Variety

My second son mentioned on our drive down to Houston, that a lot of college kids say they listen to all kinds of music, "but you really do." Knowing how he feels about many of my music choices, I took this as about 75% complimentary. It seems a mark of honor, and a great irony. When I was younger and was trying to be unique, I chose music that a significant minority of other people did. Now that I listen to what catches my fancy, I turn out to be different without trying.

I thought of this today when Norwegian Folk Dances finished up on the car CD, and I replaced it with Johnny Winter. I'm not sure I should even mention what else is in the current pile. The combinations strike even me as the product of a fevered mind which has no coherence. Each individual choice is not that unusual. No really, it isn't. It's just that together they're unsettling.

Education

It is generally believed that schools and education are worse than they were in previous decades. The usual evidence offered are examples of idiotic things being done in schools these days, plus tests showing how little our students know about what should be basic information. Both of these intuitively seem persuasive, but don’t actually measure anything.

Most adults give little or no thought to “what we used to learn at school.” Everyone has a few examples of what they think they were taught, which they retrieve from memory whenever the subject comes up in conversation. Such memories are notoriously unreliable, though they are usually based on some real fact. The people who put any of their own adult energy into the topic are a distinct minority. Notably, it is that minority of people who like remembering things, analyzing them, and putting their opinions into words. This is going to include a significant concentration of those people who did well at school, whose social circle will be weighted toward those who also did well in school.

We remember what we learned. This has little to do with what our classroom as a whole learned. We learned fractions. We learned some geography. We learned the parts of speech. But some of our class then didn’t learn them, just as some don’t learn them now. Even more students learned these things temporarily, just as they do now.

Even rarer are those of us who write about such things. We are not representative of our classmates. This is not entirely an intelligence issue, though I don’t doubt that plays a big part. Some of our classmates went on to learn other things that we know little of. Some of what they use now had its roots in schoolwork, and when they remember “what we used to learn in school” they think of those things. We all learned metric equivalents. We all learned state geography. Those of us who use those things in our day-to-day now see the continuity back to early schooling. If you don’t use them, you forget them.

We all learned that Jefferson City is the capital of Missouri. Few of us have ever needed it again, so it does not get reinforced and we forget it. But Boston, MA, Providence, RI, Richmond, VA, Honolulu, HI – those have been reinforced a thousand times since school and we remember them. When we learned them in fourth grade, we didn’t know that when Maryland was mentioned, it was going to be Baltimore in the same sentence, not Annapolis. That which is not reinforced is most easily forgotten.

Our retrospective evaluations of what we learned in school, then, are the subsequently highly-reinforced memories of the subset of people who like learning and writing. Not a very good sample for comparison. No wonder we think the schools look ineffectual.

With very little effort, we can remember less-useful things we were taught in school. Banal little nothings of songs for each holiday…pointless crafts for same…doing-nothing time while you waited for the last student to finish (the virtue of sitting quietly for no reason was highly valued in those days)…hearty doses of penmanship lessons, with the capital letters changing every year…diagramming sentences (okay, limited usefulness)…filmstrips about home safety, with examples of things that seldom actually go wrong…spelling bees, where 90% of the students sat and watched for 99% of the time…recopying papers, coloring maps, painstakingly taking attendance (“present.”) - a host of educational experiences.

Special Education, of course, consisted of sitting in the hall.

Post 700: Postmodernism vs. Modernism. Which Philosophical Fashion Is Right For Me?

There’s nothing I can intelligently add to a discussion of postmodernism. Fortunately, in my role as Assistant Village Idiot, I do have an important perspective often missing from the debate: blinking in astonishment at the obvious being overlooked.

Whenever anyone says anything in favor of postmodernism, opponents will claim they are not talking about real postmodernism and are hiding what they really mean to make it look innocuous.

Whenever anyone says anything against postmodernism, pomos will claim that their opponents are not talking about real postmodernism and are confusing it with something else to make it look evil.


AVI observations: So, whatever you say about postmodernism, you’re wrong. How convenient for everyone. But what an advantage for me! If whatever I say, I’m going to be wrong, that’s my natural habitat.

