saw in the pack ice. In summer.)
The Norwegians have a saying – “Det finnes ingen dårlig vær, bare dårlig klær” (“There is no bad weather, just bad clothing”). This is one of the reasons I expected to find non-Scandinavian DNA when I joined an ancestry site. The fact that I found almost none indicates I must be a mutation – my father did visit Hiroshima while in the army in 1946, after all.
But at last I reached my favored computer store, eventually attracting a salesman’s attention. My plan was to spend a certain amount on a refurbished one, which has been my custom for a while. The salesman persuaded me I could get a new one for the same money that would be much more powerful and have a much longer life expectancy. It meant buying a brand I’d planned to avoid, but I saw reason at last. (Update: I’m working on it now, and I’m actually quite pleased. The keyboard action is good, and I haven’t had trouble with any apps [yet]). I notice, looking around, that I actually have a fairly tall stack of crashed laptops sitting around the house, so maybe the refurb strategy wasn’t as shrewd as I thought.
It did come with Windows 11. No doubt I’ll live to regret that, but what’s done is done, as the bald guy also said.
At least I didn’t have to retype half my words on this post.
In England, people had more time to putter around the garden in the last couple years, and guess what? They uncovered old stuff. For example, Bob Greenaway from Oswestry in Shropshire found the Bulla sun pendant. “The retired engineer found the intricate piece while metal detecting in the Marches, unearthing one of the most significant pieces of metalwork ever discovered in Britain – around 3,000 years old.”
Loads and loads of stuff–one might even say hoards–have been found over the last few years.
Late posting today. I’ve been busy. Also not feeling real well. Not awful, just a little under the weather. And the work has started trickling in again, which is great. Left to my own devices, I’d probably be spending more time in bed, but money’s a good thing too.
Above is a little film about Fridtjof Nansen, about whom I posted last night. Thought it would be interesting to see him in motion, if only in old age. It feels odd to be hyping this guy, whom I don’t even like that much. Aside from his marital infidelities, he was one of those 19th Century scientific types who thought they’d figured everything out and transcended the need for God. He did some good stuff, too. But I get the sense he was always playing to the audience. In private, he felt free to be a jackass.
As do many of us.
As an aside, Fridtjof was never a common name, but it had a vogue in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. This was due to a very popular translation of a Norse poem, which I discuss in this old post.
Fridtjof Nansen in the personal uniform he designed and wore everywhere.Olaf Trygvesson, with Nansen’s face, in Heimskringla
It’s one of those awkward moments in the course of my blogging. I’ve embarked on reading quite a long book, so I won’t have a review ready for a few days. And yet I must post something, to assuage my crippling sense of obligation. So I’ll talk about the book’s author, in general terms.
If you weigh your scoring in terms of the availability and ubiquity of various media through the course of history, you can make a strong case that Fridtjof Nansen (1861-1930) was the greatest celebrity Norway ever produced (though St. Olaf is a strong contender).
Nansen was a noted zoologist before he started doing Arctic exploration. And when he ventured into the far north, it was into terra still incognita. Nobody knew what was up there. Land? Pack ice? Open sea? These were among the things he set out to learn. And he did it in a bold, groundbreaking, hands-on way. Later, he became a diplomat (he had a lot to do with Norwegian independence from Sweden and the decision to become a monarchy). Then, as a League of Nations official entrusted with the relief of hundreds of thousands of people displaced and orphaned by World War I, he saved countless lives. Remember Young Frankenstein, where Igor breaks a jar containing the brain of “Hans Dalbruck, Scientist & Saint?” It might have been a description of Nansen, as he was perceived in the public mind.
When the artist Erik Werenskiold set out to illustrate the saga of Olaf Trygvesson in the classic edition of Heimskringla, the Sagas of the Kings of Norway, he put Nansen’s face on the ancient national hero.
But Nansen had a very dark side. When he left the ship Fram to attempt to ski to the North Pole with one companion, the two men spent four months living in close quarters, utterly dependent on one another. They became close friends. But once they returned to civilization, Nansen reasserted his rank. They’d been addressing one another with the intimate pronoun, “du” (thee). But now he went back to “de” (you), as befitted men of different social classes.
He was an international sex symbol, handsome and athletic. Wherever he traveled, the most desirable women (often married women) threw themselves at him. He did not resist, though he was a husband and a father. Eventually he commenced an affair with the wife of his neighbor, the artist Gerhard Munthe. They divorced their spouses and married one another, something Nansen’s children never forgave.
So he was no Hans Dalbruck. I remind myself, however, that I’ve been protected from fornication all my life by shyness and lack of opportunity. If I’d looked like Nansen, what would I have done? Best to contemplate the log in my own eye.
One interesting sidelight must be mentioned. In his international relief work, Nansen had a faithful right hand man, a young fellow named Vidkun Abraham Lauritz Jonsson Quisling. Quisling would later achieve dark immortality, and give us a new word for traitor, when he led the Norwegian Nazi Party during the Occupation.
As the new year begins, the great Presbyterian hymn, “The Sands of Time Are Sinking,” has been in my mind. It’s not a hymn I grew up with, but one I learned to appreciate as an adult. It’s about time, and our ultimate hopes as believers. Suitable, I think. The hymnwriter Anne R. Cousin based it on something the Scottish Presbyterian divine Samuel Rutherford said on his deathbed.
I heard somewhere, once, that this was Moody’s favorite hymn, and that they sang it at all his rallies.
Or it may have been Spurgeon. I wasn’t there.
Today, it should be noted, is J. R. R. Tolkien’s birthday. It is the custom for every Tolkien fan to take a moment tonight at 9:00 p.m. local time, stand, raise their beverage of choice, and say, “The Professor!”
I doubt the Professor would have approved of the orange soda I plan to drink, but I do what I can within my personal limitations.
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.
I’ve been following, and generally enjoying, David J. Gatward’s Inspector Grimm mystery series, about a war-scarred police detective in rural Yorkshire. But I have to say I found Cold Sanctuary, the eighth volume, something of a disappointment.
The book opens in a memorable and – I must say – heartbreaking manner. On a beautiful morning, Bill Dinsdale, a Yorkshire farmer, bids goodbye to his loving wife and sets out to do one of his favorite jobs, baling hay. But we are warned from the start that this is the last day of his life. The dramatic tension builds to a shocking murder scene.
When Inspector Grimm comes to investigate with his team, they are quickly convinced that what looks like an accident is murder. In a particularly cruel form. Who would want to do this to Bill, a cheerful and popular member of the community? Could the murderer possibly be Bill’s son, who recently fought with him and is acting suspiciously? Or the mysterious person who’s been sending him threatening notes?
There were two elements of Cold Sanctuary that displeased me. One was a scene where Grimm makes an arrest, rather callously, which is treated as important – and yet turns out to be a mistake. A mistake for which Grimm does not apologize. Nor does he seem much concerned about the distress he caused.
The other element was the final solution. The puzzle all through the book was “Why would anyone kill Bill Dinsdale?” The problem is treated as mysterious and baffling. But it didn’t baffle me at all. It was plain as a pikestaff, based on the evidence. Not only was it obvious, it was actually a common trope. We’ve all seen it a hundred times before in novels, TV shows, and movies.
There’s the lesbian cop married to an Anglican woman priest, too. But when a novelist only inflicts lesbians on you these days, it’s a mercy.
I’m not sure if I’ll continue with the Inspector Grimm books or not. I came away kind of annoyed this time.
