Today is the feast day of Robert Barnes, Lutheran martyr during the reign of Henry VIII of England. Barnes was burned in 1540 for teaching that faith alone justifies.
Precious to the Lord is the death of His saints.
All praise for England's martyr Of brighter faith than fame, Whose witness to the Gospel Glowed brightest in the flame! Lord, grant that our confession- Like Robert's- may inspire In other hearts the kindling Of Your most holy fire.
I just watched the season (and series) finale of Kings on Hulu. David has fled to Gath (Phillistia) to escape Silas's (Saul's) wrath, and apparently we won't get to see him come home to succeed him.
Kings, as you might have guessed from the above, was a somewhat creative retelling of the early part of the saga of King David, transplanted to a modern nation strongly resembling a United States of America which somehow is ruled by an absolute monarchy. Its theology was often atrocious and the fidelity to the biblical story on which it was loosely based... well, loose. But with the exception of House, 24, NCIS, and maybe a few other shows, it was the best thing on TV. Unfortunately, it never generated a big enough audience to survive, much less to achieve the popularity it deserved.
Too bad. There are those of us who, for all its flaws, will miss it.
Neither the 2000 nor the 2004 elections were stolen, George W. Bush was not AWOL during his National Guard service, and Barack Obama was not born in Kenya.
There is one way to cause the economy to truly grow that will not only create jobs but revitalize whole industries, while injecting into the economy exponentially more money than it costs: go first back to the moon, and then to Mars.
All of this happened once, with the Apollo program. Never was money more productively spent by the American government. Whole industries blossomed as a result of the national committment to go to the moon before 1970. And multiple technologies developed by the moon program spawend dozens and dozens of other industries not directly related to the space program. Most people in and out of government simply don't realize what an enormous fiscal success the Mercury and Gemini and Apollo programs were for our government and our nation. Nothing could be more wrong-headed than to cite the pressing needs of social programs or even a bloated budget in opposition to an investment which has already proven its capacity to generate exponentially more revenue than it costs. If we lack the money to pay down the deficit and meet social needs, that's a very good reason for making an investment that will result in the economy generating many, many times the required expenditure in return!
It can happen again today. It will happen again- if only we have the vision, the courage, and the wisdom to do it.
If the next flag planted on the moon is that of China or even India, we will have no one to blame but ourselves.
And btw, Hirohito was not on the U.S.S. Missouri to sign the surrender document ending World War II!
Perhaps the Democrats winning the White House last November has an up side after all. The fuzziness of their thinking about matters of war and peace, national security, defense, and international affairs is manifesting itself in a feckless foreign policy which is the natural outcome of a world view which simply bears no relationship to reality.
Hopefully neither the world nor our national interests will be in hopeless disrepair when Romney or Pawlenty or Jindal or Crist or Huckabee or whoever takes over in January of 2013 and restores sanity to America's attitude toward foreign affairs and defense.
Victory not our objective? Mr. President, what are you talking about?
Classical this song isn't. But in its own sick, perverted way, it is nonetheless a classic.
Named by Rolling Stone Magazine as one of the 100 greatest music videos of all time, this song will always be associated in my mind with my dormitory days at Concordia College in River Forest, Illinois, and our residence assistant, Dave McClean. It was Dave-now Pastor McClean- who introduced several of us to this and other Doctor Demento classics, but was allowed to graduate from CC-RF and subsequently to matriculate at the Seminary anyway.
It was not done, contrary to what many believe, by Alvin and the Chipmunks. In fact, it was recorded by a Hefty bag-wearing duo called Barnes and Barnes. half of which was Bill Mumy- famous as Will Robinson of Lost in Space and, in adulthood and after going bald and have his ears shrunken and surgically lowered, as Lanier of Babylon 5.
Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, tonight's musical treat:
Today is the fortieth anniversary of Apollo 11's landing on the moon.