Modernists believe in objectivity, absolute truth, and absolute stuff in general, according to the postmodernists. Postmodernists believe everything is entirely subjective, that truth is entirely local and relative, and relativity in general, according to the modernists. Lots of both dislike religion: the modernists because of its uncertainty, the postmodernists because of its certainty.

AVI observations: I think I’m seeing a pattern here. But back in the village, I hear modernist hard-science engineering types freely acknowledge, with no pressure from pomos whatsoever, that sometimes perspective matters and situations change. Yet the people who make the most frequent absolutist statements are the pomos, who are humanities and soft-science fuzzy types.

Modernists don’t like to examine their assumptions, their perspective, their meta-narratives. However, they can do it if they have to. They do like to examine everything else. Postmodernists love to examine their assumptions, perspectives and meta-narratives. They just never get around to examining their social, sexual, political, and religious assumptions. They do get around to examining yours.


AVI observations: So postmodernism is mostly just an attitude of condescension about what everyone else believes, plus a very serious look on your face that shows you are thinking very hard. Your aim is to seem deep.

Modernism, on the other hand, is mostly just an attitude of skepticism about what everyone else believes, plus a very serious look on your face that shows you are thinking very hard. Your aim is to seem precise.

Both get to keep the default beliefs of their class, generation, and training without having to examine them in the slightest. So long as a few of you do the examination honestly, the rest you can merely appear to.

In conclusion, both modernism and postmodernism make great fashion accessories for your personality. Choosing between them will depend on the look you are going for.

NCAA Bracket

I'm no expert, just havin' fun. I have a boring bracket up until the Sweet Sixteen: the 1-4 seeds in every region, except #5 Tennessee. Then the whole bracket goes loopy, with Ohio State my only #1 seed going to the Final Four. And the strange thing is, I think Ohio State may be the weakest of the #1 seeds. Their bracket, however, does them big favors. Only the A&M/Memphis winner should be tough for them.

I have two #12's beating #5's this year: Old Dominion and Illinois - the latter sort of a non-rational guess. My other early upsets are VCU over Duke, Winthrop over Notre Dame,George Washington over Vanderbilt.

Final Four: Oregon (winces), UCLA, Georgetown, Ohio State. Texas is my emotional favorite.

Fred Thompson

Fred Thompson, former Senator from Tennessee, announced he would enter the 2008 primaries. I am very much intrigued by this candidacy. He played Arthur Branch on "Law and Order" ("I'm an attorney and I play one on television.") Very bright guy, low-key, middling but solidly conservative.

The Crusades

Bernard Lewis, arguably the premier scholar on the history of the Middle-East, stated in his speech to American Enterprise Institute yesterday

Lewis urged us to have a little sense of proportion, and went on to say — and it was an illuminating line — ‘The crusade was a late, limited and unsuccessful imitation of the jihad.’

More here

Claudia Rosett, BTW, is the reporter who is most on top of all UN scandals, including the Oil-For-Food betrayal.

Trefoils

Annika Vinje brought my Girl Scout cookies to church today. I am having a sleeve of Trefoils and a glass of milk for lunch.

Hymns Get Ridiculously Complicated – 16th-18th Century

When we hear the word “hymns,” we usually think of the music of these centuries plus the 19th, which I will discuss next. Whether we love them or find them deadly, this is what we expect when we enter a church of a mainstream denomination on a Sunday. These hymns have numbers. The composer and lyricist are listed by name, along with their years of life. They have two staffs of music, one below the words and one above, and a very odd method of stacking verses that fit these in our minds hand-in-glove.

They are much more complicated than what came before. When musical notation became common and English literacy became widespread, writers of hymns suddenly favored ornate poetry, complex harmony, and loud organs. This complexity is only possible once you can write things down. After many repetitions a congregant or a musician might memorise a complicated piece, but generally, people need to have the words and music in front of them. Once this crutch of written notation was allowed them, writers of hymns went out of control. Only a culture in which most are literate, and many can read music, can sustain this level of complexity.

Look at these. These are lyricists getting completely out of hand.

Awake My Soul and with the sun (v.1)

Awake, my soul, and with the sun
Thy daily stage of duty run;
Shake off dull sloth, and joyful rise,
To pay thy morning sacrifice.

