Healing Time on Earth (John Denver)

Healing Time on Earth (Let the River Run), was one of the last songs Denver was working on. This was recorded live at his Windstar Symposium in 1995. The song was never recorded in a studio for distribution, there is only this live, perhaps incomplete version.  We are honoring Mr. Denver, his music, and his vision with this post on the anniversary of his birth.

-

Saturday Haiku: Blizzard

 

howling blizzard winds
push the snowbound traveler
to sanctuary 

___________________________

Photo by Derek Gee (The Buffalo News/AP)

"A lone pedestrian makes his way across Colonial Circle in Buffalo, New York." Retrieved at  https://www.independent.ie/world-news/freezing-monster-storm-across-us-claims-at-least-34-lives-42243762.html

-

-

Poems for Hungry Minds

       “I first met poetry as a warm starry night –
             and cloudless.
       Wordless joy, both dazzling and calm,
       steadfast and ever-moving.
       No desire to leave.
       She was a quieting immensity.”
 
                                              ~ Charles Kinnaird

To read more about the wonders of poetry, the marvels of life, or the complexities of relationships from the varied angles of several fine poets, consider opening the pages of Poems for Hungry Minds.  The book is available now on Amazon or at Barnes and Nobel.

From the Preface:

This anthology gathers the voices, wisdom, community, fellowship, and longing for a better world through awareness, deep examination, and the joy of poetry. The HIGHLAND AVENUE POETS are a long-standing community of southern poets meeting monthly to workshop, edit and collectively refine their work.

Poetry slows the urgent world and grants a focus on life within it. The discipline practiced by these authors has occasioned a kind of communal joy - poems that reflect a community of compassion for the world.

You are invited within.

*    *    *

To take a peek at the first pages of our volume, check out the site at Amazon here.

Books may also be purchased at Barnes and Noble here.

-

Monday Music: Smooth Jazz Christmas Overture

I'm claiming the twelve days of Christmas (Christmastide) which means we have some time to celebrate the holiday. "Smooth Jazz Christmas Overture" is from the album, A Smooth Jazz Christmas: Dave Koz and Friends. This one may help you to decompress from holiday hustle and bustle. Have an egg nog and chill.

 

-

The Wexford Carol

 

St. Andrew's Church in Winter
photo by Parrish Nored

The Wexford Carol may be my all-time favorite carol. It is an Irish carol that originated in County Wexford and dates from the 12th century. This is another one that I came late in knowing. My first encounter with the carol was in the mid-1980s when I was singing in the choir at St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Birmingham. We were then under the direction of Lester Seigel, a most superb organist and choirmaster who was also choir director at Temple Emanu-El at the time (his weekends were quite busy!). These days, Dr. Seigel is an internationally known conductor and is Department Chair for the Music Department at Birmingham-Southern College. I am proud to have known him back in the day.

There is great joy in listening to music, but to sing in the choir adds another dimension. The choir works with the song over and over before it is presented to the public. As a result, the choir member has a much more intimate involvement with the music and has had the repeated experience of finding that place of harmony, balance, timing and accord with the rest of the choir. The congregation enjoys the results of the choir's many rehearsals, but the entire process brings rich reward to the choir member.

I have two versions of the Wexford Carol here. The first is a choral presentation that is very much the way I first learned the carol. The second is of Alison Krauss recording the piece for the CD, Yo-Yo Ma and Friends: Songs of Joy & Peace. Alison Krauss does a magnificent job with the song. Her background in country music (along with the addition of the drum and pipes) brings a real Celtic flavor to this Irish carol. Enjoy either one, or both!

-

Saturday Haiku: Moonlit Journey

 

a nighttime journey
offers travelers peace of mind
when graced by moonlight

________________________________

Image: "Moonlight," woodcut
Artist: Shiro Kasamatsu (1898-1991), Japan
Found on Pinterest at onizazen.collectrium.com



-

A Season of Upheaval and Hope

 

One of my poems included in North/South Appalachia’s anthology, Poetry and Art, Volume 2 is “Turning Under.” It references the Song of Hannah and the Song of Mary (The Magnificat). During this Advent season when we remember The Magnificat and it’s declaration that “He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly,” it seems fitting to present this poem today which recalls a season of upheaval.

