Music, Religion

A cut-rate carol from Sears

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Christmas is over for many of us (discounting those who observe the Twelve Days, the Eastern Orthodox, and me [because my family’s gathering this weekend]). So perhaps it would be OK for me to vent a little about a Christmas pet peeve.

As you may have noticed, I’m pretty tolerant of Christmas observances (or so I imagine. Don’t correct me, please). I don’t bemoan the commercialization much, I don’t attack Santa Claus, I don’t denounce the Christmas tree as a heathen shibboleth. When it comes to colored lights I’m essentially a little kid, and it’s pretty easy to make me happy with a Christmas tree and chocolate.

But I have a few gripes, primarily in the music department.

I don’t mean the obvious stuff. I won’t go into that Christmas Shoes song they keep playing on Christian stations (kill me now!). I’ll pass by The Little Drummer Boy, making his racket to keep a new Mother and her Baby awake all night. I won’t even spend time on Santa Baby.

I want to go where a deeper problem is. I want to single out a beautiful, well-written carol which I love, and which seems to me slightly insidious.

The carol is It Came Upon the Midnight Clear, by Edmund Sears: Continue reading A cut-rate carol from Sears →

Writing

Schultz' Writing Notes

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Greg Schultz talks about writing a bit on Ploughshares’ blog.

Craft can be counterproductive. I’ve already registered my suspicions about how-to advice on the craft of writing in a previous post. One problem with the axioms (“show, don’t tell”) and diagrams (Freytag’s triangle, below) of craft is that they turn the act of writing on its head. Freytag’s triangle, for example, is much more effective as a tool of analysis than one of instruction. It can be useful to study a completed story through the lens of the triangle. However, when taken as instruction, Freytag’s triangle, like most craft advice, is more hindrance than help. Like a cookie-cutter, it stamps the uncooked dough. The resulting story, built to satisfy preconceived notions of craft, is likely to have about the same resemblance to real life as a gingerbread man has to a living, breathing person.

Publishing, Reading

Five E-book Trends

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Philip Ruppel, president of McGraw-Hill Professional, notes five trends he says will change the publishing industry.

    • Enhanced E-Books Are Coming and Will Only Get Better
      The Device War Is Nearly Over
      The $9.99 E-Book Won’t Last Forever
      The Contextual Upsell Will be a Business Model to Watch
      Publisher Editing and Design Will Be More Important Than Ever
    • Reviews

    DVD Review: Arn: The Knight Templar

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    Arn: The Knight Templar
    Who’d have imagined that the best knights and armor movie since Braveheart (discounting The Lord of the Rings trilogy, a fantasy) would come out of Sweden, of all places?
    Arn: The Knight Templar (available on DVD and Blue Ray) is an adaptation (much truncated, I understand) of a Swedish television miniseries based on a trilogy of novels by Jan Guillou. The hero is Arn Magnusson (Joakim Nätterkvist), a young man who was raised in a monastery, but trained in arms by a monk who was once a Knight Templar. Returning to his family, he falls in love with a neighbor’s daughter, Cecilia (Sofia Helin). Unfortunately her father’s political obligations make their match impossible. But the two young people manage to get together long enough to conceive a child. The ensuing scandal results in her being confined to a nunnery, and him being sent to join the Knights Templar on crusade in the Holy Land.
    The storytelling requirements of fitting all this into the 133 minute run time make for a lot of intercutting and flashbacks (you do have to pay attention), but we follow their separate trials and and struggles for the next twenty years. The focus is on Arn, who becomes a legendary fighter in the Holy Land, one whom the Muslim armies recognize, fear, and respect. He even becomes a friend of Saladin, a circumstance which saves his life (what would fictional crusaders ever do without Saladin to pull their escutcheons out of the fire?). After their time of punishment is complete, Arn and Cecilia are reunited and married, but one final challenge remains for his warrior skills. Continue reading DVD Review: Arn: The Knight Templar →

    Music, Religion

    "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing"

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    Sissel wishes you a blessed Christmas.