There is an historical lesson in the Apollo program that we could learn from today. In terms of money pumped into the economy, jobs generated, and every other conceivable benefit, the billions we spent in getting to the moon was the wisest investment we ever made.
Want to stimulate the economy and fight the recession, Mr. Obama? Then do two things: first, commit us to a crash program to return to the moon, ahead of the Chinese. And then, commit us to land a man on Mars ASAP.
There is nothing we could possibly do as a nation that would both stimulate the economy and restore our sagging national prestige.
Anybody who sits on top of a rocket the size of a skyscraper and lets people shoot him to the moon for the sake of scientific advancement and national prestige is a hero in my book. As Chuck Yeager says in the movie version of The Right Stuff, "It takes a special kind of man to volunteer for a suicide mission on national TV." And "suicide mission" was no exaggeration, given the things which not only could have gone wrong, but did.
The computer Neil Armstrong used to land the LM was far less powerful than the one you're sitting at right now. A blunder in the pre-launch preparation of the computer undercut its performance still further; Armstrong had to land the LM "by the seat of his pants," with a near-fatal result. Calling the Apollo moonshots "suicide missions" was a great deal closer to the mark than most people realize.
Anyone who has ever heard a recording of Armstrong's voice as he and Aldrin landed on the moon will recall the "1201" and "1202" alarms which repeatedly occurred as the LM descended toward the surface. Few realize that those codes were a message from the computer that it was rebooting. By rights, the landing should have been aborted. Armstrong and Aldrin overshot the planned landing zone, and came within seconds of not having enough fuel left in the LM to return them to lunar orbit, Collins, and Columbia for the trip home. But knowing the risk, Armstrong chose to attempt a manual landing anyway.
For all of Michael Collins' humility, after the near-disaster of Apollo 13 nobody on this planet could seriously doubt the heroism of the men who went to the moon forty years ago. And even today, it's impossible not to get a queasy feeling in the pit of one's stomach as one reads the following words, written by William Safire for President Nixon to deliver on national TV- a speech Nixon came within seconds of actually having to give:
Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.
These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice.
These two men are laying down their lives in mankind's most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding.
They will be mourned by their families and friends; they will be mourned by their nation; they will be mourned by the people of the world; they will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dared send two of her sons into the unknown.
In their exploration, they stirred the people of the world to feel as one; in their sacrifice, they bind more tightly the brotherhood of man.
In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood.
Others will follow, and surely find their way home. Man's search will not be denied. But these men were the first, and they will remain the foremost in our hearts.
For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind.
Walter Cronkite, who died today at 92, may not always have succeeded in keeping his own liberal politics out of his reporting. But he tried, and he succeeded more than most.
Whether or not one agrees with his politics, one has to admire that in a day in which what passes for journalism is barely-concealed partisan advocacy. Cronkite deserves to be remembered for that alone.
But people of my generation couldn't forget Walter Cronkite if we tried. He was truly a piece of history- a national icon so firmly associated in our minds with the truly historic hours of the last half of the 20th Century that we who lived through them will never be able to remember our own lives without remembering him.
Rest in peace, Walter. You were a man of integrity, who honesty strove to transcend his biases and to tell it the way it was, not as you thought it ought to be spun. And as we were already discovering when you left electronic journalism's center stage, in a national journalist that's not a quality to be taken for granted.
I will not say that Walter Cronkite, who died today at 92, never let his liberal politics influence his reporting. But he was good enough at keeping his politics and his journalism separate that I didn't know for sure until after he retired whether he was a Republican or a Democrat. Whether you're in the habit of excoriating the bias of Fox News on the Right, or that of pretty much the rest of the mainstream media on the Left, there aren't many national news figures you can say that about today.
For me, and for my generation, the avuncular Mr. Cronkite personified journalistic integrity. When Walter Cronkite told you something, you believed it. "The most trusted man in America," they called him- and they may have been right.
