Desert Call

The Lyrics for Eden Mi Qedem’s Desert Call
By Sh’muel

We’re born into the sand,
Palms stretched out, infinite hands
For generations generations the same call,
Constantly reminding us what here for.

We’re walking on the edge,
Of holding on and letting go,
From with out from within ourselves
   beyond our minds,
Subtly answering us all the time.

But the truth beyond words is always clear,
Hints of it in this and that
   and everything even in our thoughts.
If there was a song which makes it clear
   what you want from me, I’d sing it.
If there is a way to make known to me
   where I should be, I’d be there.
If there was such a thing as revelation,
   I’d do and I’d hear.
The time is gonna’ come when you
   and the creation will be as one,
Please, look into our eyes.

Please look into our eyes,
Tell us, were our fathers right or wrong?
In the way they heard your light
   the way they saw your voice?
In the language that the chose
   to call your sacred name?

There’s not a single place,
The beginning endless light don’t shine,
A thousand ways to turn away from you.
A thousand ways you give us to come back again.

But the truth beyond words is always clear,
Breathing life into this world
   drawing us closer to it.

But the truth beyond words is always clear,
Hints of it in this and that
   and everything even in our thoughts.
If there was a song which makes it clear
   what you want from me, I’d sing it.
If there is a way to make known to me
   where I should be, I’d be there.
If there was such a thing as revelation,
   I’d do and I’d hear.
The time is gonna’ come when you
   and the creation will be as one,
Please, look into our eyes.

Click on over to their city and buy the disk or some MP3s:

The Banner of Love

I found this in my journal from January 2000…I can’t say as I wrote it, it’s coined poetry (not canned): coined from the prose words of someone else. In this case, I took a passage from St. Gregory of Nyssa’s Commentary on the Song of Solomon and Origen’s commentary on the same passage of text. The verses in question lead off the poem (quoted from the King James Bible). I noted in the journal that “I’m in the process of setting it to an Anglican Chant-style tune so that it can be sung by the folks at church.” That seems never to have happened.

I think I’ll take care of that soon.

The Banner of Love
© 2000 by Huw Richardson

I sat down under his shadow with great delight, *
and his fruit was sweet to my taste.
He brought me to the house of wine, *
and his banner over me was love.
His left hand is under my head, *
and his right hand embraces me.

My Lord says, Bring me into the house of wine
Why have I been standing outside for so long
Behold I stand at the door and knock
Only open the door, I will come in
I will eat with you and you with me

My Soul says, Bring me into the house of wine.
Spread over me the Banner of Love.
My thirst is so strong
and I am no longer satisfied

To my soul Christ says
Bring me in! Bring me in!
I will Bring your soul to the House of Wine
that your Soul may be filled
With my Wine of Joy
With my Wine, Holy Spirit

The whole content of the cup,
drained into her mouth,
is unable to quench her thirst
she wants to be taken to the cellar
to apply her mouth to the vats
overflowing with intoxicating wine

Lead in the Bridegroom, who calls your soul.
The Word, Wisdom, Truth enters your house
Bring him into your house of wine

You shall see the grapes squeezed into the vats
You shall see the vine that produces the grapes
You shall see the vinedresser of the true vine
who has cultivated these grapes
They enter the Cellar the House of Wine
Where the mystery of the wine is performed.
Once they enter, my Soul aspires still higher
Put me under the banner of your love
For Love, says John, is God.
For Love, says John, is God.

Deathly Hallows

OK folks: let’s chill on the Deathly Hallow Spoilers. Between the internet and the radio (and I assume TV) the amount of Harry Potter Spoilers and Harry Potter Analysis and Harry Potter Predictions… argh.

A Moratorium: my copy of the book will be here on Saturday. There will be blogging next weekend until I’m done reading. As soon as I get the book… if there will be spoilers published on this blog, it will be after 1 August.

I may, however, publish a review as soon as I’m done.

Harry Potter Spoilers

I don’t know about you but the whole build up to “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” is starting to drive me nuts. I don’t mind people putting spoilers on their websites, but OMG people, the books not out yet! Wait a while. This is almost as bad as guessing who the antichrist is based on the fact that Ronald Wilson and Reagan each have six letters.

(Remember the famous “Snape Killed Dumbledore” video? I can’t find a link, but that’s more like the kind of spoiler I’d do… driving by the bookstore at midnight yelling out plot twists to freak out the geeks. I digress.)

I am looking forward to seeing “Order of the Phoenix” for there are quite a few plot twists in that one that need to be resolved in “Deathly Hallows”. And I’m wondering what the connexion might be (if any) between the “hallows” of the title and the Hallows of Britain - ie the Holy Grail. Although I don’t think any of the plot ideas of John Granger have shown up in the Potter Books, I still think his alchemical idea works. Personally I think it’s all just good story telling. She doesn’t need an ulterior plot device to be a good writer.

For those who say there is Alchemy behind the plot line, the Holy Grail figures in to that one and for those who say there is Catholicism, hey, the Holy Grail works there too! The Grail really is a link between the two. The Holy Grail came out of it’s occult background into more mundane thinking as the Roman Church started teaching the Bread = Actual Flesh. The Christian grail stories arise at the same time as “bleeding hosts” start to show up on altars.

Given Harry Potter’s function as a pagan and Christian symbol, I hope the Hallows and the Hallows are all tied together!

