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Hymn of the Week: We Gather Together

Nov15

Lyrics: Adrianus Valerius (aka François Valéry). Translated to English by Theodore Baker in 1894.

Music: KREMSER, a Dutch tune arranged by Edouard Kremser.

Theme: Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world. I John 4:4.

This hymn was written in Dutch to celebrate the Dutch victory over Spanish forces in the Battle of Turnhout in 1597. The Dutch tune to which it is set was originally a folk tune with the lyrics, “Wilder dan wilt, wie sal mij temmen,” or “Wilder than wild, who will tame me?” The tune was tamed by Dutch Protestants celebrating their newfound ability to “gather together” after throwing off Spanish (Catholic) rule.

1. We gather together
to ask the Lord’s blessing;
he chastens and hastens
his will to make known.
The wicked oppressing
now cease from distressing.
Sing praises to his name,
he forgets not his own.

2. Beside us to guide us,
our God with us joining,
ordaining, maintaining
his kingdom divine;
so from the beginning
the fight we were winning;
thou, Lord, wast at our side,
all glory be thine!

3. We all do extol thee,
thou leader in battle,
and pray that thou still
our defender wilt be.
Let thy congregation
escape tribulation;
thy name be ever praised!
O Lord, make us free!

We Gather Together was, for a long time when I was a teenager, my favorite hymn, mostly because I liked the tune. I still do, even though I have gone on to other favorite hymns. I still like to sing this one at Thanksgiving as we gather to thank God for what He has done and petition Him to make us and to keep us free.

Sources:
The surprising origins of “We Gather Together,” a Thanksgiving standard by Melanie Kirkpatrick.
We Gather Together with Garrison Keillor. “Keillor is joined by Prudence Johnson, Rich Dworsky, the VocalEssence Chorus & Ensemble Singers, Charles Kemper and Philip Brunelle in musical renditions of traditional hymns and humorous adaptations of songs for the season.”

War and Remembrance: Armistice Day

Nov11

This day was known as Armistice Day because the armistice ending World War I was signed on November 11, 1918 at 11 AM. On May 13, 1938, it became a legal holiday in the U.S. to be observed every November 11th. In 1954, many held that the heroic struggle of the veterans of World War II and Korea needed to be acknowledged. Therefore, the term “armistice” was removed and replaced with veteran. In other countries this day is known as Remembrance Day.

HERE DEAD WE LIE
Here dead we lie
Because we did not choose
To live and shame the land
From which we sprung.
Life, to be sure,
Is nothing much to lose,
But young men think it is,
And we were young.

by A E Housman

IF I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England’s, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

by Rupert Brooke

Veteran’s Day is really for remembering and appreciating those who have served and protected us, those who are living and those who died. So this last poem is for those who didn’t die in war, but who served and loved and tried to bring us through war to peace.

Peace
by Henry Vaughan

My soul, there is a country
Far beyond the stars
Where stands a winged sentry
All skilful in the wars:
There, above noise and danger,
Sweet peace sits crowned with smiles,
And One born in a manger
Commands the beauteous files.
He is thy gracious friend,
And (O my soul, awake!)
Did in pure love descend
To die here for thy sake.
If thou canst get but thither,
There grows the flower of peace,
The rose that cannot wither,
Thy fortress, and thy ease.
Leave then thy foolish ranges;
For none can thee secure
But One, who never changes,
Thy God, thy life, thy cure.

Callie’s Rules by Naomi Zucker

Nov1

Some of Callie’s Rules:
A family is not a democracy. Even when your father’s a lawyer and talks a lot about rights, it’s still not.

Listen to your father. The things he tells you might be useful sometime.

Monks have the right idea. If you never open your mouth, you get into a lot less trouble.

If everybody liked their Coke the same way, the world would be a pretty boring place.

I read this book about diversity and The Town That Tried to Cancel Halloween on just the right night, Friday night October 30th in my Austin motel room while I was preparing to attend the Texas Book Festival on Saturday, Halloween. In the book some busybodies decide that Halloween is Satanic and dangerous and harmful to young psyches. Unfortunately, the head busybody is also the wife of the town banker, and Mrs. Van Dine has more influence with the Hillcrest Town Council than Callie’s weird family does. The Jones family is made up of a lawyer father, and artist mom, and seven children, each with their own unique personality. (Callie’s little sister plays and naps in a cage.) Callie’s caught right in the middle of this weird family, and she’s not sure she can ever be like her mom, who doesn’t care whether people think she’s weird or not.

The minor characters in this novel are somewhat cartoonish, Mrs. Van DIne and her snooty daughter Valeri, the obtuse Town Council members, Callie’s wishy-washy best friend Alyce, but it’s still a good exploration what it feels like to be in middle school, desperate to fit in and yet wanting to be true to one’s own passions and beliefs. Callie loves Halloween. She enjoys the “weirdos”, the metal sculptures that her mom makes every year to display in the front yard of their home at Halloween. She doesn’t want to celebrate a healthy, insipid Autumn Fest, the substitute that Mrs. Van Dine has dreamed up for Hillcrest’s children. But she also doesn’t want anyone to think she’s weirder than they already think she is.

