Words Twice a Week 3.28
If you are more into listening than reading, Words Twice a Week is available, along with other good stuff, as a podcast from St Paul’s Episcopal Church. Click here.
And shoot, I missed this – last night (March 27) was Earth Hour when people and towns and countries turn the lights off for an hour at 8:30pm local time to focus our attention on nature loss and climate change. And this year they were showing a video on social media. Well, it’s too late to turn the lights off last night, I imagine the video will still be there. Seems like if you turn off the lights you might also turn off the devices? One year we did a concert – well, me singing and playing the guitar – by candlelight. It was fun.
And the challenge for this week was to write a poem that was also a recipe for something called The Moonlight Cupcake, or Pudding. Didn’t happen. Might still, we’ll see.
Some days from the church calendar -
Holy Week – what traditions or rituals do you follow? I used to listen to The Cotton Patch Gospel, but maybe I’ll skip a year. Might be a year for Jesus Christ Superstar? Or is there a literary presentation of the gospel that appeals? I’ve ordered the text of The Cotton Patch Gospel Luke and Acts. Might be something to “zoom read” between Easter and Pentecost?
March 29 John Keble – an English clergy and poet, he died in 1866. He wrote The Christian Year, a set of poems for the Sundays and feast days of the church year. And these are not just ditsy little haiku’s – here’s the one for Palm Sunday. (warning – it’s 6 eight line stanzas)
And He answered and said unto them, I tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out. St. Luke xix. 40.
Ye whose hearts are beating high
With the pulse of Poesy,
Heirs of more than royal race,
Framed by Heaven’s peculiar grace,
God’s own work to do on earth,
(If the word be not too bold,)
Giving virtue a new birth,
And a life that ne’er grows old—
Sovereign masters of all hearts!
Know ye, who hath set your parts?
He who gave you breath to sing,
By whose strength ye sweep the string,
He hath chosen you, to lead
His Hosannas here below;—
Mount, and claim your glorious meed;
Linger not with sin and woe.
But if ye should hold your peace,
Deem not that the song would cease—
Angels round His glory-throne,
Stars, His guiding hand that own,
Flowers, that grow beneath our feet,
Stones in earth’s dark womb that rest,
High and low in choir shall meet,
Ere His Name shall be unblest.
Lord, by every minstrel tongue
Be Thy praise so duly sung,
That Thine angels’ harps may ne’er
Fail to find fit echoing here:
We the while, of meaner birth,
Who in that divinest spell
Dare not hope to join on earth,
Give us grace to listen well.
But should thankless silence seal
Lips that might half Heaven reveal,
Should bards in idol-hymns profane
The sacred soul-enthralling strain,
(As in this bad world below
Noblest things find vilest using,)
Then, Thy power and mercy show,
In vile things noble breath infusing;
Then waken into sound divine
The very pavement of Thy shrine,
Till we, like Heaven’s star-sprinkled floor,
Faintly give back what we adore:
Childlike though the voices be,
And untunable the parts,
Thou wilt own the minstrelsy
If it flow from childlike hearts.
March 30 Innocent of Alaska Born in 1797, he was an Orthodox priest who became a bishop and archbishop in Alaska, the first such in the Americas. He worked among the Alaskan natives and learned their languages. Later he became Metropolitan of Moscow and all Russia.
March 31 John Donne He was an English poet, scholar, and soldier born into a recusant family (people who refused to attend Anglican services but stayed loyal to the pope) who later became a cleric in the Church of England and Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral in London. Known mostly as a poet, I suppose, he wrote sonnets, love poems, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs, and satires. He wrote Death Be Not Proud, and a poem for St Lucy’s Day (winter solstice), and a meditation that includes For Whom the Bell Tolls, which includes the line The bell doth toll for him that thinks it doth...He died on this day in 1631, but had risen from his sickbed on Feb 25, and delivered the Death's Duel sermon, which was later described as his own funeral sermon. Death's Duel portrays life as a steady descent to suffering and death; death becomes merely another process of life, in which the 'winding sheet' of the womb is the same as that of the grave. Hope is seen in salvation and immortality through an embrace of God, Christ and the Resurrection.
April 1 Holy Thursday We often did communion with a service of tenebrae, where you read through the passion turning off lights or blowing out candles as the story goes along. Then the tradition of “stripping the church” where you carry our all the flowers, pictures, ornaments, and leave just the bare walls and altar. It was pretty dramatic.
April 2 Good Friday
Here’s a collect from the United Methodist service for Good Friday
Almighty God, your Son Jesus Christ was lifted high upon the cross
so that he might draw the whole world to himself.
Grant the we, who glory in this death for our salvation
may also glory in his call to take up our cross and follow him,
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
And this from the Book of Common Prayer -
Almighty God, we pray you graciously to behold this your
family, for whom our Lord Jesus Christ was willing to be
betrayed, and given into the hands of sinners, and to suffer
death upon the cross; who now lives and reigns with you and
the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
April 3 Richard of Chichester He was the Bishop of Chichester, and known, among other things for a rigid frugality and temperance. Richard was an ascetic who wore a hair-shirt and refused to eat off silver. He kept his diet simple and rigorously excluded animal flesh; having been a vegetarian since his days at Oxford. He is often shown with a chalice by his side, because the legend is that he once dropped the chalice while serving mass and nothing spilled from it! He was said to have spoken this prayer on his deathbed -
Thanks be to Thee, my Lord Jesus Christ
For all the benefits Thou hast given me,
For all the pains and insults Thou hast borne for me.
O most merciful Redeemer, friend and brother,
May I know Thee more clearly,
Love Thee more dearly,
Follow Thee more nearly.
“Day by day, day by day” if you learned it from Godspell!
