There is no one who has ever come close to Jimi Hendrix, even 40 years later. If you thought the Woodstock Star-Spangled Banner was something, here, for your New Year's Eve enjoyment is, of course, Auld Lang Syne.
(Sadly, too short. The song and his life.)
It may go back to my college days when the engineers at the radio station hooked some black box device to the Christmas tree in the studio. They took the station's audio, ran it through the box and it made different colors light up on the tree. (We tried to make more bass lights turn on. That was the sign of a wonder DJ.)
Neat- and cool, man. (This WAS the 60s.)
Being a visual as well as a musical person, then, these modern day computer-generated things continue to intrigue me. Here's Bach's Sonata in C Major for a solo instrument. It is entrancing to watch the music move as well as hear it.
I'm calling Thursday's hospital stay Surgery 3.0. The first (1.0) was just about three years ago in Feb 2009. Then came 2.0 this past summer. Both were lower back with quick and easy recuperations. But in the examining that led to Surgery 2.0 the difficulties in the cervical spine were also discovered. We waited as long as we could in 2011 since I wanted to get through Christmas, which, as I will write about in a future post, was fortuitous.
Anyway, the time is approaching. I am having an anterior cervical something or other with fusion. I will be in the hospital for only 2-3 days at most but recuperation is to be 6-8 weeks. Therefore, liking to be in the middle of the road on at least a few things, I have taken 7 weeks med leave. As I write this on Wednesday afternoon I have gotten just about everything ready and will be at the hospital bright and early.
I am pre-posting some things here for the next 5-7 days, but through the wonders of Wi-Fi and B&N Color Nook, I may even get something posted about an update. So far I have received lots of good information from some friends who have gone through this- and it all sounds good. I am getting lots of prayers. I feel very confident in the doctor who also did Surgeries 1.0 and 2.0.
Prayers are of course welcome- and I will keep you posted.
SBNR.org has an American Christmas Quiz. Just in case you think Christmas "as we know it today" is the way it is supposed to be, from either side of the argument. Here is one of the answers to one of the questions, to give you some help...
The early Puritan settlers didn’t like anything about Christmas and fined people for observing it. They didn’t believe Christmas to be a religious holiday and deplored the secular celebrations that had developed in England, where Christmas was a rowdy holiday that included much jovial feasting, drinking, and game-playing, none of which were in keeping with the Puritan philosophy. Puritans even banned the holiday in Boston between 1659 and 1681.
The American Revolutionaries opposed Christmas celebrations on the simple basis that Christmas was an English holiday. During the Revolutionary War between the American Colonies and Great Britain, it was fashionable to oppose all things English, which is also why Americans started drinking coffee instead of tea. George Washington made his famous crossing of the Delaware River on Christmas day, and the first session of Congress under the new American Constitution met on Christmas day, which would indicate that America’s founding fathers didn’t pay much attention to Christmas either.
Christmas also was the subject of rigorous religious debate among various Christian sects in America’s 1700s. Those wanting to distance themselves from the Church of England or from the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church opposed Christmas for both secular and religious reasons. These included the Baptists, Calvinists, Presbyterians, and Quakers, who continued to oppose Christmas until the 1800s. Christmas became an official national holiday in the United States in 1870, and the last state to recognize Christmas as a holiday was Oklahoma in 1907.
In Jim Wallis’s latest email he got my attention with the title: The Night I Left My Church. In the email he says it happened when he was 15:
“Jim, Christianity has nothing to do with racism.”
That's what my church elder told me when I was a 15-year-old boy. Can you believe that? “That's political, and our faith is personal,” he said.
That's the night I left my church.
This kind of story is all too common. So that's exactly why we founded Sojourners 40 years ago – to call Christians back to a radical Jesus, the one who called us to be with “the least of these,” including those people living with the realities of poverty, racism, and war.Well, I have liked Sojourners for many years now and think highly of their social justice stance that calls into question so much of what the Religious [sic] Right [sic] considers "Christian." I think this story of Wallis's says why so many have had such difficulty with the church. I cannot overlook that a baby being born to an unmarried mother and having to put the child in a manger is pretty radical stuff. Christmas is a message of hope for the least and lost. It is a message of challenge to the rest of us.