We all have our memories of probably the greatest TV news anchor in history. There were those three, terrible days in November 1963, when a nation in which such things just didn't happen anymore first watched in horror and grief as a young president was assassinated, and then mourned his death. Walter Cronkite held our collective hands through the horror. I, who was in the midst of the event, still recall from the snippets I caught that night and the rebroadcasts later the eloquent outrage of Walter Cronkite as Chicago's police, provoked beyond the point of human endurance, finally threw the law and all professionalism to the winds and assaulted the innocent and the guilty alike on Michigan Avenue during the 1968 Democratic Convention riots in Chicago. I recall the childlike wonder in Cronkite's voice as human beings left the gravitational bonds of Earth for the first time, and planted Old Glory on the surface of the moon.
The list of Cronkite memories is endless for a person of my generation. And plenty of tributes have been written already to the last American television journalist to inspire a trust which truly transcended the passions of partisan politics. To recall how well he concealed his political views- and they were indeed far to the Left- until after he left the anchor role at CBS News is perhaps the best tribute he could be given. Sadly, no network anchor has come anywhere near matching his example in the long years since.
The death of Walter Cronkite is more than the passing of one more iconic figure from my own past, and that of my generation. It's the loss of a reminder that it's possible to have strong opinions without allowing them to overcome one's objectivity entirely, and to disagree agreeably with those who reach opposite conclusions. Back when I aspired to a career in journalism, it was freely conceded that even journalists couldn't avoid having opinions. But they were under a professional obligation not only to conceal them for the sake of their own credibility, but to strive to transcend them for the sake of their own objectivity. Walter Cronkite succeeded amazingly in doing the first; he may not always have won that second battle, but no journalist truly ever does. But he came closer to doing so than any national journalist I can think of off hand, and that is reason enough in this uncivil age to honor his memory.
Cheyenne Cherry gives every indication of being a seventeen year-old girl wholly lacking a moral compass. If she has a conscience, or a coherent concept of right and wrong, she hides it well.
Last May 6, she and a friend broke into her former roommate's apartment, destroyed her furniture, stole some DVDs and- as a "joke-" put the roommate's kitten in the oven and roasted it alive. She protests that it was her friend who actually put the cat in the oven and turned it on. She merely "didn't let it out."
This is not Cherry's first run-in with the law. Last year she and her boyfriend used a BB-gun to steal a dog. She also has an arrest on her record for armed robbery. She is currently in jail for violating probation.
Has Cherry learned her lesson? Judge for yourself: as she left the court, she passed protesters demanding that she be dealt with more harshly. She grinned broadly, stuck out her tongue at one of them, and said of the kitten, "It's dead, bitch!"
I can well understand the anger of people whose rhetoric has gotten the better of them, suggesting that Cherry and her friend deserve to be put into a hot oven themselves. Yes, it was a cat, not a human being. And yes, Cherry herself is a human being- and we don't exact capital punishment, by torture or otherwise, from human beings for killing animals,
But behavior like this predicts that she may not confine herself to animals in the future. A person of Cherry's age sufficiently lacking in conscience not only to think that roasting a kitten alive was funny, but to react so flippantly and to show such little remorse when called to account for her act, is a threat to human life in the making. It's not just a matter of saying that she deserves a great deal worse than she's apparently going to get. The rest of us need protection from the monster she seems in the process of becoming- and we owe it to her, as well as to any potential future victims of any species, to take this behavior a great deal more seriously than New York's court system seems to be taking it.
And folks look, AARP knows and the people with me here today know, the president knows, and I know, that the status quo is simply not acceptable,” Biden said at the event on Thursday in Alexandria, Va. “It’s totally unacceptable. And it’s completely unsustainable. Even if we wanted to keep it the way we have it now. It can’t do it financially.”
We’re going to go bankrupt as a nation.
Now, people when I say that look at me and say, ‘What are you talking about, Joe? You’re telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt? The answer is yes, that’s what I’m telling you.
