Tag Archives: religion

More Judith

I had to spend most of the morning producing the handout for the party, so I'll give you the rest of it today. I'm reading parts of two sections -- the one I gave you yesterday about Holofernes cutting off the water supply to Bethulia, and the one about the death of Holofernes. Here's the [...]
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged , , , | Leave a comment

The Book of Judith

I'm going to a Robert Burns Birthday Party tomorrow, where people read poetry that's impressed them. We'll also song some Burns songs and read some of the standard Burns, but people mostly pick poems that mean something to them no matter who the poet is or when they were written. I thought over what poetry [...]
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

More about bashing the babies

In my post about Psalm CXXXVII, I said: I think it's important to remember that it isn't just songs about not singing songs that war produces, but people who actually want to kill babies. I just read something that suggests another point of view on this. I'm reading Wolf Hall, a novel about the life [...]
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged , , | Leave a comment

Christmas Eve in the melting pot

The clash between family tradition and the American protestant tradition was even more plangent with my sister’s new church. The Polish tradition is to have a large meal on Christmas Eve and then go to midnight mass. The American protestant tradition is to have a church service on Christmas Eve, and then the large meal [...]
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged , | Leave a comment

Gibralter and Christmas

We like to end the three-hour West Gallery Quire meetings with something rousing that we know well, so that even if we've been struggling with unfamiliar music where the words are on a different page with the notes, we can go home feeling like we sound good when we've worked through those difficulties. Last Sunday [...]
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Why there was no room at the inn

I was typing lyrics for the concert program, and it occurred to me to wonder why there was a run on hotel rooms in Bethlehem, before Christmas was a generally celebrated holiday. The only explanation in the Bible is that the decree had gone forth from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed, [...]
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged , | Leave a comment

Leaving a religion

There turned out to be two ex-quakers (people formerly involved in the Society of Friends, but now members of other churches) at the band rehearsal (and subsequent beer-drinking) last night, so I reflected yet again that ex-quakers are much more civilized about their disagreements or dissatisfactions than ex-catholics are. I should mention that in some [...]
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged , | Leave a comment