Forty years ago, many Christians didn't understand that we are called to the public meaning of faith, as well as the personal.
After finishing the first video of Christmas Joy that I posted a few days ago I was surfing through my iTunes music and came across a middle-eastern and/or Celtic rendition of "Patapan" with "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen". Thats neat, too, I told myself. So I put it together and added a short intro from Paul Horn called "Joyous" to fill out the time. Here is the second Christmas Joy video. Enjoy, too.
No, I'm not up at the early hour to "enjoy" the longest night, I just posted it to publish now. I'm not that crazy.
Anyway, Jan Richardson at The Advent Door posted this wonderful blessing for the longest night. It speaks well to the darkness- and the soon to be seen light. Walk in any direction, she says, and we will head toward the dawn.
Blessing for the Longest Night
Longest Night © Jan L. Richardson.
All throughout these months
as the shadows
have lengthened,
this blessing has been
gathering itself,
making ready,
preparing for
this night.
It has practiced
walking in the dark,
traveling with
its eyes closed,
feeling its way
by memory
by touch
by the pull of the moon
even as it wanes.
So believe me
when I tell you
this blessing will
reach you
even if you
have not light enough
to read it;
it will find you
even though you cannot
see it coming.
You will know
the moment of its
arriving
by your release
of the breath
you have held
so long;
a loosening
of the clenching
in your hands,
of the clutch
around your heart;
a thinning
of the darkness
that had drawn itself
around you.
This blessing
does not mean
to take the night away
but it knows
its hidden roads,
knows the resting spots
along the path,
knows what it means
to travel
in the company
of a friend.
So when
this blessing comes,
take its hand.
Get up.
Set out on the road
you cannot see.
This is the night
when you can trust
that any direction
you go,
you will be walking
toward the dawn.
© Jan L. Richardson. janrichardson.com
It is the day and time of the Winter Solstice. The days are as short as they will be; the earth's journey is heading toward our northern summer. Though summer is weeks and months away, the darkness has been brought to a halt.
“The black moment is the moment when the real message of transformation is going to come. At the darkest moment comes the light.”
– Joseph Campbell
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lord of the Dance
Traditional
I danced in the morning when the world was begun
I danced in the moon and the stars and the sun;
I was called from the darkness by the song of the earth,
I joined in the singing and she gave me birth.
(chorus, repeat after each verse)
Dance, then, wherever you may be!
I am the Lord of the Dance, said he,
And I'll lead you on, wherever you may be,
I will lead you all in the Dance, said he!
I sleep in the kernel and I dance in the rain,
I dance in the wind, and through the waving grain,
And when you cut me down, I care nothing for the pain --
In Spring I'll be Lord of the Dance again!
I see the maidens laughing as they dance in the sun,
I count the fruits of the of the harvest, one by one;
I know the storm is coming, but the grain is all stored,
So I sing of the dance of the Lady and the Lord.
We dance ever slower as the leaves fall and spin
And the sound of the Horn is the wailing of the wind;
The Earth is wrapped in stillness and we move in a trance,
but we hold on fast to our faith in the dance.
The sun is in the south and the days lengthen fast,
And soon we'll sing for the winter that is past,
Now we light the candles and rejoice as they burn,
and Dance the dance of the sun's return.
They cut me down, but I leap up high!
I am life that will never, never die.
I'll live in you and you'll live in me --
I am the Lord of the Dance, said he!
The moon in her phases and the tides of the sea,
the movement of Earth, and the seasons that will be
Are rhythm for the dancing and a promise through the years --
The Dance goes on through joy and tears.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”
- Albert Camus
Why do we fall in love with an apocalypse? Do we think that if we know about it ahead of time we can prepare or- surprise- even cheat it? Do we think that if we are informed we will be able to party-hearty (or is it -hardy?) when the time comes? Or is it just so that when it doesn’t happen we can look at the other silly ones who REALLY believed it?
