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Advent Singing: From Heaven Above to Earth I Come

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Today’s advent hymn is not one I’ve sung before, but the video above recommends it well. The text is originally from the great Martin Luther (1483-1546), translated in 1855 by a woman who brought many German hymns into English, Catherine Winkworth (1827-1878). The Psalter Hymnal Handbook notes Luther wrote this “for his family’s Christmas Eve devotions,” and “intended that stanzas 1-7 be sung by a man dressed as an angel and stanzas 8-15 by children.”

The video has only five verses, but I’ve copied the text from the 1918 Evangelical Lutheran Hymn-book so you can get the full piece.

“And this will be a sign for you: you will find a babe wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger” (Luke 2:12 RSV).

1 From heaven above to earth I come
To bear good news to every home;
Glad tidings of great joy I bring,
Whereof I now will say and sing.

2 To you this night is born a child
Of Mary, chosen virgin mild;
This little child, of lowly birth,
Shall be the joy of all the earth.

3 This is the Christ, our God and Lord,
Who in all need shall aid afford;
He will Himself your Savior be,
From all your sins to make you free.

4 He brings those blessing, long ago
Prepared by God for all below,
That in His heavenly Kingdom blest
You may with us forever rest.

5 These are the tokens ye shall mark;
The swaddling-clothes and manger dark;
There shall ye find the young child laid,
By whom the heavens and earth were made.

6 Now let us all with gladsome cheer,
Follow the shepherds, and draw near,
To see the wondrous gift of God,
Who hath His own dear Son bestowed.

Continue reading Advent Singing: From Heaven Above to Earth I Come →
Creative Writing

A Warning, an Advent Ghost Story

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He sees you when you’re sleeping. You say that in a song.  

I’d think you’d take the hint by now. It shouldn’t take this long. 

You’re not going to catch him.  You don’t know where to start. 

You think you can, but you don’t know the secret to his art. 

He’ll dodge a fire roaring. He’ll see the traps you make. 

He’ll swap your poisoned Christmas treats with ones your kids might bake. 

And then he’ll drag you from your bed and put you in his sack. 

He’ll take you to his workshop. You’re never coming back. 

Good night now. 

This bit of silliness is a 100-word story for Loren Eaton’s Advent Ghost Story fest. Click that link for more and better tales by other writers.

Photo: “Cookies” by Katrin Gilger is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Fiction, Music, Non-fiction

Christmas Ghost Stories, Music, and Bad Ideas

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Frittering. I’ve been sitting here frittering like a River City school boy at a pool hall. It often goes this way, even when I have a good idea to write about. This time I didn’t have a good idea, so let’s share some links.

Christmas Carol: Hope Media Group and Compassion International have produced an audio adaptation of A Christmas Carol with the voices of Sean Astin and John Rhys-Davis. Find it on your podcast platform of choice or on the official website. (via World News Group)

Ghost Stories: Loren Eaton is hosting a storytelling fest for Christmas-related ghost stories. The stories are flash fiction, only 100 words each. My contribution is in another post.

Musical Delight: “What do Armstrong and Waller have in common? Both are artists who dispense joy without compromising their art.”

Machen’s Classic Book: “On topic after topic, Machen demonstrates liberalism’s misunderstanding of the enormity of sin: ‘If sin is so ­trifling a matter as the liberal Church supposes,’ Machen writes, ‘then indeed the curse of God’s law can be taken very lightly, and God can easily let by-gones be by-gones.’ But if God is holy and sin is as the Bible describes it, the state of the sinner is desperate.”

Photo: University of Washington Libraries, “Two skiers on Lyman Glacier near Red Mountain, northwest Chelan County”/ Unsplash

Fiction, Reviews

‘Paris In the Present Tense,’ by Mark Helprin

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Music asked nothing, required nothing, needed nothing, betrayed nothing. It appeared instantly when called, even in memory. It was made of the ineffable magic in the empty spaces between – and the relation of – its otherwise unremarkable components.

“Wow,” I thought. “There’s a Mark Helprin novel I haven’t read yet.” A bargain deal had appeared, and I checked on Amazon and found I hadn’t bought it. So I did. Only then did I discover that I’d read Paris In the Present Tense before. I must have gotten a free review copy or something. However, I was only briefly discomfited by this. A Helprin novel always bears – and rewards – re-reading.

Jules Lacour is a septuagenarian Jewish music instructor in Paris. He is neither rich nor famous, though he is one of the geniuses of his generation – because this generation cares nothing for genius. But Jules has lived content with his art, except for missing his late wife.

But now his grandson has leukemia, and Jules wishes he had money to get him treatment. An offer from an American insurance conglomerate, to write them a signature tune, gives him brief hope, which they then dash callously.

