64 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 2-9-18”

  3. oh, my, that is certainly a spooky tree and it is not even October.
    It was a very long Friday with a lively class. And then one sweet, little boy flipped off a scooter, the kind you sit on, and landed on his face on concrete. I gave he and his dad a ride to the clinic. And the boy with the broken arm, which is still just in a splint, was jumping around the playground. Do that have full suits of body armor for kinder boys????

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  5. That looks like a very unhappy tree!

    Jo, I think they need suits of armor until they marry. When I taught college English, I assigned students to write a how-to paper. The things several boys wrote about were kinda spooky. One wrote about climbing a mountain, and continuing to the top even though a snowstorm came up and made the terrain dangerous. Another wrote about exploring in a cave, how to do it safely and not do dangerous things like tying ropes together . . . but another also wrote about cave exploration, and his was the dangerous kind. Left me wondering, “How do we have enough of that sex live long enough to reproduce?”

    Liked by 2 people

  6. I woke up this morning with an old WW II Roy Acuff song in my head and can’t get it out.
    It’ stayed with me during breakfast so I looked it up..
    Thing is, the third line of the course doesn’t make sense in context/
    “Ther’ll be smoke on the mountain when the heather get saved”.
    I’m sure it didn’t matter to anyone.

    Liked by 2 people

  10. I am phone challenged this a.m. I do not get sound on this old phone, and my newer phone has the dying battery. Should I spend a little free time this morning getting a battery, going to the phone store, or doing laundry and dishes? Difficult choice. Miss Bosley says she’ll make the choice easy. She says I just need to hang out and cuddle with her.

    Liked by 1 person

  11. Good Morning Everyone. I posted last night about my friend L. Someone was singing to her when she went.
    Now for the rest of the story. I got a text message about 7:50 that a classmate of ours had posted on Facebook at 7:20pm that she had died. I was being called at 7:50pm to confirm it or do something about it. I called the house to let them know what was going on and accidentally dialed L’s mother’s cell phone. No one answered. When her mother called me back it was to tell me that she had just gone. She died at 7:55pm.
    I later found out that this same Jerk had send L’s husband a text or FB message sometime yesterDAY asking if L had died.
    I have shared with all of you, because you have been my support. Also no one except a few people in my life know the name or how to find this blog. If you are not spouse or child, do not announce anyone’s death on social media. When an obituary is published you can share that. Until then-know your place.
    This is a horrible and insensitive thing to do to a family.

    Liked by 8 people

  14. So sorry for your loss, Kim. At least you know she is in a better place now. When a close friend died a few years ago, we all were sad, but we knew that he was in the presence of the Lord.

    Liked by 2 people

  16. This is the song that I woke up with in my head – I had to think for a bit to remember where I heard such a beautiful melody. The song is about a ship caught in a winter storm and whose brave captain guides her to safety.

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  17. I had written out a long post for FB this morning but did not post. In it I said I did NOT want to be among the first to know that someone had died. That would mean I was next of kin or they were someone I really loved. I want to be at the very most second in line to know.

    Liked by 1 person

  19. I’m sorry she’s gone, Kim, but grateful she’s no longer suffering. It brought back our daylong watch by Norma’s bedside. I can’t say it was easy to see, I don’t think the process of dying is ever pleasant, the body struggles and fights, but you just hope the person is unconscious enough not to be very aware. But what a privilege it was to pray together, sing hymns, and read Scripture in those final hours to such a good and faithful friend and fellow believer.

    And what a difference it makes knowing where they are for eternity.

    Liked by 4 people

  21. Our city editor is meeting with the head Grim Reaper today at our paper in Orange County. We’ll see what comes next. Our editor is expecting to stay on (though he wishes he could walk away under these circumstances; but there’s that mortgage to pay …). He’s thinking he may be moved to another paper, however, which would mean a significant increase in his daily commute time.

