Getting Loose

The Cherubim

In the Bible study I have been teaching on Wednesday mornings at the village church, we recently were looking at chapter 6 of the scroll of the prophet Isaiah.  That led to a discussion about the 9 ranks of angels with the seraphim being next to God himself, and the cherubim just below them. 

I had remembered that P. I. Tschaikovsky, one of my absolute favorite composers, had composed some piece of work about that rank of angels, and here it is.

.

I remember how it blew me away the first time I heard it by chance at night on my car radio years ago.  I was alone.  I tell you, the composer was a genius . . .  or very, very sensitive . . . like Mozart.  As I listen, I shake my head in amazement and wonder.

If you want to get blown away, turn up the sound and listen to it at night with the lights off, or with just a few candles lit.  You will be within aural proximity to the antechamber of paradise.

Ike Strike--12

Well, the rain has finally hit. We lost our tv signal for a while, but at least as of a moment ago, it was back up.

We are also getting some pretty significant gusts. You can occasionally hear the wind blowing through the trees. The intensity is definitely beginning to pick up where I am.

Our temperature is 78. That’s probably as high or as low as it will get for a while. We probably have some gusts in the 50 mph range. From inside you can definitely hear the wind gusts from time to time.  They are now saying that the wind gusts will be in the 77 mph range.

I don’t know how many more of these I’ll be doing tonight.  And we’ll see if the power holds out.

Vaya con Dios.

Ike Strike--11

Well, we now have a 90% probability of experiencing a hurricane. It’s about 1½ hours out of Galveston and appears to be roaring toward that town. According to The Wall Street Journal the eye of Ike will go north, to the east of me, about 20 miles away. That means that I am not on the "dirty" side of the hurricane. I expect I will experience hurricane force wind gusts of 81 mph.

There is hardly any traffic outside. Neighbors are out walking their dogs. River Oaks, one of the priciest sections of real estate in the United States, to the ESE of me, has already lost power. We have two bathtubs full of water.

I expect no flooding where we live.

It is really fairly quiet here. We get gusts of about 45 mph from time to time, but that is about it. Still no rain.

Of course the news media is covering this like the plague. They have people stationed everywhere.

The things that amazes me the most is the surge way to the east of us in Louisiana. I would not have guessed that. Galveston is probably flooded everywhere by now.

Ike Strike--3

I got up one time in the night to go to the bathroom. The sky was clear. I could see the moonshine peaking into the bathroom window. Everything seemed so calm, so quiet. It was hard to believe that there is a storm threatening to come here.

I guess this is what they call the calm.

Star Dust

I know that there are a lot of Christians who listen to so-called "religious" radio stations. I have never really cared much for that kind of musical format. But, then, I can also remember over 30 years ago saying the same kind of thing about country and western format stations. At the time, I did not care for them. I’ve changed a little on that score.

I took the Church Lady today to pick up her car, and being as nosey as she is, she immediately proceeded to go through my little stash on CD’s that were out in public view. I’m not sure if she actually said these words, but I at least got to thinking, "You can tell a lot about a person by the kind of music they listen to."

She started going through them like so many cards in a hand. "Well who is this? Liquid Mind? What’s that? Patsy Cline." And then there was a Sam Kennison CD. "You listen to that? What kind of a minister are you?" (That would probably take several posts to figure that out myself) "Dusty Springfield? Who is that?" I put it in and punched in a couple of songs she could identify. And then I dropped her off.  But one of the CD’s I hadn’t listened to in a while was by Nat King Cole. The song in particular that really stirs me deeply is Star Dust—it is one of my absolute, all time favorites. I think the musical score is by Nelson Riddle.

I remember months ago looking up what I could find out about Hoagy Carmichael who wrote it. I listened to a couple of other versions recorded by Frank Sinatra and others back in the 1940's much closer to the time when it was written, but this particular version by Nat King Cole is absolutely haunting. Mitchell Parish wrote the lyrics to this song which are so poetic as to be nearly beyond belief. He also wrote the lyrics to Deep Purple.

And now the purple dusk of twilight time
Steals across the meadows of my heart
High up in the sky the little stars climb
Always reminding me that were apart.
You wander down the lane and far away . . .

Why does that song get to me so? Besides its musical gentility, and lyrical beauty that is deeply disquieting, I suppose it reminds me somewhat of the most painful episode in my life back in 1996. I felt as if I had been excoriated. And one particular evening I was in a base camp up about 6,000 feet in New Mexico. I needed to get away by myself and wandered to a deserted amphitheater, laid down on one of the wooden benches that had no back and stared up into the sky trying to make sense of what had happened in my life. The tears flowed, the stars were like jewels in the sky—there were so many, and their light seemed so close, and my heart was so broken.

It Never Gets Easier

   I have to pick myself up by the psychological scruff of my neck to do three things. 

   One was back in seminary at SMU.  And that was going to Chapel.  Without fail, I had 20 other things I needed to do other than that.  But I was always glad I went.

   Hospital visits.  They always take a lot of time, and again there are so many irons I have in the fire, that I can always find a reason not to . . . but invariably I am the one who gets the blessing by doing the visiting.  That has happened so often that you'd think I'd learn by now.

   Number three--going to the gymn.  I hate it.  In fact for some reason I woke up at 5:15 this morning and went in order to get it over with.  I usually go late at night sometime after 8 p.m.  But last night I was thoroughly and completely in a state of frustration trying to hook up a new amplifier/tuner I had bought for our home theatre system.  It was enraging not having the logic go the way I thought it should.  At one point things began to work OK, and then like a dew in the morning, it disappeared.  I eventually got it fixed in a fashion by midnight, but I never, never thought it would EVER take THAT long.  All of this is a long-winded way of saying that I missed working out last night (I usually go 3 times a week) . . . but . . .  when I go, I always feel better afterwords.

The Monday after Epiphany

   Yesterday I went to three church services.  One church was the largest one in the USA.  The second one was the largest United Methodist Church in the USA.  The third one was a packed crowd in an artistic community church who has the coolest web site of any church I have ever seen.

   The thing that amazed me was that not one of them mentioned the fact that yesterday was the Epiphany.  That is the third oldest Christian holiday just after Easter and Pentecost.  I was amazed.  All three were "successful" churches in some manner of speaking, but here we are, Christian communities, that increasingly have less and less contact with our Christian heritage and tradition.  I felt a sense of loss.

  Last night after my wife had gone to bed, I went back into our den and turned on the Christmas tree lights one last time.  I just stared at the tree and the lights and realized how much I love the Christmas season.  For so many, "Christmas" is all the helter skelter of activities that commence immediately following the Thanksgiving holidays and goes at a fever pitch right up until and through Christmas Day.  That is certainly what the secular culture  would have you to believe.  But those values are so false.  Most of that is Advent--a time to reflect and think about the God the Son coming not just as a baby, but as our judge as well.

   Christmas time is December 25 - January 6.  The 12 days of Christmas.  As I looked at the tree, I could remember the ghost of Christmases past.  When I was little and how excited I would be.  When our children were little and how excited they got.  The Advent calendar that would be out as a prelude to a wonderful Holiday time.   This was our first empty nester Christmas.