As Racefor2008- to whom a hat tip- observes, tongue planted firmly in cheek, "Thank goodness that gaffe machine Sarah Palin wasn't elected."
"It's great to be in a hockey town," said Hossa, who had 40 goals and 31 assists for the Wings last season.
First Hossa- who jumped to the Red Wings last year because he thought it improved his shot at playing for a Stanley Cup champion- leaves after one year and comes to Chicago.
And then he talks about how nice it is to play "in a hockey town."
Does "Hockeytown," as it styles itself, not qualify, Marian?
ADDENDUM: An influential Red Wings blog, Snapshots, has linked to this entry, its author apparently unaware that I'm a Blackhawks fan and that what he seems to have read as a criticism of Hossa's remarks was intended as a good-natured (though perhaps a little too subtle) jibe at both Detroit's pretension in bestowing the name "Hockeytown" upon itself and any assumption its fans may make about being the next Western Conference team to hoist the Cup. Your mothers wear army shoes, guys.
Seriously, though- without denigrating Detroit's devotion to the Wings, its support of hockey in general, and the obvious success its NHL franchise has had over the years- until the late Bill Wirtz almost killed the franchise there Chicago, too, was one of the great hockey cities in North America. Maybe it was even more of a jibe at the ghost of the "Dollar Bill" era than it at Detroit's pretension. Whether or not Detroit is "Hockeytown," it's good that- thanks to Rockey Wirtz and the recently-fired Dale Tallon- Chicago is, indeed, a hockey town once more.
However appropriate or inappropriate Hossa's remark may have been as regards its implications concerning Detroit, his observation about Chicago is right on the money- for the first time in many, many years. For which, huzzah.
He was a great Blackhawk. Some may remember the key goal he scored in the decisive sixth game of the 1961 Stanley Cup Finals, when the Hawks beat Detroit and last hoisted the Cup.
Here are the highlights of that glorious night:
Below is part of a tribute by Reggie's son, Chris.
That's what Bobby Rosengarten played when old Salvadore came out for his interview on Dick Cavett back in the 'Seventies.
Anyway, a fellow Facebook user named Steve Goodwin just pointed me to this surreal piece- the great artist's appearance on the game show which dominated my Sunday nights back when I was growing up, What's My Line?
Newsweek's utter confusion concerning the basics of the Christian faith has become legendary since Lisa Miller's screed on gay "marriage" and the magazine's editorial condemnation of biblical authority (of any kind!) as "the worst form of fundamentalism" a few months ago- both in the same sad and sorry issue.
It has long been clear that Newsweek does not understand the elements of the Christian faith. It is now clear that Ms. Townsend- a notional Catholic herself- does not even understand what a Catholic is. But then, many American Catholics seem not to.
The Christian faith is not defined by majority vote, but by a content handed down through the centuries and embodied in the Scriptures. For Catholics, the papacy and the Magisterium are the infallible teachers whose job it is to explicate that content to the faithful. To the extent that they reject that teaching, they are, as Catholicism defines the matter, precisely not faithful.
As a Lutheran, I myself do not submit to the teaching authority of the Pope. But then, I don't claim to be a Catholic. Ms. Townsend does. She should perhaps reassess that claim in light of her article in Newsweek.
"Representing American Catholics" is simply not, on any showing, Pope Benedict's job. Rather, as defined by the faith to which they give lip service, it is the job of American Catholics to be taught by him and to conform their beliefs to the faith as he defines it- or to be honest enough not to call themselves Catholics anymore.
I know it's been a while since the Sopranos ended, but I just learned what actually happened after the picture cut to black. I had to share that knowledge.
Here's the ending that HBO didn't want you to see:
For those who are really wanted closure:
Seriously, here's the ending I had expected all along- the one the series had seemed to me to have been building toward for quite a while, and which I still think it would have been the best:
Here's a marvelous article from NR on why Sarah Palin so outrages the Left, on the relentless campaign of the cultural elites to destroy her- and how she ought to respond.
