(A paraphrase of Psalm 98)
Joy to the world, the Lord is come!
Let earth receive her King;
Let every heart prepare Him room,
And Heaven and nature sing.
Joy to the earth, the Savior reigns!
Let men their songs employ;
While fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains
Repeat the sounding joy.
No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessings flow
Far as the curse is found.
He rules the world with truth and grace,
And makes the nations prove
The glories of His righteousness,
And wonders of His love.
---Isaac Watts, 1719
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Monday, December 3, 2007
Joseph the Faithful Carpenter
Ponders the new he keeps concealed:
His bride-to-be in found with child—
A father’s name is not revealed.
As Joseph slumbers fitfully
An angel enters Joseph’s dream
To tell him that this comes from God
And things are not as they may seem:
“O, Joseph, banish all your fears
And take Young Mary as your wife
And be a father to God’s child
Who comes to share in human life.”
Good Joseph, born of David’s line
(Which matters not in days of Rome)
Bequeaths a human royalty
And gives the Boy a godly home.
A jealous Herod fears this King,
So Joseph takes them speedily
To Egypt, where again he works,
To care for his small family.
An angel tells that Herod’s dead,
So Joseph brings them all back home;
He brings them to quaint Nazareth
And raises God’s Son as his own.
---C. Marie Byars, 1999 (c)
Sunday, October 21, 2007
November
Besides the autumn poets sing,
A few prosaic* days
A little this side of snow
And that side of the haze.
A few incisive mornings**,
A few ascetic*** eyes,---
Gone Mr. Bryant's golden-rod****
And Mr. Thomson's sheaves. . .*****
Perhaps a squirrel may remain,
My sentiments to share.
Grant me, O Lord, a sunny mind,
Thy windy will to bear!******
---Emily Dickinson
*Prosaic: plain-language, ordinary, dull, lacking poetry
**The cold, frosty mornings tell you quite clearly winter's on the way
***Ascetic eyes---stoic, living without pleasures; people who are out aren't out to absorb the beauties which have faded
****Goldenrod: a yellow-flowering stalky plant related to daisies & etc.
*****The neighbor's bunches of grain are taken inside the barn now for protection & use
******Yes, God's will is to be gracious; but in this sin-tainted world, the nature He oversees has imperfections, such as cold, blustery winds; at some point we do better to accept that His will can sometimes seem unpleasant
A few prosaic* days
A little this side of snow
And that side of the haze.
A few incisive mornings**,
A few ascetic*** eyes,---
Gone Mr. Bryant's golden-rod****
And Mr. Thomson's sheaves. . .*****
Perhaps a squirrel may remain,
My sentiments to share.
Grant me, O Lord, a sunny mind,
Thy windy will to bear!******
---Emily Dickinson
*Prosaic: plain-language, ordinary, dull, lacking poetry
**The cold, frosty mornings tell you quite clearly winter's on the way
***Ascetic eyes---stoic, living without pleasures; people who are out aren't out to absorb the beauties which have faded
****Goldenrod: a yellow-flowering stalky plant related to daisies & etc.
*****The neighbor's bunches of grain are taken inside the barn now for protection & use
******Yes, God's will is to be gracious; but in this sin-tainted world, the nature He oversees has imperfections, such as cold, blustery winds; at some point we do better to accept that His will can sometimes seem unpleasant
Monday, October 1, 2007
Pied* Beauty
Glory be to God for dappled things,
For skies of couple-color as a brindled cow,
For rose-moles in stipple** upon trout that swim.
Fresh-firecoal chestnut falls***, finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced---fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, spare, original, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled, (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise Him.
---Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1877
*Pied: Having patches of more than one color; i.e. the "Pied Piper"
**Rose-colored dots or flecks
***Fallen chestnuts, red as burning coals
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Spring and Fall
to a young child
Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah, as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal* lie**;
And yet you will weep and know why***.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrows springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed,
What heart heard of, ghost guessed****:
It was the blight man was born for.
It is Margaret you mourn for.
---Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1880
"Leafmeal"; akin to "piecemeal", a work coined by Hopkins
**although Margaret might someday see a whole LOT ('worlds') of leaves laying around decaying,
***when she someday does, she will know why it moves her: the decay of leaves triggers thoughts of her own mortality
****before she had expressed it or heard it expressed, Margaret's own inner spirit knew the truth of this
Friday, September 14, 2007
FALL
I'm waiting for fall to come:
For leaves to fall,
For mists to blow,
For winds to call,
For birds to go,
And then I'll know it's fall.
---Anonymous [makes the elementary school rounds]
For leaves to fall,
For mists to blow,
For winds to call,
For birds to go,
And then I'll know it's fall.
---Anonymous [makes the elementary school rounds]
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Lutheran Ladies' Laugh
Martin Luther married a woman named "Katharine." His early side-kick, Philip Melanchthon, also married a woman named "Katharine." Mrs. Melanchthon's maiden name had been "Katharine Krapp*." ---No wonder she wanted to get married, even if she had to acquire such a clunky new last name & a kind of wimpy-looking husband!!!
"Krapp" is actually a German word for "red dye." The ancestors probably moved into the middle class by selling this. Katharine's farther was the mayor of Wittenberg. Yes, Mayor Krapp, not to be confused with Major Crap, which you find all over the internet!!!
Technorati Labels Lutheran funny humor German Melanchthon deutsch
"Krapp" is actually a German word for "red dye." The ancestors probably moved into the middle class by selling this. Katharine's farther was the mayor of Wittenberg. Yes, Mayor Krapp, not to be confused with Major Crap, which you find all over the internet!!!
Technorati Labels Lutheran funny humor German Melanchthon deutsch
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