Callie’s dilemma, the fitting in and being yourself at the same time, is the dilemma of almost all middle school students. Callie navigates this perplexing middle school conflict with grace and humor. I’m thinking this would be an enjoyable Halloween read for young people who are caught in the same quandary. They might find some of Callie’s rules quite useful. Oh, and fans of Jane Eyre will also find a kindred spirit in Callie since Charlotte Bronte’s classic is Callie’s comfort book.

Comfort books, books that the protagonist reads over and over for solace and support, seem to be a theme in several books I’ve read lately, and that re-reading is also something my own children do. I don’t remember ever becoming that focused on one book or one set of books, though I do re-read favorites sometimes. The girl in Rebecca Stead’s When You Reach Me loves Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time. Brown Bear Daughter has been reading and re-reading Twilight and its sequels for about six months now. I read them once and found them entertaining, but I really don’t see that there’s enough there to go back to the well more than once. And Drama Daughter has been, dare I say, obsessed with Harry Potter for about three or four years now. Do you have a “comfort book” —one that you read again and again and that serves as metaphor and key for your life’s events?

Amazon Affiliate. If you click on a book cover here to go to Amazon and buy something, I receive a very small percentage of the purchase price.
This book is also nominated for a Cybil Award, but the views expressed here are strictly my own.

Wednesday’s Whatever: Blogiversary

Oct28

On October 28, 2003, I began this blogging gig with a post about Stephen Lawhead’s Patrick. And ever since then, for six years, I’ve been telling everybody who’s remotely interested what I’m reading and what I think about it. I’ve also indulged in the occasional political opinion piece, essays and observations about homeschooling, even poetry.

If you enjoy reading what I write here at Semicolon, I am both appreciative and humbled. If you’ve commented, even once or even negatively, I thank you for the contribution. If you read and never comment, I thank you, too, for making it fun to blog. Without readers, even if it’s only one, I am the proverbial tree falling in the forest. Maybe the tree would fall and make a sound anyway, but it wouldn’t make nearly as satisfying a boom. Communication and sharpening of thoughts and ideas are what blogging is all about for me.

I hope to continue blogging for as long as the process satisfies something within me and keeps me thinking. I hope you’ll continue reading for whatever your reasons are. In addition to the links above, here are some of my favorite posts from the past six years. Enjoy.

Why Read?

Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry.

Interview with J.B. Cheaney, author of The Middle of Somewhere.

Welcome Autumn!

Hurley Needs a Cool Code Name

LOST Names

Narnia Aslant: A Narnia-Inspired Reading List.

The End of the Alphabet, Wit and John Donne.

107 Best Movies

Of Psalms and Semicolons.

Autumn Links

Sep27

Pilgrimage




Pilgrimage

Art Print

Rockwell, Norman


Buy at AllPosters.com

Here are a few links to some autumnal posts, pages and resources here at Semicolon as we celebrate my favorite season:

October: Celebrations, Links and Birthdays

100 Pumpkins: A Celebration of All Things Pumpkin-ish

The Apple Collection: A collection of posts about apples from 2007.

In November 2006, I celebrated the Pecan, noblest of all nuts, and so yummy!

Welcome Autumn; a collection of fall favorites.

BBAW: Meme Time

Sep16


Do you snack while you read? If so, favorite reading snack?
Hot chocolate and peanuts. No, the peanuts don’t go IN the hot chocolate.

Do you tend to mark your books as you read, or does the idea of
writing in books horrify you?
I write in some books, especially my Bible, but mostly I don’t. Not horrified, but also not inspired to write anything until I’m done.

How do you keep your place while reading a book? Bookmark? Dog-ears? Laying the book flat open?
Ummm, I have the bad habit of laying the book down spread-eagle.

Fiction, Non-fiction, or both?
Both, but I read more fiction, and I usually choose nonfiction that tells a story, mostly biographies and history.

Hard copy or audiobooks?
Hard copy. I can’t keep my attention on an audio-book; I suppose I’m not an auditory learner.

If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop to look it up right away?
No. I just guess.

What are you currently reading?
The Log of a Cowboy: A Narrative of the old Trail Days by Andy Adams.
Lone Star: A History of Texas and the Texans by T.R. Fehrenbach.

What is the last book you bought?
I had another answer to this question, but this afternoon I visited this little hole-in-the-wall bookstore while Karate Kid was in canoeing class.
IMG_0264
I bought three books:

Antarctica: Journey to the Pole by Peter Lerangis. It looked good, and I like books about polar adventure.

The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard. Mindy recommended it, and the last book I read on her recommendation was a home run.

A Hole in Texas by Hermann Wouk. I didn’t even know Mr. Wouk (The Caine Mutiny, The Winds of War, War and Remembrance) was still writing. I’m trying to read books about Texas, or set in Texas, and this one is about a guy who works at NASA just like Engineer Husband.

Are you the type of person that only reads one book at a time or can you read more than one at a time?
See above. I always have several books going at once. That way I can find a book to suit my mood.

Do you have a favorite time of day and/or place to read?
Anytime, anywhere.