Remember Sean Connery's explanation to Kevin Costner in The Untouchables of "the Chicago way," and how to use it to get Al Capone? It's what the moonbats have been doing to Sarah. It's what they did to Dubyah. About time to do it back.
And here is a Roger Simon piece on the arrogance of the Leftist pundit class as it applies to its visceral hatred of the soon-to-be-former Alaska governor.
When Barack Obama was elected president last November, the liberal media hailed a national lurch to the Left. Supposedly we were now a Center Left, rather than a Center Right, nation (as if there were anything truly centrist about Obama). Sometimes it even went further. "We Are All Socialists Now," Newsweek even crowed in the weeks between the election and the inauguration. TIME featured a cover portraying the new president as an African-American FDR.
Ideologically, this is still the country that elected George W. Bush- twice (and before anybody even says it, there is no reasonable doubt that, had the networks not suppressed Bush's national vote by untold millions on election night in 2000 by continuing to insist that Al Gore had won Florida and- by implication- the presidency for the entire prime-time period, hours after it became clear that their projections were based on very faulty numbers and while the polls remained very much open throughout the largely Republican West, Bush would have won the popular vote twice, as well as the electoral vote).
The present economic crisis, which Mr. Obama himself is mishandling so badly, combines with the unpopular (but apparently successful- and in the long term arguably beneficial) war in Iraq to account for the fall-off in Republican popularity in recent years. Then, too, there's the corruption that often comes when a single party has too strong a hold on both Congress and the presidency for too long, and Mr. Obama's undoubted charisma.
But combined with recent poll results showing that more Americans think the Democratic party is too liberal than think that the Republican party is too conservative, and one cannot conclude that both the demise of the former and the permanent ascendency of the latter is an illusion. Ideologically, this is a nation far closer to Bush than to Obama- and if the present administration continues to mishandle both the economy and American foreign policy as badly as it has so far, for the Republicans to return to at least a share of power in the next election cycle seems more likely than not.
Nor- the wishful thinking of the Leftist media to the contrary- is Mr. Obama anything like assured of winning a second term.
Whether or not one chooses to regard the president under whom General Motors became the property of the United States government and the prospect of some sort of nationalized healthcare more and more is becoming an administration priority as a socialist, there can be no question that ideologically both Mr. Obama and his party are far to the Left of the American people.
Here is a spot on article in TIME (what a contrast to Newsweek!) about a crisis that causes an unbelievable amount of human suffering and disrupts society to a degree that most of us just aren't willing to face: the collapse of heterosexual marriage in our society.
Nearly forty percent of American kids are born out of wedlock. Nearly twenty percent of adult Americans (more than a quarter of adult New Yorkers) have genital herpes.
By every measurement, the divorce of parents is a devastating psychological trauma for children even in the best of circumstances, and by every measurable criterion children who grow up without fathers lag behind kids who grow up in intact homes both in development and in ultimate economic status. Yet both marriage and childbearing are increasingly seen not as responsibility to others, but as means of self-fulfillment to be casually walked away from if they become inconvenient. More and more, we seem able to distinguish between loving our children and acting responsibly toward them. I never cease to me amazed by the number of couples who avoid marriage because they say that they aren't ready for the commitment, completely oblivious to the commitment sleeping in a crib in the next room!
We Americans don't understand the commitment marriage- to say nothing of parenthood- inherently entails. The emotional and financial devastation to the adults involved is incredible. Its impact on their children is devastating.
This is not a "religious" issue; It is not even primarily an ethical issue. It is a matter of the survival of our society, and it's glad to see a major news publication undertake the unpopular task of holding its seriousness up to the unwilling gaze of hedonistic, selfish, childish American adults.