    Meanwhile, I need to meet an electrician at my house at 1:30 today so I’ll have to zip out of there for a quick run home. The good news is I’ve verified only 2 outlets in the house are not working (I thought 4 weren’t, but I apparently have a couple dead lamps so that faked me out when I was testing the outlets).

    So to double check, I found a good, portable working lamp to test everything last night and was relieved to find one of the outlets in the living room and another one in the bedroom that I thought were dead was alive after all.

    (And back to FB “announcements” of people’s deaths, yes, that’s something everyone needs to observe — no posting about that unless you’re officially the next of kin; even then, definitely tell everyone in the person’s inner circle personally first before you go public.)

    Liked by 2 people

  24. The header tree has that quarter moon shape seen on outhouses. The holes on the tree are to let fresh air in. Therefore, my logical conclusion is that the header is a photo of an outhouse for the extremely tall and skinny people. Or perhaps it is a new fangled combo covered cat litter box, scratching post/climbing tower/bird bait and lure, and fake cell tower. Has my imagination been cooped up too long in the tax office?

    Liked by 2 people

  25. So sorry to hear of the social media posting, Kim. I think some people get their happiness from being first reporter of news, mostly bad news. It must be an ego trip, and they are totally insensitive to the needs and desires of others. They probably should be banned from social media for doing that sort of thing.

    Liked by 1 person

  28. Janice – When Puppy Janie goes back upstairs in the evening, on days when she’s been downstairs for most of the day, Heidi makes it clear that she’s glad to have her mama back all to herself. 🙂

    Liked by 2 people

  30. Vet wants me to try Cowboy off the incontinence meds for a while to see if maybe it was just an isolated episode. The meds may be contributing to the diarrhea.

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  37. on the music of the church

    http://www.patheos.com/blogs/leithart/2018/02/church-lost-soundscale/

    How the Church Lost Its Soundscape

    _____________________________________________________

    … Contemporary worship music is, for starters, “contemporary.” Of course, the age of music doesn’t determine its quality, but that bromide misses the point. In a world peopled by advertisers and entertainers, “contemporary” is a hurrah word, a marketing tool, branding liturgical music that is fashionable, up-to-date, oozing youthful cool. Contemporary is young, and young is good. The desire to make worship more appealing to young people was a major impulse behind the development of contemporary Christian music in the first place. The magnitude of this shift cannot be overestimated. Culture is a gift from the old to the young, and the younger generation’s grateful reception is a sign of honor for fathers. Cultural transmission has been thrown into reverse, also in the church. …

    … The church created the soundscape for Western Christendom because she cultivated her own musical life in the liturgy that united human voices with the angelic choirs of heaven. I can hardly imagine a more worrisome sign of worldliness, or clearer evidence of the church’s identity crisis, than our eager renunciation of our own soundscape and our determination instead to reproduce the world’s.

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  38. I feel sad for Linda, but I really like the textural pictures. I like seeing the amazing beauty in creation and that includes odd forms and shapes in trees and toadstools and such.

    Liked by 3 people

  39. Hmm, the 1:37 (wrong to have a pet) is me. I don’t know why it logged me out, but since that is the second time in two days, maybe there is some sort of message!

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  40. Interesting article at 2:22 Donna. I have wrestled with that since I came to Greensboro.
    Even the “traditional” service is slanted to the “standing and clapping” style.
    I can’t say anything against the praise songs, but I do not have a worship experience there.
    Our church is going through a transition in which we old folks will not have a worship service.
    But, as I said before, the old folks provide the financial support for the church.
    They don’t want to lose us.

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  44. While I do realize this is not about me, my feelings are a little bruised. All along the plan has been to have the funeral on the 15th. R called me because his half brother would not be able to attend on the 15th so he changed it to the 16th. I had already changed my flight from the 15th to the 16th so I will not be able to attend.
    I realize that I was there when it counted but I wanted to be there in the end too.