All Hail the Power (v. 2)

Let highborn seraphs tune the lyre, and as they tune it, fall
Before His face Who tunes their choir, and crown Him Lord of all.

Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah (v. 2)

Open now the crystal fountain,
Whence the healing stream doth flow;
Let the fire and cloudy pillar
Lead me all my journey through

.

I’ll Praise My Maker While I’ve Breath (v.2)

Why should I make a man my trust?
Princes must die and turn to dust;
Vain is the help of flesh and blood:
Their breath departs, their pomp, and power,
And thoughts, all vanish in an hour,
Nor can they make their promise good.

Praise to the Lord, the Almighty (v.5)

Praise to the Lord, Who, when tempests their warfare are waging,
Who, when the elements madly around thee are raging,
Biddeth them cease, turneth their fury to peace,
Whirlwinds and waters assuaging.

Open Now Thy Gates of Beauty (v.4)

Thou my faith increase and quicken,
Let me keep Thy gift divine,
Howsoe’er temptations thicken;
May Thy Word still o’er me shine
As my guiding star through life,
As my comfort in my strife.

Notice also that the words me, my, I are creeping in more frequently. Most hymns are still either declarative and/or communal, but the importance of the individual is growing. The use of thee, thy, thou is archaic and distancing now, suggesting a god far away and difficult to approach. In their own time these words had the opposite meaning. You was formal discourse for strangers; Thou was the intimate language of the family. Sweethearts would say I love thee; to say I love you would have been a mixed message. That feature of intimacy is entirely lost now, unless one has a familiarity with the same feature in foreign languages.

These works are now boring to children, daunting to newcomers, and often obscure in meaning. I love these hymns. I have had a wonderful time building this post and entering in to the strong, intense strains. A child brought up in the church from early years might absorb them over time. But for general consumption – no more.

Kids and newcomers hate them for their archaic language. These treasures of the church have become weighted necklaces of gold about our necks. It kills me to write that.

Others in group: Love Divine, All Loves Excelling
Come Thou Almighty King
O God Our Help In Ages Past
Ye Servants of God
O For a Thousand Tongues

Why Do Intellectuals Oppose The Military?

It is gratifying to have an idea, and even a phrasing, and run across a person much smarter than me who agrees with it, and puts it better than I do.

James L. Holmes, over at the American Thinker, makes points that are very reminiscent of our discussions here about tribes. He even calls a subset of intellectuals "wordsmiths," which I had offered as a descriptor of my Arts & Humanities Tribe.

Schooling, maintains Nozick, breeds in intellectuals a sense of superiority, and with it a sense of entitlement to the highest rewards society has to offer - not just top salaries but praise comparable to that lavished on them by their teachers. After completing their formal academic training in the centralized environment of the classroom, intellectuals go forth into a seemingly chaotic capitalist society, which purports to reward individual citizens by merit but in fact applies a different standard of merit from the one imparted in the classroom.

There is a link in the essay to this earlier piece by Nozick, who wondered two decades ago why intellectuals opposed capitalism. Also recommended.

Impeachment

Sooo, various towns in Vermont are voting to impeach Bush. In Putney it was unanimous. I haven’t read the resolutions, but I assume they are polite wordings of the “lied to get us into an illegal war” accusation. If they really got rolling, I imagine the spying on civilians and torturing prisoners ideas got in there as well.

These resolutions have no force, as everyone, including these various townspeople, knows. These amount to much less than a non-binding resolution of the Senate. But people feel unheard, so they go where they can to make a statement, like grafitti artists. Just because these resolutions can’t make anyone do anything, they do give the satisfaction of having made a statement. People sometimes like to declare to the world, or to their posterity, “Yes these things happened, but I didn’t agree.” I think I understand the motivation.

There are other things happening beneath the surface, however. I would note first that the idea that the Bush opposition has not been heard is preposterous. It is embarrassing, in fact, to imagine having to point that out to a usually-rational friend. The debate about Iraq takes place every day, dominating the news. I think people are fairly well-aware that the Democrats are angry, angry with Bush, with the War in Iraq as a primary focus of that. Anyone who feels that they are not being heard is not absorbing some very obvious data. Their feeling must come from something other than the facts in hand.