Hymntelligent Design

The spacious firmament on high,
With all the blue ethereal sky,
And spangled heavens, a shining frame
Their great Original proclaim.
Th’unwearied sun, from day to day,
Does his Creator’s powers display,
And publishes to every land
The work of an Almighty Hand.

Soon as the evening shades prevail
The moon takes up the wondrous tale,
And nightly to the listening earth
Repeats the story of her birth;
While all the stars that round her burn
And all the planets in their turn,
Confirm the tidings as they roll,
And spread the truth from pole to pole.

What though in solemn silence all
Move round the dark terrestrial ball?
What though no real voice nor sound
Amid the radiant orbs be found?
In reason’s ear they all rejoice,
And utter forth a glorious voice,
Forever singing as they shine,
“The hand that made us is divine.”

Words: Joseph Addison, in The Spectator (London, England: August 23, 1712). It followed an essay on the proper means of strengthening and confirming faith in the mind of man, with this introduction:

The Supreme Being has made the best arguments for his own existence in the formation of the heavens and the earth, and these are arguments which a man of sense cannot forbear attending to who is out of the noise and hurry of human affairs… The Psalmist has very beautiful strokes of poetry to this purpose in that exalted strain (Psalm xix). As such a bold and sublime manner of Thinking furnished out very noble Matter for an Ode, the Reader may see it wrought into the following one.

Music: Creation, Franz J. Haydn, 1798. Click here to hear the music.

(Props to St Mary’s, Asheville, where this was the closing hymn today.)

Questions.

Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart
and try to love the questions themselves …
Don’t search for the answers,
which could not be given to you now,
because you would not be able to live them.
And the point is, to live everything.
Live the questions now.
Perhaps then, someday far in the future,
you will gradually, without even noticing it,
live your way into the answer.

Rainer Maria Rilke

From: Take This Bread (p97)

I ate the bread.

Conversion isn’t, after all, a moment: It’s a process, and it keeps happening, with cycles of acceptance and resistance, epiphany and doubt. As I struggled with bread and wine and belief over the following year at St Gregory’s, it stayed hard. I began to understand why so many people chose to be “born-again” and follow strict rules that would tell them what to do, once and for all. It was tempting to reply on a formula - “accepting Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and saviour,” for example - that became itself a form of idolatry and kept you from experiencing God in your flesh, in the complicated flesh of others. It was tempting to proclaim yourself “saved” and go back to sleep.

The faith I was finding was jagged and more difficult. It wasn’t about abstract theological debates: Does God exist? Are sin and salvation predestined? Or even about political/ideological ones” Is capital punishment a sin? Is there a scriptural foundation for accepting homosexuality?

It was about action. Taste and see, the Bible said, and I did. I was tasting a connection between communion and food - between my burgeoning religion and my real life. My first, questioning year at church ended with a question whose urgency would propel me into work I’ve never imagined: Now that you’ve taken the bread, what are you going to do?

- by Sara Miles ©2007

An Invite from Geoffrey

Mr Chaucer invites us to remember that Sunday is that day when April with its sweet showers shall pierce the drought of March to the root. In celebration whereof, he most humbly adds:

Ich am nat oon to tooten myne owen horne, but this week-ende ich wolde asken yow to declaymen my tales. To yowrselves, to yowr frendes, or simplye in the marketplace or churchyarde. For charitees sake, ye coulde declaymen them to beggares, leperes, or humorlesse rogues who studien engineerynge. Wherever ye proclaymen them thogh, do yt so in loude voyse and cleere, for yt is only fooles who think a poeme lith on the page aloone.

Yf thou knowst nat this maner of Englyssh, be nat ashamed. Yf thou kanst reden thys blogge, thou kanst reden myn Englisshe. Talke to yt slowlie, as if it were an olde relative whom thou lovest verie muche, and yt shal talke back to thee.

What’s more: we’ve an open invitation to share his works on the internet and to let him know:

I, Galfridus Chaucer, do invite all my rederes to poost yower contribuciouns as comments to this poost - ye maye make videoes for ye-tube of redynges of myn werkes or of adaptaciouns, ye maye poost linkes to mp3s, or to events, or to peyntures or animaciouns or what-evir ye wolde present to the othir rederes of myn blog to celebrate this joyous moneth.

This weekend always brings back fond memories of learning the Canterbury Tales - memorising the first 18 lines - in the Fall Semester of my Freshman Year at The Kings College (1982) in June Steffensen Hagen’s English Lit 101 class. Dr Hagen was also very helpful and pastoral in other, personal matters. In that vein, yer host shall endeavour to produce a video for YeTube.

(A timely confession: I think there’s something funny about Palm Sunday happening on April Fools day… think about it. “Hosanna!” Pause. “April Fools!”)

Origins of Consciousness

The following is from Consciousness and the Voices of the Mind by Julian Jaynes. Available as a free PDF from the Julian Jaynes Society. (Tie this into the discussion on evolution and morality which links back to the NY Times article I pointed out here.)

More

Welcoming Lover

LOVE BADE Me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack’d anything.

“A guest,” I answer’d, “worthy to be here”;
Love said, “You shall be he.”
“I, the unkind, the ungrateful? ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.”
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
“Who made the eyes but I?”

“Truth, Lord, but I have marr’d them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.”
“And know you not,” says Love, “who bore the blame?”
“My dear, then I will serve.”
“You must sit down,” says Love, “and taste my meat.”
So I did sit and eat.

George Herbert