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Beloved in Peanuts, as we await the festival of the Great Pumpkin,
let us prepare ourselves so that we may be shown its true meaning.
Let us hear, in comic strips from Charles Schulz,
how Linus foretold
that the Great Pumpkin would visit and reward his waiting people,
in a pumpkin patch of great sincerity.
Let us rejoice in our Pumpkin Carols and hymns,
that the good purpose of the Great Pumpkin is being mightily fulfilled.

From a fragment of a Bidding Prayer for the Great Pumpkin, late twentieth century, author unknown

Labels: All Saints' Day, literature

This year brings a special moment that I've been waiting for since... well, for years.

That is the confluence of Good Friday and the Feast of the Annunciation (Mar. 25).

Now, before you get all huffy, yes, I know this feast is transferred.

In Holy Week (the week from Palm Sunday to Easter) and in Easter Week (the week from Easter to the following Sunday) all "lesser feasts" are transferred to later in the calendar. This makes sense. This is the holiest time of the church year, and our focus should rightly be on our Lord's passion, death, and resurrection. This year the Episcopal Church will formally celebrate this feast on April 4 (Jesus needing a shorter than usual gestation period this year).

But still, the fact remains that in many circumstances Mar. 25 would be the day that the Church remembers the announcement to a young girl, a virgin, that she was pregnant with God.

So for Anglicans, who are Christians who do theology with a heavy dose of big-I Incarnation, there is at least a unique opportunity for theological exploration here. And it's one that was written beautifully 408 years ago by John Donne.

What happened in 1608? Please note that the date that I have for this poem is 1608. But Easter was on April 6 that year, so maybe Donne was actually writing about something else? Oh, no, have I been waiting for the wrong day?! I don't think so.

How often is Good Friday on March 25? This last occurred in 2005, which is when I drafted this article (thanks, Internet!). When does it happen again? Well, I can't find it on my calendar for a while...

Upon the Annunciation and
Passion Falling upon One Day.
1608

Tamely, frail body, abstain today; today
My soul eats twice, Christ hither and away.
She sees Him man, so like God made in this,
That of them both a circle emblem is,
Whose first and last concur; this doubtful day
Of feast or fast, Christ came and went away;
She sees Him nothing twice at once, who’s all;
She sees a Cedar plant itself and fall,
Her Maker put to making, and the head
Of life at once not yet alive yet dead;
She sees at once the virgin mother stay
Reclused at home, public at Golgotha;
Sad and rejoiced she’s seen at once, and seen
At almost fifty and at scarce fifteen;
At once a Son is promised her, and gone;
Gabriel gives Christ to her, He her to John;
Not fully a mother, she’s in orbity,
At once receiver and the legacy;
All this, and all between, this day hath shown,
The abridgement of Christ’s story, which makes one
(As in plain maps, the furthest west is east)
Of the Angels’ Ave and Consummatum est.
How well the Church, God’s court of faculties,
Deals in some times and seldom joining these!
As by the self-fixed Pole we never do
Direct our course, but the next star thereto,
Which shows where the other is and which we say
(Because it strays not far) doth never stray,
So God by His Church, nearest to Him, we know
And stand firm, if we by her motion go;
His Spirit, as His fiery pillar doth
Lead, and His Church, as cloud, to one end both.
This Church, by letting these days join, hath shown
Death and conception in mankind is one:
Or ‘twas in Him the same humility
That He would be a man and leave to be:
Or as creation He had made, as God,
With the last judgment but one period,
His imitating Spouse would join in one
Manhood’s extremes: He shall come, He is gone:
Or as though the least of His pains, deeds, or words,
Would busy a life, she all this day affords;
This treasure then, in gross, my soul uplay,
And in my life retail it every day.

             – John Donne

Labels: Annunciation, Donne, Good Friday, Holy Week, literature, poetry, theology

It is in the twenties that the actual momentum of life begins to slacken, and it is a simple soul indeed to whom as many things are significant and meaningful at thirty as at ten years before. At thirty an organ-grinder is a more or less moth-eaten man who grinds an organ–and once he was an organ-grinder!

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Beautiful and the Damned.

Happy Birthday to me.

Labels: literature, real life

There’s a very interesting mystery in Simon Boswell’s debut novel, The Seven Symphonies, which features Helsinki homicide detective Miranda Lewis. Miranda has a musical background, as her father is a musicologist and her sister, Rosie, is a cellist. Miranda’s knowledge about music in general and Jean Sibelius in particular comes in very useful when a young woman’s body is found propped against the monument to Sibelius in Helsinki’s Sibelius Park. The woman’s been strangled and her little finger cut off. Next to her is a violin. Then, another body is found. It’s not long before Miranda and her investigation team realize that they’re on the trail of a serial killer. This isn’t an ordinary killer, though; each of the murders is related in some way to one of Sibelius’ symphonies. Also, after each murder, the killer sends a letter to the police; the letters contain cryptic references to the symphonies, a quotation from Sibelius’ diary, the victim’s fingerprint and the signature, JS. Once Miranda realizes that these murders are tied in with the Sibelius symphonies, she also realizes that she and her team don’t have much time to find the killer. Besides the crimes that are at the center of the plot, this novel also includes a lot of interesting information on Sibelius, his life and his music.

from "Give Be the Beat, Boys, and Free my Soul", Confessions of a Mystery Novelist

May I also recommend the excellent non-mystery novel Winter Fire by William R. Trotter.

Labels: Jean Sibelius, literature

An average man By Robert Hugh Benson

Ah, just one of the many Caleb Simper references in the literature.

But who's "Gadsby"? More obscure Anglican church music to research . . .

Labels: literature, Simper

American poet Charles Bernstein counts from one to a hundred [mp3].

If you ask me, this is a spoken interpretation of Herbert Howells Master Tallis's Testament.