Turning Under

 

On the near edge of summer

things are dying.

The plague has been like a

great harvester

mowing and sifting humanity’s

stalks and branches

leaving sorrow, memory, and

accommodation

strewn about

for the combine to gather

as dry statistics.

 

Some deaths come

When people can’t breathe.

There comes a time of burning

to level those suffocating structures.

 

Things die in summer,

even when death goes unnoticed

amid the flourishing of green.

 

An age-old song

rises from the rubble

when there is hope for the lowly

to be lifted up

as the mighty are brought down.

A song sung by the women who

witness the end

and see the beginning.

A song of Hannah,

a song of Mary,

and a song

of Billie Holiday

because all celebration

is born of sorrow.

  

                        - Charles Kinnaird

*   *   *   

North/South Appalachia Poetry & Art Vol 2 is available on Amazon. Proceeds go to the nonprofit organization, Reconnecting McDowell, to improve educational opportunities in West Virginia.

-

Monday Music: Christmas Time is Here (Vince Guaraldi)

I remember watching the Charlie Brown Christmas special the very first time it was aired. As an 11-year-old, I was already a seasoned fan of the Peanuts comic strip by Charles Shultz. Finding it in the “Sunday Funnies” was always a treat. Naturally, I took delight in the first televised cartoon of the Peanuts gang. Not only did A Charlie Brown Christmas tell an endearing Christmas story while presenting THE Christmas story, but it was also probably my first introduction to jazz with the musical score written by Vince Guaraldi. Many years later, I was very glad to have an excuse to watch the televised special again when my own daughter was young. The opening song, “Christmas Time is Here,” has since become an enduring Christmas classic, featured on many Christmas recordings.

Saturday Haiku: Birch and Pine

  

 evergreen pines stand
with bare birch trees in winter
wakefulness and sleep

___________________

Image: Forest pine and birch trees growing on frozen lake bank (stock photo)

-

One for Your Christmas Gift List

Susan Swagler, on WBRC's Good Day Alabama, offered book gift suggestions for Christmas. She gave a nice review of our new anthology, Poems for Hungry Minds.

 

The book is available now on Amazon or at Barnes and Nobel.

 

-

Monday Music: The Weight

Featuring Ringo Starr and Robbie Robertson | Playing For Change | Song Around The World

From the YouTube site:

Sep 18, 2019

“The Weight,” features Ringo Starr and The Band's original member Robbie Robertson, along with musicians across 5 continents. Great songs can travel everywhere bridging what divides us and inspiring us to see how easily we all get along when the music plays. Special thanks to our partner Cambria® for helping to make this possible and to Robbie Robertson, Ringo Starr and all the musicians for joining us in celebrating 50 years of this classic song.

 

-

Saturday Haiku: Kamigamo Shrine

 

clear waters flow down
past an ancient sacred shrine –
pathway swept today

__________________

"Kamigamo Shrine is one of the oldest shrines in Kyoto and is located in a peaceful, quiet area."
An important Shinto sanctuary on the banks of the Kamo River in north Kyoto, it was founded in 678.

Photo by beautiful_places_in_japan found on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/100378811716599/photos/a.100387675049046/557046259383183/

-

North/South Appalachia: Poetry and Art

I just learned that three of my poems were selected for North/South Appalachia’s anthology, Poetry and Art, Volume 2. The concept is to hear from the varied and diverse voices within Appalachia’s long and borders that extend from the southern part of New York State to the northern portions of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi.

“The richness of Appalachian culture, especially iits literature, is often misunderstood when it is considered at all. The poets of this collection, which spans the breadth of the complex and deeply diverse region known as Appalachia, paint vivid portraits of real lives lived in hill and dale, valley and holler, city street and urban neighborhood. Familiar and new voices sing together to celebrate the ongoing story of the Appalachian Renaissance.”