What they are upset about, then, is that the country is not doing what they want. There is a belief that we are doing what some other people want. That we might not be doing quite what anyone wanted, but hammered out a consensus, seems not to enter the equation for them. It’s an us-them, and they feel they have been robbed.

I am trying to see how this is different from a child’s perception of the world, and I’m not coming up with anything but better vocabulary as a divider. Children believe that if you are not doing what they want, you must not have listened. They find it impossible to imagine that you could understand their point of view and not agree. Personality disorders, BTW, have a similar organization of reality. If you really listened, you would have to agree.

This making a statement to distance yourself from the president, or the administration, or American culture, has become quite common in the 21st C. From the “Not In Our Name” campaign to the Dixie Chicks, there has been this run on Americans going out of their way to secede from the Union. They wash their hands of this enterprise by the other Americans. They apologize to “the world” for the actions of their countrymen.

I doubt that this is brand new, but I can’t think of earlier examples. Perhaps Vietnam protest had some of this, but I can’t come up with any. Nor can I think of examples of this happening in other countries. Someone in the UK has likely done it, for much the same reasons as their American counterparts. That, I would count as the same example, not a separate example.

Do what we say or we’ll publicly disown you. It seems an odd contradiction among a people who stress our common lot in other areas. We are to care about pollution, and poverty, and education, because they “affect us all.”

Puzzling.

90%

90% of parenting is just saying your lines. You have to be present to say your lines, of course. All the food-on-the-table, roof-over-your-head, shoes-on-your-feet things are of course the basics. Without those you don't really have much chance to say your lines. And those basics consume an enormous amount of time and energy, without which parenting wouldn't take place.

Easy to say, hard to do. Sometimes you are tired enough from all those basics that saying your lines seems an unfair imposition. Sometimes you feel you have said these lines enough times. And you're right. It is unfair. It is too many times.

But someone has to say your lines, so it might as well be you. And once you know that just saying your lines is often all that's required, it becomes easier.

Christofascists

For those who thought the name-calling was just hyperbole, check out the views of Chris Hedges. I find the easy use of the word "fascist" troubling for many reasons: it diminishes the horror of the Holocaust; it is an excuse to pretend that one's personal anger has international meaning; it is an imprecise and generic insult.

But Hedges really means it. This level of frothing never occurs unless someone has a personal issue - it is never intellectually based, however it is covered. Does anyone know what this journalist's issue is?

Transnationalism Is The Last Refuge of A Scoundrel

This fits nicely with the last post though it is from exactly a year ago.

Samuel Johnson originally said "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." Johnson said this in the mid-18th C, before Europe became convulsed -- for good and ill -- with movements which purported to transcend mere national boundaries and uplift Mankind in general. The nation was a cause larger than one's own self, and thus the most convenient sheep's clothing for a wolf to hide in. Marx would not appear on the scene for a century. Even the American and French Revolutions, with their high-falutin' language about the Rights of Man, were unknown.

If transnationalism had existed, Johnson would have picked that instead, not merely because it follows that the "higher" cause creates the better cover, but because he would have observed it happening.

Mark Steyn excoriates the UN, (HT: Instapundit) not because it is flawed, but because its flaws are now central to its existence. The UN retains wide emotional approval, especially on the left, despite its demonstrated corruption and active interference in the improvement of nations.

In fact, however, the UN is a shamefully squalid organization whose corruption is almost impossible to exaggerate. If you think—as the media and the left do in this country—that Iraq is a God-awful mess (which it’s not), then try being the Balkans or Sudan or even Cyprus or anywhere where the problem’s been left to the United Nations. If you don’t want to bulk up your pension by skimming the Oil-for-Food program, no need to worry. Whatever your bag, the UN can find somewhere that suits—in West Africa, it’s Sex-for-Food, with aid workers demanding sexual services from locals as young as four; in Cambodia, it’s drug dealing; in Kenya, it’s the refugee extortion racket; in the Balkans, sex slaves. On a UN peace mission, everyone gets his piece.