Apocalyptic thinking is part and parcel of being human. Just in my lifetime- quite short in the LONG scheme of things- we have had nuclear holocaust threats, the Late Great Planet Earth threats, Y2K threats, to name but the three most famous. People went scurrying off to build bomb shelters, pray hard or store up water while their computers got ready to shut down.
So, just in case you hadn’t noticed, we are now in the long (366-day) countdown to the end of the world. Again. Dec 21, 2012, according to the current crop of apocalyptic- experts in the Mayan region, will be it. The extensive, millenia-long Mayan calendar will end. All the cycles will come to an end as the sun completes its next and final sojourn through the sky.
Wait. You mean the sun doesn’t travel around the sky like the Mayans no doubt believed? You mean the calendar can start over, just like ours does every Dec. 31/Jan 1?
Darn. Just when I thought I had found a use for all those old Y2K bottles of water.
Not to miss out on a chance to make some money off the suckers tourists, Yahoo! News, the Mayans of Quintana Roo (Home to Cancun and Chichenitza) are ready.
Good thinking.Unlike enthusiasts of other doomsday theories who suggest putting together survival kits, southeastern Mexico, the heart of Maya territory, plans a yearlong celebration.
It's selling the date, the Winter Solstice in the coming year, as a time of renewal. Many archeologists argue that the 2012 reference on a 1,300-year-old stone tablet only marks the end of a cycle in the Mayan calendar.
"The world will not end. It is an era," said Yeanet Zaldo, a tourism spokeswoman for the Caribbean state of Quintana Roo, home to Cancun. "For us, it is a message of hope."
--Link
This drummer sure had fun doing this video. It makes me want to smile, too.
Enjoy.
Are you bowed down in heart?
Do you but hear the clashing discords and the din of life?
Then come away, come to the peaceful wood,
Here bathe your soul in silence. Listen! Now,
From out the palpitating solitude
Do you not catch, yet faint, elusive strains?
They are above, around, within you, everywhere.
Silently listen! Clear, and still more clear, they come.
They bubble up in rippling notes, and swell in singing tones.
Not let your soul run the whole gamut of the wondrous scale
Until, responsive to the tonic chord,
It touches the diapason of God's grand cathedral organ,
Filling earth for you with heavenly peace
And holy harmonies.
--James Weldon Johnson
Last week I was exercising when the cut, "Joy" by Paul Winter came through my headset. I have always like the feel of the song and I thought, "That would make a great soundtrack for a video slideshow of some of my favorite Christmas pictures of the past few years (and some from longer ago, as well.) So here's the first of two videos from last week using the same pictures. This one is with Paul Winter's incomparably joyous rendering of "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring."
With still a week until Christmas, the music of John Rutter sets the stage.
December 18 – How the Grinch Stole Christmas, narrated by Boris Karloff, is shown for the first time on CBS, becoming an annual Christmas tradition.
December 15 – Walt Disney dies while producing The Jungle Book, the last animated feature under his personal supervision.
Grief can be brought about by many specific things, good or bad. A promotion may be just as filled with grief as losing a job. When things change, for whatever reason, we lose something. Often the security that we build around ourselves, the security that says things will always stay just the way they are.
But, as I have spoken about before, those things come along that can be referred to as "Black Swans." These are the unexpected things. Or perhaps things that are expected but not yet, not at this time, not now- it's too inconvenient at the moment. Black Swans are the bane of our comfort and ease, the antidote (though unwanted) for complacency.
One of the more non-death-related grief inducers is age, simply the passing of time. I have posted, for example, those "xx-Year Memories." They serve as incredible reminders of the passage of time for me. Any posts about events since the mid-1950s are prods to my memory, items of remembrance, moments of recalling how long ago some of those things occurred.
The 45-year Memory from Sunday contained one of those life-changing times of awareness for me- the trial of Adolph Eichmann. As only a 13-year old who had just had his Bar Mitzvah can understand, Eichmann, from thousands of miles away shattered my perception of life.
On the global scale The Holocaust was more than a Black Swan, it was a Black Hole into which history has not yet recovered, if it ever can. It devastated, destroyed a way of thinking about humanity that had been a hallmark of western thought since the Renaissance. In one of the most advanced civilizations, civilized civilization, all those advances were turned to evil. Eichmann's arrest and trial sent (and still sends) shivers up my spine.