    (You’ll note that they use the original “Born to raise the sons of earth” line, rather than a PC revision. That’s like a Christmas present right there.)

    Religion

    Platt on Rebelling Against the American Dream

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    Pastor and author David Platt writes:

    We American Christians have a way of taking the Jesus of the Bible and twisting him into a version of Jesus that we are more comfortable with.

    A nice middle-class American Jesus. A Jesus who doesn’t mind materialism and would never call us to give away everything we have. A Jesus who is fine with nominal devotion that does not infringe on our comforts.

    Platt has written the bestselling book Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream (via Christian Fiction Daily)

    Poetry, Religion

    "The House of Christmas"

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    The Nativity, Barocci

    The Nativity, by Federico Barocci, c. 1597

    By: G. K. Chesterton

    There fared a mother driven forth

    Out of an inn to roam;

    In the place where she was homeless

    All men are at home.

    The crazy stable close at hand,

    With shaking timber and shifting sand,

    Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand

    Than the square stones of Rome.

    For men are homesick in their homes,

    And strangers under the sun,

    And they lay on their heads in a foreign land

    Whenever the day is done.

    Here we have battle and blazing eyes,

    And chance and honour and high surprise,

    But our homes are under miraculous skies

    Where the yule tale was begun.

    A Child in a foul stable,

    Where the beasts feed and foam;

    Only where He was homeless

    Are you and I at home;

    We have hands that fashion and heads that know,

    But our hearts we lost – how long ago!

    In a place no chart nor ship can show

    Under the sky’s dome.

    This world is wild as an old wives’ tale,

    And strange the plain things are,

    The earth is enough and the air is enough

    For our wonder and our war;

    But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings

    And our peace is put in impossible things

    Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings

    Round an incredible star.

    To an open house in the evening

    Home shall men come,

    To an older place than Eden

    And a taller town than Rome.

    To the end of the way of the wandering star,

    To the things that cannot be and that are,

    To the place where God was homeless

    And all men are at home.

    Music

    "Nå tennes tusen julelys"

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    Here’s one of my favorite songs from Sissel’s Kyrkjebø’s first Christmas album, the one that made her a superstar in Norway. The title means “Now a thousand Christmas lights are being lit.” I was looking for a live performance video, but the only one I could find is half talk (in Norwegian). So you’ll just have to look at her face on the album cover, which seems to me no chore. Below is an original translation of the lyrics, done by me at this keyboard at this very moment:

    Around this darkened world tonight,

    A thousand candles glow,

    And all God’s stars above shine down

    To cheer our night below.

    And over towns and over fields

    The joyful carols sing

    The news that in a manger bed

    We find our God and King.

    O Star that shone o’er Bethlehem,

    To hail the holy birth,

    Bring to our hearts the angels’ song

    Of love and peace on earth.

    So every wand’ring heart shall see

    A beacon in their sky,

    To light their path through this dark world

    To Christmas home on high.

    (For the record, this picture of Sissel on the “Glade Jul” album was the inspiration for the appearance of the character Halla in The Year of the Warrior.)

    Blogs, Socials, Creative Writing

    The Night After Christmas: An Advent Ghost Story

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    Wayne’s car died downtown while a frizzy-headed kid watched. Three sickly children stopped playing under a large electric snowflake when he walked by, and a pale, stained baby, rolling on the sidewalk, began wailing. Now he runs past the shuttered tourist-shop windows, seeing shadows in doorways, twisted faces in car windows, and figures from the corners of his eyes. The rumor can’t be true–that children, murdered by Herod, haunt the streets tonight seeking abusers. Broken sidewalk catches his foot and cracks his knee like a walnut.

    Then they come.

    Pallid boys emerge from the cracks: grabbing, pulling, twisting, choking.

    (Thanks for Loren Eaton for organizing this shared storytelling event. See his post for a list of other stories.)