It retains this cachet because transnationalism is thought to be a holier cause than nationalism. Perhaps even especially in the Christian denominations, there is a fuzzy logic which believes "Because the Church transcends national boundaries, therefore anything which also transcends national boundaries is holier than the merely national." When you put it this way, it is revealed as merely silly. But the denominational offices, the seminaries, and the higher clergy really do think this way. Causes which "reach across" (notice the image) national boundaries are seen as aspirational and inspirational. Trying to rise above "mere nationalism" is seen as a default Good Thing.

It is not. CS Lewis notes that the higher things may rise, the more evil they may become. Devils are made of fallen angels, not fallen cattle.

Additionally, notice that the Church didn't begin to think this way until socialism became part of the equation. The Holy Roman Empire did not envision itself as a mini-UN. The laudable cooperation of Christians from different backgrounds occurred because they had an allegiance to the Church, and hopefully, ultimately to Christ, not because they had an allegiance to transnationalism per se.

Transnationalism is a new false god, and like Moloch, has devoured many children.

It Takes a Village Idiot

But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. Matthew 5:39

The direction from Jesus is pretty clear. One might try and get around it by noting that this is the highest possible response, on the order of "Sell all your goods and give the money to the poor," or "Be ye perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect." But that might be an evasion. Jesus did say it, and having lived in the same world we inhabit, He presumably knew that this is counterintuitive, unnatural, and difficult.

What we do not have from Jesus, however, is any indication how this applies when it's someone else who is being struck, or what this means for people under our protection. The classic pacifist would immediately apply this to all situations of aggression. By that reading, attacks on your wife, your children, your flocks, fields, or nation would fall under the same command - to never use force in response.

Perhaps so. That is more counterintuitive, unnatural, and difficult, but it is the same sort of difficulty. Certainly Jesus does not say anything here to suggest exceptions for group behavior or protection of others. Maybe we're stuck with it as is: if someone takes your son, give him your daughter as well; if the Mongols burn your fields, deliver your flocks as well, that the tribe might perish, but you all die a witness. Perhaps the Mongols will be stunned by your righteousness and convert. Maybe it will take the righteous capitulation of a dozen Christian nations before they get the message, but it will eventually work. Won't it?

So let's apply this cheek-turning command to other progressive causes. If Caucasians have better jobs than African-Americans, then give them better schools as well. If the state forbids you to have an abortion, give up birth control as well. If your rich neighbor cheats on his taxes, then pay his share and give him one of your cars. If the mills burn too much fossil fuel, let them dumb junk in the river as well.

Hmm. Something seems to be going wrong here. It seems this cheek-turning is being applied selectively. Community action to enforce justice seems to be a good thing when it's taxes or pollution, but a bad thing when it's war. What exactly is the difference between them? Is Jesus's command only for the rich? But he delivered it mainly to the poor. Are Christian progressives to encourage the poor to seek greater oppression, then?

Perhaps the behavior of nations, and the Christians who inhabit them, is too far a jump to make cleanly. Jesus gave an individual command; it just might mean something in the political realm as well. But how are we to make the leap and apply it? Taking Matthew 5 as command for nations and warfare leads us to a terrible contradiction with what the religious left espouses in other areas.

And the contradiction is enormous, almost complete. Not only is the verse only applied to the examples of warfare and redistribution, it is applied in reverse in other areas. Working for justice means confronting the powerful, sending them to jail if they're wrong, making the system give the oppressed what they deserve. And probably rightly. In the history of getting justice for the downtrodden, the confrontative, strong-arm tactics do seem to have worked better. Christians just can't have it both ways. If the community can organize to tax the rich at higher rates because it is just, then it can organize to defend the oppressed of other nations. Just 'cause we wanna, even.

I offer the following explanation. The religious left would like to believe it is against war because they believe it such the way of Christ. They don't mean it. They are not lying to us, but to themselves. What they really believe is that talking works better than war. They see avoidance of war as a tactic, not a principle. They don't perceive this. But there really isn't any escape. They don't believe Christ, they believe Gandhi, and quote Christ in support. They want to be servants of Christ, when you pull off the disguise, it's Gandhi underneath.

