“I Greet Thee, Who My Sure Redeemer Art,” performed by Zachary Harris
This hymn is attributed to John Calvin and his arrangement of the Genevan Psalter for his congregation. He promoted lively psalms and spiritual songs in worship and leaned on such musicians as Claude Goudimel and Louis Bourgeois to compose them. This tune was published in 1551, and from what I understand was sung much quicker than the beautiful performance above.
1 I greet thee, who my sure Redeemer art, my only trust and Savior of my heart, who pain didst undergo for my poor sake; I pray thee from our hearts all cares to take.
2 Thou art the King of mercy and of grace, reigning omnipotent in ev’ry place: so come, O King, and our whole being sway; shine on us with the light of thy pure day.
3 Thou art the Life, by which alone we live, and all our substance and our strength receive; O comfort us in death’s approaching hour, strong-hearted then to face it by thy pow’r.
4 Thou hast the true and perfect gentleness, no harshness hast thou and no bitterness: make us to taste the sweet grace found in thee and ever stay in thy sweet unity.
5 Our hope is in no other save in thee; our faith is built upon thy promise free; O grant to us such stronger hope and sure that we can boldly conquer and endure.
Artist and illustrator N. C. Wyeth (1882-1945), trained by the famous Howard Pyle and painter of the Brandywine School, produced illustrations for many Scribner’s Classics editions such as Treasure Island, Kidnapped, The Lastof the Mohicans and The Yearling.
Best of: Ted Gioia offers his paid subscribers his reviews of the 50 best works of non-realist fiction (sci-fi, alt-history, fantasy, and more). Read the list for free (part one of five so far). The reviews are behind the paid wall.
In this short span, he wrote his breakthrough story cycle, The Martian Chronicles, a book that signified a start to the genre’s inclusion in mainstream literature; published the celebrated science-fiction collection The Illustrated Man; followed up with the underrated collection of mixed fiction (fantasy and contemporary realist prose), The Golden Apples of the Sun; wrote his magnum opus, Fahrenheit 451; and began work on the screenplay for Moby-Dick for director John Huston.
Cleopatra: His legs bestrid the ocean, his reared arm Crested the world. His voice was propertied As all the tunèd spheres, and that to friends; But when he meant to quail and shake the orb, He was as rattling thunder. For his bounty, There was no winter in ’t; an autumn ’twas That grew the more by reaping. His delights Were dolphin-like; they showed his back above The element they lived in. In his livery Walked crowns and crownets; realms and islands were As plates dropped from his pocket.
Dolabella: Cleopatra—
C: Think you there was, or might be, such a man As this I dreamt of?
“I can’t help but think the situation was made a whole lot worse by the world-wide proliferation of those intensely addictive distraction-devices called cell phones. If bookworms were rare in the pre-Internet days, I can only think they’re even rarer now that it’s possible to watch funny cat videos 24 hours a day.”
I’ve had some rough days recently. I was sick most of last week with recurring fevers that held me down. I think the antibiotics are working me over, making me sleepy in the middle of the day or maybe only after I have coffee.
While sick I read most of Brian Jacque’s Redwall, which the kids all read years ago. Got to make sure I didn’t corrupt their minds back in the days of their impressionable youth. That question still crops up occasionally.
Today, we discerned that a burned fuse was preventing the Honda Accord from shifting out of park. Praise the Lord, it’s drivable again, but we need to replace it soon, and I’m rotten at buying cars. The descriptions are relatively similar and I want to believe them. I want to believe it’s a reliable car at a good price. Why shouldn’t it be?
Like a book blurb, they may say we have an “unparalleled epidemic of masterpieces,” and I want to believe them. But are any of them compelling enough to read?
“Some blurbs are so obscenely fulsome they give me a good laugh. Superlatives worthy only of the Deity pile up like cancer cells.”
The American Spectator posted my latest article on Sunday. You can read it here. It’s all about the disadvantages of high intelligence, a subject about which I know nothing at all.
Also, I’m going to be at the Norsk Hostfest in Minot, North Dakota Wednesday through Saturday, God willing. If you happen to be there and want to see us Vikings, we’ll be in the Flickertail building which is (I think) south of the main hall at the state fairgrounds.
It seemed to Hugh as he sat there that this was a very bad place on the face of the earth, that it was unwise to bring to this place any decent impulse or emotion, because there was a curiously corrosive agent adrift in this bright desert air…. It would not be a good thing to stay in such a place too long, because you might lose the ability to react to any other human being save on the level of estimating how best to use them, or how they were trying to use you. The impossibility of any more savory relationship was perfectly symbolized by the pink-and-white-and-blue neon crosses shining above the quaint gabled roofs of the twenty-four-hour-a-day marriage chapels.
As I’ve been reacquainting myself with John D. MacDonald’s non-McGee novels, happily republished by The Murder Room in Kindle format, I’ve had one nagging worry. I remembered that one of these books in particular was a heartbreaker, a really tragic story. Now I don’t have to worry about it anymore, because I just read The Only Girl in the Game, and it turns out that’s the one. It knocked me down, made me cry, and took my lunch money. Excellent book.
Hugh Darren manages the Cameroon Hotel in Las Vegas. It’s interesting work and it pays well, which will help him with his dream of eventually opening his own resort in the Bahamas. He knows that the mob owns the place, but they’re on the casino side. Hugh just deals with food suppliers, employees, and customer complaints, that sort of thing. Oh, from time to time his genial, party animal boss asks him for a little favor, and he gets an off-the-books gift when he does it, but they’ve never asked him to do anything illegal.