So when Jules discovers that he has a previously undiagnosed brain aneurism that could kill him at any moment, he concocts a plan to make the company pay, and thereby to give his grandson a chance at life.

My big problem with Paris In the Present Time, you’ve probably guessed, is that our hero is an unapologetic fraudster. I don’t approve of fraud, no matter how bloated and greedy the target. However, that’s a question the book scarcely considers. The story is about love – Jules’ love for his parents, murdered by Nazis. His love for his wife, who died too soon. For his daughter and his grandchild. For a beautiful young student who is transparently smitten with him, and for a woman of more appropriate age whom he meets too late. But equally it’s about his love for Paris, and especially his love for music. The book is lush with gorgeous description and meditations on the meaning of it all. This is a book for reading slowly and savoring. It sweeps the reader into realms of transcendence.

Also, it meshed with – and helped to feed – my recent delusions of glimpsing some kind of Unified Theory of Existence. Helprin seems to have had some of the same thoughts I’ve had – maybe I stole some of them from him.

Insurance fraud aside, Paris In the Present Tense is a wonderful book. You ought to read it.

Religion

It’s all music

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I may be achieving a breakthrough. Or possibly I’m losing my mind. Or it could be the new medication I just started taking…

I got up this morning to put in my two hours of writing (okay, it’s more like an hour and a half when I deduct bathroom and tea-making time). Then I went to the gym, as usual. And while I was driving there, I had this epiphany. It rose, I’m pretty sure, partly from the lingering effects of reading Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything. And from Mark Helprin’s Paris In the Present Tense, which I’m re-reading. It’s a novel about a musician, with all kinds of metaphysical implications.

Anyway, it occurred to me that (as best I understand physics, which is probably not as well as I think) the universe is made up of atoms, which are made up of particles and charges and empty space and stuff. Every solid thing is actually just energy in motion. What makes things exist is movement and attraction and repulsion and waves and so on.

In other words, the universe is music.

Which works just fine with my theology. The Bible says that God said, “Let there be light.” The light – energy – was spoken by God. Light is energy in a pattern. That’s pretty much like music.

Tolkien used this metaphor in The Silmarillion.

After I thought, “The Fall introduced discord into the music,” I found myself shouting out loud (in my car): “CHRIST RESOLVED THE CHORD!”

Well, it seemed profound to me at the time.

Of course I used this space not long ago to explicate a theory that the universe is a Story.

So which is it, Walker?

Maybe the universe is a ballad. No metaphor is every perfect.

Above, a little music from that most theological of composers, the Lutheran J. S. Bach.

Fiction

Mary Is Truly Wonderful in George’s Life

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Clare Coffey talks about the annual criticism people shovel at one of the best Christmas movies of all time, Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life. She said she could dismiss most of it as small-minded or stuck in its own bitter slough from which no reply could deliver. But one criticism, that of Mary’s role, seemed to stick. Why did Mary need George to save her from a single life? She was a vibrant young woman in her own right. If George hadn’t been around, she would have chosen another path for herself.

But after seeing the film on the big screen, Coffey noticed something that changed her mind.

The scenario that the counterfactual world presents us is explicitly foreshadowed by Mary’s playful, obviously ridiculous rejoinder, “to keep from being an old maid.” Once I realized this, it became my interpretive key to the problematic later scene.

From the beginning, it is Mary who chooses George, not the other way around. 

Music, Religion

Sankta Lucia and Christian beauty

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It’s been a few years, I think, since I’ve mentioned the Sankta Lucia celebration. “Sankta Lucia” is Saint Lucy of Syracuse, a virgin martyr of the early church. A Sicilian legend says that once when there was famine, ships appeared in the Syracuse harbor on St. Lucia’s Day, loaded with grain. Thus there came to be a tradition of eating whole grains on December 13. Somehow this tradition evolved in Scandinavia (especially in Sweden) into eating a particular kind of bun on that day. The girls of a household would rise early, prepare the buns, and then march in procession, led by one girl portraying Lucia, wearing a crown of candles (Lucia means light, after all), and wearing a red sash to symbolize martyrdom. They would sing a version of the Italian Santa Lucia song (as above) and serve the buns for breakfast, to general celebration.

It’s a lovely tradition (I’ve observed recreations a few times) and seems to be gaining in popularity even in these secular times.

One thing I love about it is the fact that it’s a revival of tradition. In spite of the growing hostility to Christianity in our culture, genuine beauty still appeals. That’s worth remembering, even if we Protestants are forced to do some borrowing from the Catholics (that’s less a problem for me as a Lutheran than for some). But maybe we need to question the emphasis on stark simplicity in our worship. We seem to have won the argument over pomp and ceremony so well that many churches have proceeded to embrace pure ugliness. And ugliness ages poorly.