The reading is powerful lesson to organists. Even with limited means (pipes, air) we can be exceedingly expressive.

Labels: literature, organ music

Conjubilant with Song points us to Christina Rossetti's Advent poem:

This Advent moon shines cold and clear,
  These Advent nights are long;
Our lamps have burned year after year
  And still their flame is strong.
'Watchman, what of the night?' we cry,
  Heart-sick with hope deferred:
'No speaking signs are in the sky,'
  Is still the watchman's word.

The Porter watches at the gate,
  The servants watch within;
The watch is long betimes and late,
  The prize is slow to win.
'Watchman, what of the night?' But still
  His answer sounds the same:
'No daybreak tops the utmost hill,
  Nor pale our lamps of flame.'

One to another hear them speak
  The patient virgins wise:
'Surely He is not far to seek'—
  'All night we watch and rise.'
'The days are evil looking back,
  The coming days are dim;
Yet count we not His promise slack,
  But watch and wait for Him.'

One with another, soul with soul,
  They kindle fire from fire:
'Friends watch us who have touched the goal.'
  'They urge us, come up higher.'
'With them shall rest our waysore feet,
  With them is built our home,
With Christ.'—'They sweet, but He most sweet,
  Sweeter than honeycomb.'

There no more parting, no more pain,
  The distant ones brought near,
The lost so long are found again,
  Long lost but longer dear:
Eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard,
  Nor heart conceived that rest,
With them our good things long deferred,
  With Jesus Christ our Best.

We weep because the night is long,
  We laugh for day shall rise,
We sing a slow contented song
  And knock at Paradise.
Weeping we hold Him fast, Who wept
  For us, we hold Him fast;
And will not let Him go except
  He bless us first or last.

Weeping we hold Him fast to-night;
  We will not let Him go
Till daybreak smite our wearied sight
  And summer smite the snow:
Then figs shall bud, and dove with dove
  Shall coo the livelong day;
Then He shall say, 'Arise, My love,
  My fair one, come away.'

Labels: Advent, Christina Rossetti, literature

THE ORGAN-BLOWER
by Oliver Wendell Holmes

DEVOUTEST of My Sunday friends,
The patient Organ-blower bends;
I see his figure sink and rise,
(Forgive me, Heaven, my wandering eyes!)
A moment lost, the next half seen,
His head above the scanty screen,
Still measuring out his deep salaams
Through quavering hymns and panting psalms.

No priest that prays in gilded stole,
To save a rich man's mortgaged soul;
No sister, fresh from holy vows,
So humbly stoops, so meekly bows;
His large obeisance puts to shame
The proudest genuflecting dame,
Whose Easter bonnet low descends
With all the grace devotion lends.

O brother with the supple spine,
How much we owe those bows of thine
Without thine arm to lend the breeze,
How vain the finger on the keys!
Though all unmatched the player's skill,
Those thousand throats were dumb and still:
Another's art may shape the tone,
The breath that fills it is thine own.

Six days the silent Memnon waits
Behind his temple's folded gates;
But when the seventh day's sunshine falls
Through rainbowed windows on the walls,
He breathes, he sings, he shouts, he fills
The quivering air with rapturous thrills;
The roof resounds, the pillars shake,
And all the slumbering echoes wake!

The Preacher from the Bible-text
With weary words my soul has vexed
(Some stranger, fumbling far astray
To find the lesson for the day);
He tells us truths too plainly true,
And reads the service all askew,--
Why, why the--mischief--can't he look
Beforehand in the service-book?

But thou, with decent mien and face,
Art always ready in thy place;
Thy strenuous blast, whate'er the tune,
As steady as the strong monsoon;
Thy only dread a leathery creak,
Or small residual extra squeak,
To send along the shadowy aisles
A sunlit wave of dimpled smiles.

Not all the preaching, O my friend,
Comes from the church's pulpit end!
Not all that bend the knee and bow
Yield service half so true as thou!
One simple task performed aright,
With slender skill, but all thy might,
Where honest labor does its best,
And leaves the player all the rest.

This many-diapasoned maze,
Through which the breath of being strays,
Whose music makes our earth divine,
Has work for mortal hands like mine.
My duty lies before me. Lo,
The lever there! Take hold and blow
And He whose hand is on the keys
Will play the tune as He shall please.

1812.

Labels: literature, organ

Today marks 101 years since the T. S. Eliot's conversion to Anglicanism.

Labels: literature, randomness

The BBC's weekly broadcast of Evensong (from Lincoln Cathedral this week) includes, among other things, the first broadcast of "The Windows" by Tarik O'Regan.

It's neat poem that uses stained glass as a metaphor for preaching.

"The Windows" by George Herbert.

Labels: Evensong, literature, music

Don't miss pages from Musurgia Universalis at Bibliodyssey.

Labels: literature, organ

The following includes information about a scriptural quotation in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

On the tomb of Kendra and Ariana Dumbledore is written Matthew 6:21. Here's a bit of context:

¹⁹Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; ²⁰but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. ²¹For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Matthew 6:19-21

We in the liturgical churches read this on Ash Wednesday, but Harry Potter reads it on Christmas Eve.

An astute cultural/theological observation by Mrs. Rowling, I think.

Labels: literature

I have read it. You know of what I speak, surely.

Elsewhere, I'm guessing the Astros's second baseman has not.

Biggio has been plunked 4 times on release weekends of Harry Potter books (including both US and British releases of "Prisoner of Azkaban"), but he hasn't been plunked on the release weekend of any of the past 3 books. Biggio has never been plunked by a pitcher named Potter, Voldemort, Dumbledore, Weasley, Granger, Snape, or Hagrid.

Craig Biggio and the no-blood plunks at Plunk Biggio

Labels: literature, sports