That last was a brutal accusation on my part, but I make it with full knowledge of the fact. The religious left does not believe in the principle of returning good for evil - not at the community level - as much as they believe in the principle of nonviolence, which is not the same thing. They embrace pacifism not because they are prepared to apply non-resistance to all injustice, but because they think it will work. (There is one escape I see. They might also believe that military action is only justified when sanctioned by the United Governments, uh, I mean Nations. They believe transnationalism has some innate holiness.) If you have a better explanation, give it a try.

I think there is a way of envisioning these issues in an intermediate step between individual and society at large: imagine a village. Imagine a village of predominantly Christian people, who wish to do well by each other and be an example for Christ. When one woman starts to break into houses and steal, what do they do in response? When one young man begins to rape the women of the village, what should they do? Cast them out? Kill them? Give them more? Try and reason with them? Send for the King's men? - And what would the king's men do?

Once you've answered that set of difficulties, go on to a harder one. What if the next village is stealing your sheep, or not letting you get to the market town to trade? Pretend you are a simple Christian villager, even the Village Idiot, and determine what should be done.

Emerging Church - Very Preliminary Comments

There is a difference between the Emergent Church, which is a specific organization associated with Emergent Village, and the Emerging Church, which is a more generic name for a broad movement. Critics of the movement often fail to make this distinction, which is not only inaccurate, but somewhat insulting, as the distinction is often mentioned.

There are some areas where I think the Emerging Church is quite clearly correct, and they have the added advantage of having some critics who are clear meatheads. Our weekly gathering, still called a Bible study though it has not been for years, is very much what some Emerging churches are attempting to create: creative, nontraditional worship; missional outlook; community; doctrinal flexibility and humility. There's a lot to like in this movement.

Because of this intellectual approval and agreement, I don't know what to make of the fact that I find many of the EC advocates so irritating. That in itself is enough to keep me from venturing further comments, as I don't know if the irritation is driven by my irritability or their being irritating.

No MySpace

As if you needed 10 Reasons Not To Have a MySpace Page

Not-So-Ancient Hymnody

Second in a series.
The earliest worship lyrics, as I noted, were straight from the scriptures. Jerub-baal asked in the comments for sources, and I have updated that post, including a link to an online radio station which plays Gregorian chant.

Somewhat more flexibility of lyric began to creep in over the centuries, though the subject matter hewed pretty close to rephrasing biblical sentiments. Notice in "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" (Veni Emanuel) that no single line is quoted from a Bible verse, but every line uses biblical phrases. This is apparent even in this later translation of the 12th Century lyrics.

Veni, veni Emanuel Captivum solve Israel
Qui gemit in exilio Privatus Dei Filio

Gaude, gaude Emanuel nascetur pro te Israel

O Come, O Come Emmanuel And ransom captive Israel
That mourns in lonely exile here Until the Son of God appear

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee O Israel

O Come Thou wisdom from on high Who orderest all things mightily
To us the path of knowledge show And teach us in her ways to go

O Come Thou rod of Jesse, free Thine own from Satan’s tyranny
From depths of Hell Thy people save And give them victory over the grave

O Come Thou key of David, come And open wide our heavenly home
Make safe the way that leads on high And close the path to misery

O Come Thou root of Jesse’s tree An ensign of thy people be
Before Thee rulers silent fall All peoples on Thy mercy call

O Come, Thou Dayspring come and cheer Our spirit by Thine advent here.
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night And death’s dark shadows put to flight

O Come, O Come great Lord of might Who to Thy tribes on Sinai’s height
In ancient times once gave the law In cloud and majesty and awe

O Come Desire of nations, bind In one the hearts of all mankind
Bid Thou our sad divisions cease And be Thyself our King of Peace

Similarly, in the 16th C "Gaudete" the chorus is not Scripture, but so closely scriptural as to make no difference. The verses, because of the artistic convention of rhyming (in the Latin, not in this translation), get pulled just a bit farther afield. Note: gaudete, "rejoice," is related to our word gaudy. Though the word has the negative connotation now of being overdone, the connection with rejoicing, which suggests exclamation marks rather than mild approval, is clear.
From the Finnish collection of medieval music Piae Cantiones, which I first encountered while listening to Steeleye Span.