This would be, of course, a great way for the Synod save money- and at the same time get rid of that pesky hotbed of Lutheranism in Fort Wayne. For that matter, by abolishing seminary faculties, it becomes an easy matter to downplay all this theology nonsense and facilitate the real mission of the Church: as Body of Christ, Inc. (c)
As a commenter on the blog to which this post links observed, the irony is that one of the original purposes of the Missouri Synod was to serve as a means of funding those very seminaries.
When I was a student at River For... er, Concordia University- Chicago, we did a satirical piece in the April Fool's edition of The Spectator proposing that the college- which was in the process of closing down its psychological counseling service for financial reasons- go the whole way and abolish the student body as a cost-saving measure. We pointed out that the College of Cardinals and the Electoral College, to name only two such institutions, function quite well without student bodies, and that Concordia College might well follow their example.
President Kieschnick, in case you or someone in the Purple Palace got this idea while browsing through the morgue in the Spectator office... we were kidding. And make no mistake: the idea of saving money for the Synod by closing the seminaries makes exactly as much sense as saving money for Concordia College by abolishing the student body. Both would matters of putting the cart before the horse, and defeating the whole purpose for which the institution seeking to economize exists in the first place.
Gee, Joe. Why don't you motivate the bad guys to be violent?
The incompetence of this administration's foreign policy is amazing. George W. Bush and his crowd at their worst were better than these guys. When they're not insulting our allies, they're motivating our enemies to attack us.
I have a feeling Republicans aren't the only ones who can't wait until 2012. President Obama must be, too- if only to have a chance to dump Joe Biden!
Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming? Whose broad stripes and bright stars thru the perilous fight, O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming? And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there. Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep, Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes, What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep, As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses? Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam, In full glory reflected now shines in the stream: 'Tis the star-spangled banner! Oh long may it wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
And where is that band who so vauntingly swore That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion, A home and a country should leave us no more! Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution. No refuge could save the hireling and slave From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave: And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand Between their loved home and the war's desolation! Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n rescued land Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation. Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, And this be our motto: "In God is our trust." And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
If only one verse is to be sung, in my opinion it should be the last.
Our family joined the Lutheran church when I was ten years old. To be honest about it, at first I wasn't crazy about the hymnody. I was a typical American in my musical tastes, preferring the old Protestant standards and not remotely appreciating that my new denomination had the most glorious musical tradition in Christendom.
We live today in a world which even nominal Lutherans embrace and even prefer "contemporary" church music- most of it musically inferior to the Lutheran chorale, originating in Methobapticostal circles and theologically vapid if not outright heretical- largely on the basis of its alleged entertainment value and its supposed evangelistic potential. Of course, if we truly believe that God the Holy Spirit operates through the Word, we would not be nearly as obsessed with its packaging as a means of helping it along as many today are.
And the attitude that sees church music as entertainment is in itself a disaster. Is it really "evangelism" to teach inquirers that they and their emotions, rather than God, His Word, and His Sacraments, are the center of what the Divine Service is all about? While on one hand we go to church to receive what God has to give us- He doesn't need our praises, while we desperately need His Word and Sacraments- that is a very different matter than seeing ourselves as the "audience" for church music. We learn from what we sing, to be sure. Its primary function is as a medium for the Word, and in that sense we do, indeed, sing to ourselves. Moreover, there is a reason why we call it the "Divine Service:" in it God- incongruous as it seems- serves us by coming to us and bestowing upon us what we need. He, not we, is the primary Actor.
But on the other hand, if our worship we offer on Sunday morning has as its primary purpose our receipt of what God has to give us, that most certainly does not make us the "audience!" The party addressed by our worship- like its subject matter- is God, and not us! That's one reason why I've never been able to stomach applause for a piece of music in church. We are not there to be entertained, but to be fed. If there is anybody who might appropriately applaud, it's God.