But in my little corner of the wilderness of northern Pennsylvania, at the same time (November 1961 - February 1962) my mother was in the hospital, dying rather quickly at age 48 of colon cancer.
While never consciously connected in my mind until now, they both served as events that are unexpected, out of left field, Black Swans. Grief and fear, sadness and confusion got wrapped up in that now distant time. It took years of growth and therapy and personal reflection to outgrow the initial pain of the death of my mother. It took years of study and reflection and spiritual searching to come to some personal understanding of The Holocaust, spurred by the intense understanding that such things can and will happen- but we must do everything humanly possible to stop them.
Even on a local level, where things like abuse and hatred can be as personally devastating as the Holocaust was to the world's self-understanding. When faced with protecting the weak, we must be steadfast. When faced with injustice, we must be willing to stand up. When faced with people of fear we must offer an antidote of hope.
Perhaps years of living (also called aging) allows one to see grief and its consequences and then take the time to review what that means. Black Swans like other things, happen. Then we take the time to allow ourselves to work through it. Change is real, we must work through it, not deny it, discover what we can in living through it.
Memories, good and bad, of change can remind us that we can get through the Black Swans.
Sometimes music can be as visual as much as it is audio. Over there on You Tube one can find wonders of the computer music world for all to see. Here is one that is about as humanly impossible as it can get, I think. Yet it has both visual and aural awe.
The Famous MIDI "Circus Galop" Played with Synthesia.
BROOKVILLE, Pa. (AP) — Authorities in northwestern Pennsylvania say a man published an obituary for his living mother in a ploy to get paid bereavement time off from work.
[He] wrote up the memorial notice because he didn't want to get fired for taking time off.
--AP-Yahoo!News
Over at Mental Floss they have the most wonderful gift idea for those who are of an analytical direction:
Yes, my friends, these are
December 11
A great player- Ryan Braun! It appears he has tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs. Let us hope that there is a good explanation. Baseball, like Braun, needs to keep itself clean. He is one of the new, younger players who shouldn't be in this. His MVP will be called into question.
Show us it ain't so, Ryan. For all of us and for baseball.
Link to ESPN
...or so I was told when a person I know heard about some city council somewhere (in Texas, I believe) who said they were not going to give in and remove a Nativity Scene from a public place. “These anti-Christian people need to know the will of the majority. The minority shouldn’t be allowed to push the majority around," he said in about that way.
Thus goes Round-
Whatever of the supposed War on Christmas. We poor Christians are really being persecuted.
Needless to say I don’t agree with the sentiment. First, I don’t believe there is a war on Christmas.
Nor do I believe it is meant to be anti-Christian. If it is “anti” anything it is “anti” religious “domination” of non-religious. Yes, I think some of the controversy is caused by people going over-the-top from the secular side. But the response from the “-ism” side is just as over the top.
Let me stand up and be heard, then.
I would love to see a Menorah in the public square since Judaism is as American as Christianity. Not the Ten Commandments. That is something else. But a Menorah- a light of hope for 8 days when all hope seemed futile.
I would love to see some awesome Muslim artwork in the public square, those beautiful mosaics with the words of the Koran since graven images are forbidden. Beauty of The Word of the Creator for all to see.
I would love to see a Buddha in the public square reminding us all that quiet contemplation at this time of the year is more priceless than what MasterCard can give.
I would love to see the Manger Scene in the Public Square. Mary, Joseph, the Sepherds would be right there with them all, in a full and truly American statement of the freedom of religion and its many sides and gifts to our diverse and rich culture. The Baby Jesus, born in a stable and placed in a manger. He is poor and homeless reminding us that the ways of materialistic excess everywhere else in this season is not the way of God.
Yes, that would certainly raise cry of foul from all sides. The secular would be against its seeming support of religion. The strict of any faith would call it too syncretistic or overly “universal”. The self-righteous would challenge putting a ”not-their-religion” together with “their religion.” No one would be happy. Except perhaps God.
I wonder who would be willing to stand up and be seen supporting THAT view of American patriotism?