                                                 ~ Dr, Christina Fisanick,

                                                    President of the Writers Association of Northern                                                    Appalachian Writers (WANA)

 

Available on Amazon, proceeds go to the nonprofit organization, Reconnecting McDowell, to improve educational opportunities in West Virginia.

Poetry & Art from Appalachia. North/South is an inclusive periodic print & electronic publication by @studioappal & @watershedthe

Georgia on My Mind (Ray Charles)

Hoagy Carmichael wrote the music to "Georgia on My Mind" in 1930. His friend Stuart Gorrell wrote the lyrics. There is no doubt that Georgia native Ray Charles elevated the song to a new level when he recorded his rendition of it in 1960. In 1979, the State of Georgia designated Ray Charles' version the official state song. So here's lookin' at you Georgia. We're singing your song today!

  

-

Monday Music: Georgia on My Mind (Willie Nelson)

 In 1978, country music outlaw Willie Nelson showed us how American music might be all of a piece. Known for performing country music, much of which he wrote himself, Nelson recorded an album of pop standards offering a playlist using a blend of pop, country, and jazz. He included two Hoagy Carmichael numbers, the title track "Stardust" and one of my favorite versions of "Georgia on My Mind."

 

-

Saturday Haiku: Bluebird Pause

 

a bluebird sitting
on the branch of an oak tree –
momentary pause

---------------------------

Photo by Charles Kinnaird

-

A Happily Startling Advent

 

Advent at Grace

I suppose it is appropriate to be happily startled by the Nicene Creed on the first Sunday of Advent. That was my experience at Grace Episcopal Church in Woodlawn last Sunday when we came to that moment in the liturgy. 

Grace Church is an Anglo-Catholic parish in an old neighborhood that was once thriving but now bears that inner-city urban blight seen in the wake of white flight and new suburbs. The church sponsors a soup kitchen, a food pantry, a clothes closet, and a warming station on cold winter nights. Their motto is, “Where street and altar meet,” doing everything they can for neighbors in need.

I like to visit Grace, especially during Advent, for a dose of Anglo-Catholic liturgy. This past Sunday, the service moved along as expected with prayers, chants, and hymns. The service was printed out for congregants to follow. When it came time for the Nicene Creed, my first delightful surprise was in the gender-neutral language. Instead of talking about how Christ “was made man,” with the incarnation, the creed stated he “became truly human.”

Another gender-neutral turn was in reference to the Holy Spirit. I have never understood the Holy Spirit as “he,” anyway (if I were to think of gender, I would think in feminine terms). I usually just shuffle through those gender pronouns in the creed without giving them voice. This translation of the creed we read on Sunday, however, gets around gender altogether by saying, “who proceeds from the Father” and “who has spoken through the prophets.”

But the real zinger for me was that the creed I recited with the congregation had no filioque clause (the part where it says the Spirit proceeds from the father and the son. Instead, it harked back to the very early form which simply states that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father. Church history buffs know that the filioque clause was the final straw that launched a rift between the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Church.

Tracking Down the Source

Maybe I’m a bit of a church nerd in this, but it was quite enlivening for me to hear the creed in this newer form that was also an older form. When I got home, I had to do some research to find out where this version of the Nicene Creed came from. (see the full text of the translation below).

I got help online from Trinity Episcopal Church in Concord, Massachusetts. In a letter to the congregation, their rector explains the “New Words for Old Words” that the parish would be using in their services. He explains that

The translation of the Nicene Creed we are using this summer comes from Enriching our Worship 1 which are supplemental liturgies prepared by the Standing Liturgical Commission of the Episcopal Church in 1997. There are three major changes in this translation: language around the incarnation, the filioque clause, and the removal of a gendered Holy Spirit.