That said, it took me a number of years to realize how many early Lutheran hymns- those "clunkers" we all grew up with in TLH, played much too slowly on a church organ- would probably go over very well with contemporary Americans on purely musical terms if people actually could hearthe music, rather than the way we generally sing it. When some of these glorious hymns are played, contemporary American Lutherans listen for clunky, bizarre, musically awkward and outdated pieces played too slow on an instrument- the pipe organ- which in our culture is almost exclusively associated with church, and which fewer and fewer people even play. A tragedy beyond words, that; there is no music as glorious as that of the pipe organ. But that's a subject for another rant. One tragedy at a time: the one that I'm concerned with at the moment is our failure to appreciate the beauty of the very hymns in our tradition that we're perhaps least likely to think of as beautiful.
But what if contemporary Americans could hear the music on its own terms, instead of filtered through our own negative expectations? Years ago, it occurred to me, for example, that Luther's "To God the Holy Spirit Let Us Pray" is not really the clunky piece of medieval music many of us think of it as being. If somebody sang it a capella, and the people who heard it didn't know its origin, they would probably not only assume that it was "contemporary" but recognize how truly beautiful it really is. Unfortunately, somebody else realized the same thing; the only online version of the hymn I've been able to find jazzes it up to the point where the proverb about the gilding of lilies comes to mind. Trying to turn hymns by Luther and his contemporaries into modern "praise music" is exactly the opposite of what I'm trying to describe. Rather, it's a matter of uncovering the wholesome, unaffected simplicity which playing a song on a pipe organ sometimes can disguise.
I am an incurable traditionalist when it comes to worship. No one is as big a fan of the pipe organ as I am, and I would find its replacement on a regular basis by a guitar to be utterly unsupportable. Yet Luther, like David, played sacred music on a stringed instrument- the lute in Luther's case, the harp in David's- and if it serves the purpose of helping us to appreciate the glory precisely of our traditional Lutheran church music, well, why not, once in a while?
But enough musing. There's a young LCMS guy named Colin from Davenport here Iowa who has done some of our very earliest Lutheran hymns- some by Luther himself- on YouTube, either a capella or (shudder) accompanying himself on a guitar.
My parishioners know that I am not a fan of "contemporary" church music. They also know how suspicious I am of anything "seeker sensitive;" Christ is not a commodity to be marketed to skeptical clients, but a Savior to be proclaimed. And I am certainly not suggesting that this replace the traditional pipe organ as the way we celebrate the Divine Service.
But listen to Colin. I strongly suspect that "seeker" and orthodox traditionalist alike would be edified not only by the Word as set forth in these venerable and orthodox hymns, but awed by their wholly unexpected kind of simple beauty. These are certainly not "campfire songs," and they will not lead to a sudden outgrowth of human "trees" in the pews. But here we might just discover a dimension of our solidly traditional and very liturgical Lutheran musical heritage we may not have appreciated before.
And you would not believe which some of the hymns I'm talking about are...
Of his own faith journey, Colin says- quickly and concisely, I suspect, so that as befits a Lutheran he can get off the subject of himself and sing about Jesus: "My search for Jesus Christ has only begun. And it began where it ends: Baptism, and the Supper."
They haven't seized the British embassy, but the whack-jobs in Tehran are considering doing to certain arrested British embassy staff what they never dared do to our diplomats during the Carter-era hostage crisis: put them on trial.
When- and I suspect the moment is approaching faster than the Iranians realize- the Israelis either take out their nuclear facilities or (less likely) do the regime change thing, the Allahcrats are ensuring that the Jewish state will have the united and enthusiastic support of the Western world. Only the Moslem nations of the Middle East and the Russians will do anything but applaud.
Detroit fans say they're not worried. But denial, as a certain newly-anointed United States senator once said on national TV while wearing a sweater and posing as a Twelve-Step counselor, is not just a river in Egypt.
Sarah Palin has resigned as Alaska's governor. My guess is that it's her first move in a campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012.
Given her lack of experience- especially in the national arena- and the hatched job the media did on her in 2008, her nomination would spell a certain Obama landslide in 2012. Her smart move would be to serve at least one term in the Senate before running for the White House.