He particularly delights in Betty Dawson, his new girlfriend. She’s a singer with a regular show in one of the small lounges. She’s tall and beautiful, smart and funny. Hugh is head over heels in love with her, but she’s made it clear she wants only a casual relationship.
What he doesn’t know is that their boss owns Betty. He has leverage on her, and that enables him to require her – not often, only once or twice a year – to do something that makes her hate herself, that makes her feel dirty. Nothing personal, it’s just business.
One day they’ll ask Betty to do something she knows she can’t do. And that day she’ll break free. Then everything will go very bad, very quickly.
The Only Girl in the Game was originally written for the cheap paperback originals market. It includes the obligatory scenes of sex and violence (though fairly mild by 21st Century standards). But it’s also a remarkably well-written and morally centered book. It’s all about the effects of gambling, on individuals and on communities. We’ve come to accept those effects since casinos have been legalized most everywhere, but we’ve paid a price. If you want to understand that price, this is a good book to start with. If you’re thinking of going to a casino for fun, this is a good book to read.
Highly recommended, with cautions as specified above.
“Jerusalem,” the unofficial anthem of the United Kingdom
The glorious hymn sung in the video above is William Blake’s original poem and is consequently theologically off-base. When we’ve sung it in church, we used this lyric by British composer C. Hubert Parry (1848-1918) and adapted it even further.
1 When did those feet in ancient times walk upon Israel’s mountain green? And did the Christ of Heaven come down, was God in flesh both heard and seen? And did He die to prove His love, and did He rise again more powerful still? And was His rule on earth started there upon Golgotha’s tragic hill?
2 Bring me my bow of burning gold; bring me my arrows of desire; Bring me my spear, O clouds, unfold! Bring me my chariots of fire! I will not cease to spread His light. My faith a shield, His word my sword. ‘Til Christ my Lord is crowned King, and all the earth shall own him Lord!
Fans of comic books and some of the Marvel shows and movies have been talking about where the writers have taken the Incredible Hulk character. They compare the Ed Norton Hulk, who looks enraged while standing still, and the Eric Bana Hulk, also a rage monster, to the Mark Ruffalo Hulk, who was last seen patiently listening to his She-Hulk cousin explain how being a woman enabled her to control her anger “infinitely more” than he could.
Years ago, we talked about the first Avengers movie and the controversy of Bruce Banner appearing to be able to transform on command. The point in the movie was the wildness of the Hulk. Banner could use the Hulk’s power to a degree, but if things got out of hand, the Hulk would bring even more chaos.
In Avengers: Infinity War, the Hulk is beaten into submission right out of the gate. This takes one of the strongest characters out of the picture to make room for many others who need a few seconds of their own. The movie proceeds to follow Thanos to each of the remaining Infinity Stones and half of the time sets up an identical scenario: Thanos threatens to abuse and kill one character unless another one forfeits a stone.
But what if Thanos’s brutal beating had caused the Hulk to go wild? Initially, he would appear beaten, Thanos would leave, and the heroes would plot their defenses. Then Thanos would confront a group about the stone they’re guarding, and a wild, uncontrolled Hulk would return with more rage than ever, turning everything to chaos. It wouldn’t be repeated bad decisions that give Thanos the stones in the end. It would be the impossibly strong Avenger who couldn’t be stopped.
This movie would have villain and anti-villain with a hoard of heroes to manage both. They could even have Captain Marvel fight him. She should be able to handle him for a while. Maybe Wanda Maximoff could even save him in the end by pulling him out of his rage.
Or he could be taken by the snap, in which case he’d have to come back as Bruce to give everyone a breather.
But I guess they’ve taken that wildness away from the cinematic Hulk to make him more of a team player.
We do not want to risk coming out of the shadows, preferring to remain in the darkness of lives of quiet desperation, afraid of all that is unknown about God and holding on to our only certainty, even if this certainty is the pain we know and understand.
How come nobody ever told me about Sigmund Brouwer before? (I’ll bet somebody did, and I overlooked it.) He’s a Canadian writer, and yet in Out of the Shadows he’s produced an excellent mystery in the Southern Gothic style. It reminded me a little of Walker Percy.
Nick Barrett is a son of Charleston aristocracy, but only in a marginal way. His mother married into the old, moneyed Barrett family, but then bore a child – Nick – out of wedlock. After she disappeared, with Nick’s trust fund money and (according to rumor) with yet another lover, Nick was raised in the family home and tolerated. But they never let him forget his inferior status. He thought he’d beat them all when he married the beautiful Claire, also from their circle. But that all blew up a few nights after the wedding, when several of the young people were in a car accident. Nick lost half his leg in that accident, while Claire’s brother was killed. And Nick found himself faced with an ultimatum from the corrupt county sheriff – sign an affidavit admitting to being the drunk driver (which he wasn’t) or go to prison. Nick left town, the marriage was annulled, and he traveled the world before settling down to teach astronomy at a small college in the southwest.
But now he’s gotten an anonymous letter, telling him that if he comes back to Charleston he can learn the truth about his mother’s true whereabouts. He goes back, limping on his prosthetic leg, to face the still-hostile relatives, and starts kicking over stones and stirring up hornet’s nests. People will die, including (nearly) Nick himself, before the truth comes out and he learns the true power of love, the reality of forgiveness, and something about God.
Out of the Shadows knocked me for a loop. It was thoughtful, lyrical, and even action-packed (I didn’t see that coming). I’ve read a fair number of Christian novels, but never one where the actual act of conversion is portrayed as effectively and movingly as it is here. I was reminded of Leif Enger, but Brouwer is more explicit in his message.
Highly recommended. Really, you need to read Out of the Shadows.