In his letter, The Rev. Christopher Whiteman writes of the incarnation passage:

The difference here is the Son being “made man” or “becoming fully human.” The original Greek contains the word ánthrōpos from which we also derive the word anthropology. This word in its singular form is translated as “man,” but in the most common usage of its plural form means people of all genders. The Greek word anḗr means biologically male in both its singular and plural forms. If it was essential that Jesus was incarnated biologically male, the word anḗr would have been used instead of ánthrōpos. Of course, we can use “man” in the English language similarly to ánthrōpos in the Greek but practice has changed. In academic circles Christians believe that the Son being biologically male in the person of Jesus is significant and use that as the basis for excluding those who are not biologically male from the priesthood. In the fourth century, Gregory of Nazianzus, an early pivotal thinker of Christianity and one of the authors of the creed we use, suggests that to ascribe human relationships and our understanding of gender to any of the persons of the Godhead is like a perverse joke.1 This passage appears to suggest that the best way forward is emphasizing the Son becoming human in the person of Jesus rather than biologically male.and even in common language, we more frequently go to “humanity” or “humankind” to describe the collectivity of people.

In translating this Greek idea into English as “became truly human,” we are emphasizing that the importance of the incarnation is the Son becoming human–one of us. Some Christians believe that the Son being biologically male in the person of Jesus is significant and use that as the basis for excluding those who are not biologically male from the priesthood. In the fourth century, Gregory of Nazianzus, an early pivotal thinker of Christianity and one of the authors of the creed we use, suggests that to ascribe human relationships and our understanding of gender to any of the persons of the Godhead is like a perverse joke.1 This passage appears to suggest that the best way forward is emphasizing the Son becoming human in the person of Jesus rather than biologically male. 

Of the second major difference, the removal of the filioque clause, Whiteman writes,

In the Book of Common Prayer (1979) translation, we say:

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,

who proceeds from the Father and the Son.

In the Enriching our Worship translation, we say:

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,

who proceeds from the Father.

The filioque clause is the “and the Son” which suggests that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the two other persons of the trinity not just one. This clause is not original to the creed and was only officially added in the western churches during the eleventh century as part of the East-West Schism when the church broke in two. In 1976, Anglican and Orthodox theologians issued the “Moscow Agreed Statement” in which Anglicans agreed with Orthodox Christians that the filioque clause should not be included in the Nicene Creed. In 1994, the General Convention of the Episcopal Church resolved that any new liturgies from that point on would not include the filioque clause. The removal of the words “and the Son” corresponds to the original Greek text and aligns us with current Anglican liturgical practice.

 

Of the gender-neutral references to the Holy Spirit, Whiteman writes,

The third major change in this translation of the Nicene Creed is the removal of gender from the Holy Spirit. In the 1979 translation the pronoun “he” is used for the Spirit and in the 1997 translation “who” is used. It has become common practice in some Episcopal churches to replace the 1979’s “he” with “she” when reciting the creed, but this gets us into another sticky situation: one in which we ascribe masculine aspects to parts of the Godhead and feminine aspects to others. This could suggest a play between gendered forces within the nature of God and goes against Gregory of Naziansus warning that we should not ascribe human concepts of gender in our theological expressions even though we are given the language of Father and Son. The Greek word for spirit, pneûma, is neuter and so the authors of Enriching our Worship chose to render the Holy Spirit without gender. This is not a perfect solution, but no words we choose can fully encapsulate God.

I’m not sure how many of you find this sort of discussion interesting, but for me it was an enlivening turn to take on this first Sunday of Advent at Grace Episcopal Church, “Where street and altar meet.”

*   *   *

Nicene Creed 

We believe in one God,

the Father, the Almighty,

maker of heaven and earth,

of all that is, seen and unseen.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,

the only Son of God,

eternally begotten of the Father,

God from God, Light from Light,

true God from true God,

begotten, not made,

of one Being with the Father;

through him all things were made.

For us and for our salvation

he came down from heaven,

was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary

and became truly human.

For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;

he suffered death and was buried.

On the third day he rose again

in accordance with the Scriptures;

he ascended into heaven

and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,

and his kingdom will have no end.

 We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,

who proceeds from the Father,

who with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified,

who has spoken through the prophets. 

We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.

We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.

We look for the resurrection of the dead,

and the life of the world to come. Amen.

 

-