Gaudete, gaudete Christus est natus Ex Maria virgine gaudete
Rejoice! Rejoice! Christ is born Of the Virgin Mary, Rejoice!

1. Tempus adest gratiae Hoc quod optabamus
Carmina laetitiae Devote reddamus

1. The time of grace has come For which we have prayed
Let us devoutly sing Songs of joy

2. God is made man While nature wonders
The world is renewed By Christ the King

3. The closed gate of Ezekiel Has been passed through
From where the light has risen Salvation is found

4. Therefore let our assembly sing praises now At this time of purification
Let it bless the Lord Greetings to our King

This technique of the congregation singing or reciting one repeated part while the leader inserts verses between is common in most non-literate cultures. Before slaves were allowed education, the African-American spiritual had this call-and-response form ("Michael Row The Boat Ashore"), and liturgical churches retain this style in the prayers in which the congregation echoes "Lord have mercy." This form makes eminent good sense if you think about it, as it is a very efficient way of allowing everyone to participate while developing greater complexity.

As verses enter the picture, we see the beginnings of story being told in music. Veni Emanuel captures a whole sweep of Old Testament characters and themes. The communal aspect is still very strong: we instead of I, our instead of my still predominate.

Visual break here, because it's important and I want to catch those scanning: The communal words of prayer and song were considered of utmost importance to nearly all earlier ages of the church. One does occasionally find lyrics that use me, my, I, but these were in the specific context of confession, or meditating on Jesus dying for my sin ("O Sacred Head Now Wounded"). As we move into the later ages of the church, we will see that we have lost something when our hymns start to say "He walks with me and He talks with me, and He tells me I am His own." It's a nice sentiment, but something precious has been lost.

A related type of lyric is the doxology (glory + word), a form which predates the Christian era but was popular in the medieval church. The Tallis Canon, the Gloria Patri, and "Praise God from whom all blessings flow" are among the oldest pieces still commonly sung in English in our churches.

Other early lyrics we still keep: "All Creatures of Our God and King," "All Glory, Laud, and Honor," and "Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silent."

The only real rivals to these pieces for age are some Christmas carols, which we also tend to hang onto fiercely. The carols, sometimes based on folk tunes for pagan festivals, were not always accepted in formal worship. One can still see the conflict of Christian interpretation being imposed on non-Christian elements in such carols as "The Holly and The Ivy," "O Tannenbaum," "The Boar's Head Carol," and the various Wassails.

Early carols:
The First Nowell c. 1600 AD
I saw 3 ships 1500
Good King Wenceslas 1500
Lullay 1500
A Babe is Born 1350
The Angel Gabriel 1450
In Dulci Jubilo 1350
Lo How a Rose Ere Blooming 1600

You Knew This Already, But...

Which political side of the blogosphere is more potty-mouthed?

Okay, too easy. But did you realize it was at a ratio of 18/1?

Update: It is actually even more dramatic than that. Most of the uses of George Carlin's Seven Words on the right side of the blogosphere were quoting the left side.

Humbling

I read Christopher Hitchens notes on Robert Conquest a month ago. A few lines stuck with me, so I went back and read it again over the weekend. I was deeply impressed with Conquest's humility when asked about the War in Iraq. He has opinions on the matter, but doesn't feel that he knows enough to comment. Robert Conquest knows more about world events than any thousand people you know put together.

Well I stand humbled, then. If Conquest doesn't believe he knows enough to have a public opinion, what am I blathering on about?

I have kicked the American tribes, particularly the A & H Tribe, for adopting political views as a fashion accessory, a method of declaring the sort of person one is. My unstated claim was that this of course is not true of me. Yet I wonder if any of us do better when publicly declaring our beliefs than simply declaring: "See, this is the sort of person I am."

Our day-to-day activities have a much more profound effect on the world than our political actions. A single vote has little effect, and is more a ritual of tribal unity. Few of us persuade many people more than incrementally. Moving to another place, taking a different job, having children, making an act of generosity - all these have much more effect on the world.

Vanity, vanity, all is vanity, saith The Preacher.

Emerging Church

I have been reading up on, and soliciting comments about, the Emerging/Emergent Church. I will be making preliminary comments in the next few days.