Is there a specific book or author that you find yourself recommending over and over?
Everybody should read something by C.S. Lewis, and if you like fiction, read Madeleine L’Engle.

Of eReaders and Books

Sep14

There’s a special promotion going on at Book Blogger Appreciation Week in which IREX Technologies is giving away one of their new eReaders. To be in the running, we are asked to write a post about the most important feature in an eReader.

Since I was thinking about Kindles and similar book readers way back last spring, and I jotted down some notes but never transferred those thoughts to the blog, I thought this would be a good opportunity to write about the newest twist to an old technology–books.

Last spring, I wrote:

I think I want a Kindle. For the uninitiated, a Kindle is Amazon’s version of an electronic book reader. You download books from Amazon into your Kindle and read them on a page-sized screen. The Kindle is light-weight, like a book, and the print is supposed to be easy on the eyes. Right now it costs about $350. However, I figure either the price will go down, or the Kindle will acquire more features.

For that much money, I would like for my eReader to be an MPED—multi-purpose electronic device. I want it to be an eReader/Blackberry/iPhone thingy, without gaining weight. I want my MPED to:

* double as a cell phone with a port where I can plug in one of those cool headsets so that I would no longer be tempted to hold my cell phone and drive at the same time.

* get me on the internet to check my email and my favorite blogs just the way my iPhone does. No, I do not want to pay a subscription price per blog, and yes, I do want to be able to download books on the go wherever I can connect to free Wifi.

*receive TV and radio signals. I want to be able to download movies into my eReader, watch TV, and listen to the radio on it, too.

I like the size of the Kindle, lightweight and about the size of a sheet of paper, or an 8 1/2 by 11 inch book. Blackberries and iPhones are too small for reading comfortably, and laptops are too bulky to carry around just for reading. I like that the primary purpose of the Kindle is reading books. Even if it branches out, the focus will remain on books and applications for book people.

I don’t like this little episode. If I pay for a book, on my eReader or in print, I want to own it. No backsies. And I don’t want to be limited to one bookseller; I want to be able to download books into my eReader from multiple sources, just like I can buy songs for iTunes from anywhere.

Come to think of it, an eReader that is just a reader, not a phone or a Wifi internet device or a radio would be fine, as long as I can get books for it wherever I want and as long as they belong to me to do whatever I want with them after I purchase them.

BBAW: My Favorite Book Blogs

Sep14

There are an awful lot of book blog and book bloggers out there, folks. I’m enjoying discovering new ones by means of Book Blogger Appreciation Week. However, the song we used to sing in Brownies said, “Make new friends but keep the old. One is silver and the other’s gold.”

The following are some of my favorites that were, for some odd reason, NOT shortlisted for a Book Blogger Appreciation Week Award:

Brandywine Books: Phil and Lars are the best at finding interesting book news and recommending good books and just generally writing good stuff.

Mental Multivitamin. Madame M-MV has been a favorite ever since I discovered her blog, not long after I started this one. She’s insightful, opinionated, intelligent, and agrees with me just enough of the time, but not too much. Iron sharpening iron. Oh, and M-MV is my tutor in Bardolatry.

Camille’s blog Book Moot makes me remember why I became a school librarian many, many years ago, and why I miss the job sometimes. Her love of children’s books is contagious.

Mindy Withrow is an author and a great reviewer. She’s the one who told me about Fieldwork by Mischa Berlinski, one of my favorite reads this year so far.

Brenda hosts Sunday Afternoon Tea at Coffee, Tea, Books and Me each Sunday, and during the week she’s always a source of calm, frugality, and good book recommendations.

Mitali’s Fire Escape is the best author blog I know. YA and children’s author Mitali Perkins blogs about life and books between cultures, and she asks thought-provoking questions and hosts the discussions that ensue.

There are more, but these are the ones I keep coming back to read —old friends even though we’ve never met in person.

Sunday Salon: What a Week!

Sep13

The Sunday Salon.comTomorrow starts Book Blogger Appreciation Week, and I’m stoked. I’ve already enjoyed discovering lots of new-to-me book blogs as I explored the blogs nominated for awards. And I also, of course, gleaned lots of titles for my TBR list:

Short Girls by Bich Minh Ngyuen. Recommended by My Friend Amy.

Hands of My Father by Myron Uhlberg. Recommended at Nonfiction Book Reviews.

The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry. Recommended by Trish at Hey Lady, Whatcha’ Readin’?

Fire by Kristin Cashore. Recommended by Jen Robinson (and lots of others).

Rachel Ray by Anthony Trollope. Recommended by Carol at MagistraMater.

The Knife of Never Letting Go and The Ask and the Answer by Patrick Ness. Recommended, together, by Becky at Becky’s Book Reviews.

It’s going to be a busy week here at Semicolon. The Top 100 Hymns are back. I have an interview to post for Book Blogger Appreciation Week on Tuesday. I have several books to review. And I need to write something to spur me, and you, on to good works in the area of homeschooling. Please join in, leave a comment to tell me what you’re reading and enjoying.

Hang on; it’s going to be good!