    Liked by 4 people

  45. Some girl wanted to take her emotional support hamster on an airplane, met with some confusion and allegedly flushed it as she deemed that more humane than the alternatives. Kind of like saying abortion is more humane than giving your child up for adoption only it gets a bigger response. Don’t worry, she got a new hamster.

    Liked by 1 person

  46. Kim, you were there in the end. You are not there for the mop up. You were available to help but that is okay. Don’t you have a wedding to work on?

    Liked by 1 person

  47. I wanted to be. I helped pick the readings and the music.
    While the perfect groom has been identified and seems willing he has yet to produce a ring.

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  48. Did Chas call himself uncouth @10:33? 😉

    On the Church music article – I note it is from a Catholic perspective, a lament for their liturgy. Something I am beginning to note about such articles about Church music – they display a superficial understanding of music theory and music history, and are very Eurocentric in their understanding of the artform. The article blames Protestantism in the West for killing liturgical music. Someone forgot to tell that to Bach and Handel and Haydn and Mendelssohn and Brahms and Vaughan Williams and John Rutter, and all the other composers of classical sacred music who composed for the Protestant church – I put that list in a deliberate progression, to show that the tradition has not ceased, as John Rutter is still alive. Furthermore, for every great liturgical piece that has been handed down to us through the ages, there are dozens, even hundreds of liturgical pieces that ended up in the dustbin of history, because they did not touch people’s hearts and minds enough to be preserved. History is the great eliminator of low quality, since as cultural works accumulates over centuries, people only have time for the best.

    But leaving aside the fact that classical music is far from dead yet (if nothing else, it has a permanent tenure within film music – even Hindi language films have taken to using surging string orchestras within their soundtracks), as a classically trained musician, I can recognize quality when I hear it in other music genres, in much the same way a thorough understanding of the grammatical structure of English has enabled me to listen for the grammatical patterns of other languages in order to begin to decipher them. The writers of such articles as the above lament for liturgy fail to understand that while music is a form of communication that is a universal phenomenon, it is not a universal language which everyone understands equally well.

    Professional musicians in the classical Western genre would have to start from the beginning if they decided to learn to play classical Indian music; just as those who speak their own language fluently must learn basic words and speak brokenly when learning another language. The contrast between Western and Indian music is an obvious example, but that difference is also significant between popular and classical Western genres. For example, I play the violin, well enough to get a B for my performance in a university level orchestra, but I would be utterly defeated in a fiddle competition. I can only play a few simple fiddle pieces and I do so with a distinct ‘classical’ accent; the more complicated bowing patterns of fiddle music are utterly beyond me, and those bowing patterns differ between regional fiddle styles, whether it be Cape Breton style, or Cajun style, or Bluegrass, etc. Similarly, while I play the piano fairly well, I cannot play in Jazz style or Blues, etc. I cannot ‘speak’ those ‘dialects’ of Western music. Now, human nature tends to enjoy what it understands, and if one cannot understand the musical genre, one tends not to enjoy it; but that does not mean there is no merit in the musical genre. There is much that is forgettable in popular music today, and it will be forgotten as not even wildly popular groups of the last half century have escaped the trimming of time – only a handful of the Beatles works are played anymore. As one who plays with a worship team from time to time, I can attest that it takes skill to play in that contemporary genre, and, as with fiddle music, I play those worship song with a strong classical accent.

    It is nonsense to suggest that Church music does not or should not follow the times. If that were true, we would still be singing in church to the kithera and other instruments which existed in the Roman empire. During the Renaissance, when complicated harmonies and instrumentation began to be noted in secular music, complicated harmonies and instrumentation appeared in liturgical music. The four part harmony of the German chorales of the Lutheran tradition may sound old to us now, but they sounded new when they were first sung. One of the moves of the Counter Reformation of the Catholic church was to try to remove the complicated harmonies and instrumentation that had become a part of church music, so late Catholic composers such as Palestrina and Allegri had to simplify their harmonies and could not write instrumental accompaniment for liturgical music – a setting of Psalm 51 by Allegri:

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  49. As you can hear, such settings took considerable skill. Indeed, until the mid-1800s this particular setting of Psalm 51 was the exclusive property of the Vatican, and that soaring high soprano line was sung by the Vatican’s professional castrati, the last of whom died in the early 1900s. In contrast, the four-part German chorales that were developed in Luther’s church were well suited to the entire congregation singing. Catholic music, although great composers from Haydn to Verdi to Stravinsky kept composing Requiems and Masses for professionals to perform, dwindles in quality in the centuries following the Counter Reformation. Protestant music, on the other hand, since it involved the congregation, evolved with the congregation. Bach added Baroque flourishes and plenty of organ to the Lutheran chorales, while Handel and Mendelssohn not only wrote popular dramatic oratorios based on Biblical characters, but also other melodies from their purely secular pieces were taken to be sung as hymn tunes. Just look in a hymn book composer index to see how many of the tunes were from different composers. The early 20th century British composer, Vaughan Williams, not only wrote academic symphonies and popular film music (such as the soundtrack for ‘The 49th Parallel), but he also compiled the English hymnal and ‘The Oxford Book of Carols’ – more than once, he took a folk tune he had collected and used it both for a hymn setting and as the inspiration for a classical orchestral piece, such as this tune, originally from the folk carol ‘Dives and Lazarus’ – the original folk carol:

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  52. I could go on, and put up clips of African churches singing their own harmonious liturgical settings, and Indian choirs that perform Handel’s Messiah- of how ancient Coptic hymns are still sung in Egypt and put up the clip that I put up last year of an Eastern Orthodox choir singing in the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, but I doubt that many will have time even for the above links. All of it shows that church music is still richly alive and not only preserves the past but moves forward into the future. If there is mundane contemporary church music, there is also a certain amount which is of good quality and lasting value. I learned from the city church’s worship team this new setting of old words by Charles Wesley, and I like the new tune much better than any of the older settings of the same hymn – I deliberately share a contemporary instrumentation, but the melody that is sung, just as the folk carol that Vaughan Williams used, could be used in any genre of music:

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  56. FYI, Roscuro, Peter Leithart was writing on First Things, a RC website, but he himself is not (or wasn’t, at last check) Roman Catholic. He is instead a man who was tried for heresy within my denomination (PCA), let off on technicalities, and left to join a federal-vision-friendly denomination. At any rate, his background is not Catholic (well, unless he was as a child), though it wouldn’t be shocking if he ended up there.

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  58. it seems to me that when I was young the music we sang in church was a lot of old music that had survived because it was good, and a bit of newer music. If the newer music was good it survived too.

    Now we sing almost entirely new music, written in the last ten years or so, some of which is good, but some of which is like chaff to me. Occasionally an oldie might be thrown in. An “oldie” might be something really old, or it might be from the 80s or 90s. We’re just about to the point where “In Christ Alone” is a welcome oldie.

    So I feel like we’ve traded mostly good music (old and new) in favor of mostly new music (good and not).

    Liked by 2 people

  62. Good evening ya’ll…busy day for me and I arrived home just as it was getting dark…thickest fog I’ve seen in these parts and I am glad to be home!! Snow tomorrow then sunshine returns Sunday….and Janice my first thought upon seeing that photo up there “oh look an outhouse tree”!!!!!

    Liked by 3 people

  64. Not last Cheryl.
    I “slept in” this morning.
    Not really slept, just laid there an extra 30 minutes.
    It is, after all, Saturday.

    As for the “Music” question, I contend that modern church music isn’t music, as such.
    It isn’t poetry set to music because it doesn’t rhumen,
    It isn'[t creative because I figure “I could have done that”.
    It isn’t music because it doesn’t have melody.
    But it does have beat.

    The Beetles, or someone had a song that had the lines like”
    “the beat generation. I think you’re headed for the blues.”

    All of this on yesterday’s thread. Where it belongs.

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