BTW, I'd give the same advice to Mike Huckabee.
Bobby Jindal remains the guy I'm looking most at, though Tim Pawlenty is looking better and better to me as time goes on.
Here's a fine article from the Chief Justice of the Georgia Supreme Court on the need to end one of the greatest evils ever to befall our society: no fault divorce.
Sotomayor- a judge whose track record has shown her to be as readily reversible as a cheap Wal-Mart belt- is supported by only 37 percent of those asked by the Rasmussen people, as opposed to 39 percent who want her defeated.
Two weeks ago, 42 percent wanted her confirmed, as opposed to 34 percent who opposed her.
On the down side, Martin Havlat is gone, having been given the news that the Hawks weren't interested in giving him more than a one-year contract and consequently going to the most lamely-named team in professional sports, the Minnesota Wild. Will somebody please teach those people in Minnesota the difference between a noun and an adjective?
Goalie Nicolai Khabibulin, meanwhile, was also let go, and signed with Edmonton. This puts the Hawks in the perilous position of having a French first-string goaltender. Not French-Canadian, mind you. French. As in France.Defending the goal.
To be fair, Cristobel Huet showed signs of brilliance in the last couple of games of the Conference Finals, when he subbed for the injured Habby. Of course, he also stunk up the joint in the crucial Game Four at the UC. Still, with more regular work, perhaps he'll fill the bill. Youngster Corey Crawford figures to be an adequate backup, at least some day; maybe "some day" will come next year. I still don't know enough about young Finn Antti Niemi (sounds like something Judy Garland would shout in a tornado before dropping a house on a wicked witch) to know whether he will turn out to be a long-term solution at a position about which I'm a lot more concerned than the Hawks seem to be.
The Hawks also signed tough New Jersey center John Madden, who will take Sammi Pahlssen's place. Sammi has gone to Columbus.
There is no question that Hossa is a substantial upgrade over Havlat, and Madden over Pahlssen. And while I'm sorry to see Havlat go, there is no question that the Hawks' chances of hoisting the Stanley Cup next year just got a big, big boost.
Psychologically, this has to hurt in Detroit- especially since Hossa left Pittsburgh last year to come to the Wings ironically because he thought he'd have a better shot at a Stanley Cup in Hockeytown. You have to wonder what his decision to sign a twelve year deal with the Blackhawks says after he turned down the Octopus Abusers' offer of a renewal on his one-year deal.
My concerns are twofold. First, next year several of the Hawks' young stars will become free agents. This deal makes no sense if it means not hanging on to Versteeg, Toews, Kane, Keith and Seabrook. And secondly- again- I'm not sold on the Hawks' situation in goal. I'm thinking multiple Stanley Cups here, and Huet is not my dream number one goaltender for such a scenario. Neither of our two young prospects at that position, Crawford and Niemi, strikes me as a Stanley Cup caliber netminder, either. Of course, I really don't know much about Niemi, other than that he's from Finland.
Still, if there is any question that Rocky Wirtz is serious, it's gone now. Let the sour grapes in Detroit begin!
...is a sixty one year-old former Lutheran minister, who served parishes in Missouri and Iowa for fifteen years.
He became active in politics during the McCarthy campaign in 1968, and was tear gassed while serving as a messenger on Michigan Avenue during the Democratic convention that year. He subsequently worked for a number of liberal Democratic candidates at the ward, city, state and national levels before finding himself unable to reconcile his pro-life, socially conservative views with the increasingly radical direction of the Democratic party.
He has been a delegate to the Iowa state conventions of both parties, and currently represents Saylor Township's First Precinct (just north of Des Moines) on the Polk County Republican Central Committee. Nevertheless, he still considers himself a Chicagoan, despite not having lived there since 1981; the Chicago Blackhawks, Bears and Cubs are among the true passions of his life, and he really, really misses Tom Tom tamales and Italian beef sandwiches.
He is also an avid reader, an amateur astronomer and a history buff.
