Hannah Roorda writes:

I just re-read a good article by Duck Schuler (in Credenda) on spiritual warfare through music and it reminded me of a few ideas I stored away over the weekend, about the more practical, visible ways that Christians influence others through music.

First: I sing in a college/community choir at a school that seems to place a special emphasis on the first part of the liberal arts. Thankfully, they also make a big deal of the second part of that same phrase, and the choral director there is excellent: he knows his stuff and he programs great and varied music. In my two semesters there, this once-a-week rehearsal choir has sung Mozart, Handel, Brahms, Billings, Copland, Elgar, Mendelssohn, and many other lesser-known composers. We’ve tackled huge choral works like Mozart’s Requiem, The Messiah, and Brahms’ Requiem. We’ve done programs that are strictly American music (and so quite modern) and programs of English music that stretches from the 1700s to the 1990s. It’s been a wonderful variety! But one thing I have noticed is that almost everything we sing is explicitly Christian,which I know is to be expected if we’re going to sing historically important music. College choir was where I learned to sing Kyrie Eleison, Agnus Dei, Ave Verum; where I memorized Psalm 84, Psalm 40, Revelation 21. And that only covers a few things. Since I started singing with the group, I have been immersed in Biblical texts and Christian doctrine. And it’s been good for me, having these things reinforced in a mainly secular institution. They cant get away from them! What is even better though, is the large number of unchurched college students who sing these great doctrines every week too.

Second– John, this is mainly for you– I know a family that chose their church mainly on the basis of the organ/organist/music ministry. What can we do with that? If we have truly God-glorifying, wonderful music at our churches, the world will be drawn. So learn to play the organ really well so they’ll show up and then want to stay.

John R. Ahern writes,

Rough. Work in progress. Please know I’m being cynical about a lot of things, but I hope to involve a certain amount of accuracy and aptitude at the same time. If I say something patently off the wall, please, comment.

A

ABDICATION, n. See ROWAN WILLIAMS.

ABOMINATION OF DESOLATION, n. An event towards which most Christians in past and present have looked with gleeful anticipation, despite their nominal fear that it should happen in their lifetimes; whereas there is a small faction of Christians, called praeterists, who are allowed to look at with historical satisfaction, having ostensibly occurred in 70 A. D.

ALITURGICAL, adj. Any given Divine Liturgy after Vatican II. See also OREGON CATHOLIC PUBLICATIONS.

ANABAPTIST, adj. A strand of the Radical Reformation believing infant baptism void. (from anab, English acronym: a New American Bible)

ANGELOLOGY, n. The study of angels, most expanded upon by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and St. Thomas Aquinas. Recently and less formally Jacques Maritain and C. S. Lewis have contributed to it, pointing out that the Victorian representation of angels as dazzling females or cuddly babies was nowhere based in reality. On that score, Ogden Nash says in The Cherub,

I like to watch the clouds roll by,
And think of cherubs in the sky;
But when I think of cherubim,
I don’t know if they’re her or him.

The naming of this dictionary after an angel should be purely construed as a response of Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary. The author, however not wishing to give himself airs, finds it hard to imagine either babies or girls, with wings and rosy cheeks complete, to be this cynical.

ART, ECCLESIASTICAL, n. Icons, paintings, sculptures, and architecture of the Church. Different ages and different Churches have had differing artistic styles. Post counter-Reformation, Catholics and Orthodox tended to swing between iconoclastic and pristine art, and the more aesthetically pleasing styles that evolved into Romanesque and Gothic. After the Reformation, the Roman Catholics adopted often Baroque and Neoclassical art for their churches. Most Protestants to this day don’t give a darn. There are a few who do, and these are usually mistaken for Catholics.

ATTRITION, n. (a) The impulse to repentance out of fear of Hell. (b) The decrease of a church’s congregants, laity, or members; in evangelical and/or charismatic circles, a church split; in Calvinism, usually the same pastor for more than two years.

He is risen!

Philip Hilton scribbles,

Dear Han, I’d really love to write
If only I’d somewhat to say
But as it is I lounge around at night
And no muse comes my way.

Such is life! Such is fate!
Who am I to complain?
But if you wish, I shall relate
What is in my brain.

You all — my recent study is Odysseus
That man of wiles and ways
Who has just reached Erebus
With its gloomy lightless days.

Where? Where? What? What?
Do say that name again;
Where is my pot?
Who wrote this poem?
What is all this rot?

Odysseus, my happy friend,
Is someone you won’t meet
He met a calm and peaceful end
Somewhere on your Greek map sheet.

Odysseus! He is the one
Who stops my muse from song
So pardon me, and blame that man,
Who has done so much wrong.

I shall try to post quite soon.
P.S — And forgive my bad poetry. Guess who I’m blaming it on. :P

Hannah Roorda writes:

I don’t know if you’ve noticed–
But you haven’t written much.
Oh, yes, I’m sure you’re busy;
And I haven’t been– as such–

But fellows, I’m impatient!
What muse springs from your mind?
What splendid things will thrill us
As your thought process unwinds?

Can’t we hear more from Socrates,
Aristotle, Plato, too?
Has homework got you down?
Does Latin make you blue?

Then write away your troubles
And take ours along as well!
If you’d post you would feel better:
Now, wouldn’t that be swell?

I know, my poem stinks…
But I need your inspiration!
Haven’t you heard that constant writing
Works the same as respiration?

So let us know that you’re not dead:
And give this blog a post!
It really would be kind,
And chivalrous? The most.

Hannah Roorda writes:

It’s late, but I have three thoughts. They’re not particularly original, but hey, no one ever said I had to be original.

1.The nature of suffering is that whatever you suffer, you suffer alone. Part of it is that no one can truly know your pain.

2. Suffering is an amazing transformation tool. God uses it to strip away all of the protective layers you build, and lay you raw before yourself and the world. And this will either ruin your life, or improve it in marvelous ways you could never have imagined.

3. Christ understands our sufferings. Unlike other religions, we have a God who suffered with and for us (Hebrews).