April 4 Easter and Martin Luther King, Jr He was assassinated on this day in 1968 in Memphis, TN. He was staying at the Lorainne Motel. (We were there – it’s part of The National Civil Rghts Museum now and well worth visiting. They have his room kept just the way it was that night.) According to Jesse Jackson, who was present, King's last words on the balcony before his assassination were spoken to musician Ben Branch, who was scheduled to perform that night at an event King was attending: "Ben, make sure you play 'Take My Hand, Precious Lord' in the meeting tonight. Play it real pretty." As we are thinking about racial inequality, here’s something to consider - According to biographer Taylor Branch, King's autopsy revealed that though only 39 years old, he "had the heart of a 60 year old", which Branch attributed to the stress of 13 years in the civil rights movement.
And some days from the world/earth calendar -
March 29
+ Robert Scott made his final diary entry on his way back from the South Pole with two other expedition members in 1912 "We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker, and of course, the end cannot be far. Last entry. For God's sake look after our people” He got there five weeks after Amundsen, and wrote "The worst has happened [...] All the day dreams must go [...] Great God! This is an awful place". When their bodies were found, next to their bodies lay 35 pounds (16 kg) of Glossopteris tree fossils (whatever those are!) which they had dragged on hand sledges. These were the first ever discovered Antarctic fossils and proved that Antarctica had once been warm and connected to other continents. (And then here’s an interesting little tidbit – the temperature was -40 degrees celsius, which is also -40 degrees fahrenheit.)
+ Georges Seurat died in 1891. He was the guy that painted big pictures made up of little dots of paint, most famously A Sunday Afternoon....
+ and Emanuel Swedenborg died in 1772. He was a Swedish pluralistic-Christian theologian, scientist, philosopher and mystic. Swedenborg had a prolific career as an inventor and scientist. In 1741, at 53, he entered into a spiritual phase in which he began to experience dreams and visions, notably on Easter Weekend, on April 6, 1744. His experiences culminated in a "spiritual awakening" in which he received a revelation that Jesus Christ had appointed him to write The Heavenly Doctrine to reform Christianity. We noted the Swedenborgian Church a week or two ago.
March 30
+ Vincent van Gogh was born in 1853. If Seurat painted with little dots, van Gogh painted with swirls. At least that’s my take on it.
+ Jeopardy aired for the first time in 1964. You got answers, we got questions!
Challenge # 1 for this week – if the answer is the Christian Gospel, what is the question?
March 31
+ Francis Asbury died on this day in 1816. He was a Methodist pastor and one of the first two Methodist bishops in America. He developed the circuit rider method where Methodist preachers rode from town to town. As bishop, Asbury traveled between most of the circuits, and at one time was one of the most recognized person in the United States.
+ the Eiffel Tower opened on this day in 1889. It was meant to be temporary, one of the rules was to design a tower that could be easily dismantled, but was so useful for communications, and for attracting tourists, that it has remained. The designer, Gustave Eiffel, originally had an apartment on the top floor. I don’t know if that still exists or not! Would make a dramatic bed and breakfast, although without the elevator it apparently takes an hour to climb.
+ JS Bach was born in 1685, Joseph Hayden was born in 1732. So there should be some music to listen to from those two today.
+ in 1918 the US switched to Daylight Savings Time for the first time.
April 1 April Fools Day – apparently Mark Twain once commented that on this day we are reminded of who we are on the other 364 days. April Fool commercials and news shorts have become popular. My favorite was the one of the Swiss Spaghetti Harvest that the BBC aired in 1957.
+ Apple Inc founded in 1976. Are you an Apple person? I’ve always stuck with PC’s.
+ Scott Joplin, King of Ragtime, died in 1917 – He wrote The Maple Leaf Rag, and The Entertainer (music from The Sting!).
April 2
+ Bread for the World founded by a handful of Christians in New York in 1973. Offering of Letters and Lenten Prayers are maybe the ways you have encountered it.
+ according to W Paul Jones, Velcro was first marketed on this day. I don’t know, but here's some of the story.
+ the Mint Act of 1792 was passed by congress establishing the dollar as the country’s standard unit of money.
+ Hans Christian Anderson was born in 1805; Samuel Morse died in 1872. You can use this translator to turn something you write into code, and back again.
April 3
+ Johannes Brahms died in 1897. Here’s eight hours of Brahms Lullaby. Really! I had a teddy bear that played it when I was a child. You had to wind it up every minute or so.
+ first public mobile telephone call placed from a Manhattan sidewalk in 1973. “Joel, I’m calling you from a ‘real’ cellular telephone. A portable handheld telephone.” Not exactly “words for the ages”!
Challenge #2 for this week – if you were going to make the first mobile telephone call, what would you say?”
+ Jesse James was killed in 1882. We looked at him a few weeks ago. What I remember was that despite the legend and the song, there was no real evidence of Jesse and the boys giving a lot of money to to poor. Too bad.
+ Graham Green, English author, died in 1991. He wrote novels with Christian themes – The Power and the Glory, The Heart of the Matter. Several works, such as The Confidential Agent, The Quiet American, Our Man in Havana, The Human Factor, and his screenplay for The Third Man, also show Greene's avid interest in the workings and intrigues of international politics and espionage. (This is not the guy that used to blow things up on The Red Green Show!)
+ Kurt Weill died in 1950. He wrote the music to The Threepenny Opera including Mack the Knife. Oh the line forms on the right babe, now that Mackie’s back in town!
April 4
+ Maya Angelou was born in 1928. In 1993, she recited her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" (1993) at the first inauguration of Bill Clinton, making her the first poet to make an inaugural recitation since Robert Frost at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy in 1961.
That’s what I got for now….
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