I’ve been thinking about art recently, for reasons I won’t go into here. It seems to me that – though there are many ways to divide up the world – one way we can categorize people today is by whether they are pro-beauty or anti-beauty. As far as I can observe, the Progressive movement has turned aggressively anti-beauty. Our side isn’t necessarily pro-beauty, but I think we ought to make that an issue.

Because I think beauty will win, hands down.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Case of the Terrified Typist,’ by Erle Stanley Gardner

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Like every child of the 50s, I know Perry Mason in the form of Raymond Burr on TV. (I hated the show when my mother watched it, but now I find it quite delightful in reruns.) And I’ve read a couple of PM short stories over the years. But I’d never read a Perry Mason novel before. Critics indicate that Erle Stanley Gardner, the author, was not big on characterization, which usually means a book won’t be my kind of thing.

But I got a deal on The Case of the Terrified Typist and I tried it anyway. And you know what? I now know why the Perry Mason series was so popular. Gardner knew how to spin a tale.

Trial attorney Perry Mason has a big document that needs retyping, and his secretary Della Street is having trouble finding a competent typist. She calls an agency, but they can’t promise much. Then a woman shows up in their office and, asked if she’s the typist, she says yes. She turns out to be a whiz at it, and gets a lot of work done very quickly, very accurately. Then she disappears as mysteriously as she appeared.

When Perry and Della learn that the police are in the building, looking for a woman who robbed a diamond import business, they do a search and find a clump of chewing gun attached to the bottom of the typist’s desk. Inside that clump are valuable diamonds.

That’s the neat hook that opens The Case of the Terrified Typist. As the story proceeds, Perry will be hired to represent one of the diamond company’s employees against charges of murdering a diamond smuggler. Surprisingly, Hamilton Burger, the district attorney, chooses to bring murder charges without a body being found.

The whole story was complex, but it was also lively and suspenseful. I had a good time reading it. It made few demands and entertained me thoroughly. I just might read more Perry Mason.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Mysteries,’ by Graham Wilson

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Here’s the scenario: Jim, an Australian man, purchases a very old house in an out-of-the-way corner of Sidney. While doing renovations, he notices a basement concealed and sealed off beneath the floor of one room. He assumes this feature might have historical significance, so he notifies the government, which sends an assessor, a young woman, to look at it. To his astonishment, Jim discovers that this woman is his long-lost daughter, with whom his wife ran off long ago. Though he searched for them, he never found them, until now.

On top of that, they soon realize that the house he has purchased was built by an ancestor neither of them ever guessed they had.

If all this sounds a little far-fetched, I entirely agree. But it’s a tribute to the storytelling skills of Graham Wilson, author of The Mysteries, that I was entirely swept up in the book and overlooked its gross improbabilities.

We learn about Jim’s life and his struggles to rise from poverty. We learn of his ancestor Michael, who built the house – how he was transported as a convict from Ireland, served his time at hard labor, and built a semi-legal fortune along with his stone house. As his descendants discover his story, the reader learns it too.

I thought the story slowed somewhat toward the end, and perhaps too many details about Michael’s life come to light. But I read The Mysteries all the way through, and quite enjoyed it.

There were orthographic errors – word confusions, and sometimes quotation marks missing at the start of a paragraph. But I’ve seen far worse.

Sexual morality here is conventional contemporary, and attitudes toward Christianity tend to be critical, though few in number. Still, the storytelling was top-notch, and the book had undeniable charm. I do recommend it.

Music

Advent Singing: O Come, All Ye Faithful

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O Come, All Ye Faithful, performed by Luther Vandross

This is one of the best Christmas songs ever and worthy of singing year-round. “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” was written in Latin as Adeste Fideles by English Catholic musician John Francis Wade (1712-1786) and translated by Anglican convert to Catholicism Frederick Oakeley (1802-1880).

This song has been recorded so often you may already have a favorite rendition, but I offer these two performances to you for your edification.

“And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them” (Luke 2:20 ESV).

O Come, All Ye Faithful, performed by Voctave

1 O come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant,
O come ye, O come ye to Bethlehem!
Come, and behold Him, born the King of angels!

Refrain:
O come, let us adore Him;
O come, let us adore Him;
O come, let us adore Him, Christ, the Lord!

2 God of God, Light of Light,
lo, He abhors not the virgin’s womb;
very God, begotten not created; [Refrain]

3 Sing, choirs of angels; sing in exultation;
sing, all ye citizens of heav’n above!
Glory to God, all glory in the highest![Refrain]

4 Yea, Lord, we greet Thee, born this happy morning;
Jesus, to Thee be all glory giv’n!
Word of the Father, now in flesh appearing! [Refrain]