Off to the UK to see family and friends! Postings will be intermittent.
Happy New Year!

A Mother's Carol, Clay Zambo and Scott Ethier

A Mother’s Carol

Her breath returned after pain of birth,
She awkwardly rests him on her knee.
An angel told her of peace on earth;
This new mother’s song could only be:
“Magnificat!
Magnificat anima mea Dominum!
On wings of praise my soul flies free.”

A mother’s carol, a baby’s cry:
What sorrow and joy they both express.
If she had known how her son would die,
Would Mary have said so firm a “Yes?”
Magnificat!
Magnificat anima mea Dominum!
Let all creation say no less.

For each of us comes a time of choice--
To answer the call or turn away.
And if today you may hear that voice,
May you find the grace to boldly say,
“Magnificat!
Magnificat anima mea Dominum!
May peace be born through me today.”
- Clay Zambo

This is a new composition that won this year's VocalEssence and American Composer's Forum's 11th annual Welcome Christmas! Carol Contest. The piece also will be recorded by Minnesota Public Radio for distribution in 2009.

Scott Ethier is a composer and pianist who writes and performs concert works, musical theater, and jazz. His musical Rosa Parks (book and lyrics by Jeff Hughes) was commissioned by Theaterworks/USA and kicks off a tour of the United States at New York City’s Town Hall in February of 2009.

Missing Magnificat on Episcopal Cafe

My piece "The Missing Magnificat" is posted on Episcopal Cafe in Daily Episcopalian. A similar piece by Jonathan Bartley appeared on Christmas Day, "Red Mary: This real Christmas message isn't meek and mild, it's subversive, a challenge to wealth and power."

Mary's song has far more in common with The Red Flag than We Three Kings. But if it makes uncomfortable reading for the Church keen to attract people with a warm, fuzzy message at the one time of year when church attendance seems to actually increase, it is equally challenging for governments.

A few years ago, during the passage of one of the Conservative Government's immigration and asylum bills, an MP from the opposition benches rose to speak in the House of Commons. He began to relate the story of a young unmarried couple. The young girl was pregnant, and they were fleeing a despotic regime. As the story developed, it became clear that this was no ordinary family. He was talking about the Holy Family – a fact that was not lost of the then immigration minister, herself a Catholic, who grew redder by the second as the story unfolded. Then came the final blow. Under the government's proposals, that family, the MP proposed, would not be granted asylum in the UK.

Those who really understand Mary's take on the nativity will realise that Jesus's birth is not just good news for the oppressed, but a threat to all those who seek to restrict and control. It tells us that those who crusade for Christmas will end up losing the very festival they would defend.

My additional point is simply this: where then do we hear the Magnificat in the liturgy??

Marina Warner interview for Belief

Marina Warner is interviewed by Joan Bakewell for the series Belief on Radio 3. She grew up in Cairo while her father was a bookseller. She was raised Catholic, and speaks about the rhythm of a Catholic school day. She wrestles with the purpose of the crucifixion and discusses internalized guilt. Mary, on the other hand, was the unifying maternal presence. Asked about the miracles of Mary, she speaks instead of human experiences of reversals and epiphanies. She speaks of how to be saint in a world without God citing Camus. She sees the election of Obama as the result of a collective ethical effort.

What was Jesus actually called?

Brian Palmer in Slate investigates Jesus' name:

Christ's given name, commonly Romanized as Yeshua, was quite common in first-century Galilee. (Jesus comes from the transliteration of Yeshua into Greek and then English.) Archaeologists have unearthed the tombs of 71 Yeshuas. The name also appears 30 times in the Old Testament in reference to four separate characters—including a descendent of Aaron who helped to distribute offerings of grain (2 Chronicles 31:15) and a man who accompanied former captives of Nebuchadnezzar back to Jerusalem (Ezra 2:2).

The long version of the name, Yehoshua, appears another few hundred times, referring most notably to the legendary conqueror of Jericho (and the second most famous bearer of the name). So why do we call the Hebrew hero of Jericho Joshua and the Christian Messiah Jesus? Because the New Testament was originally written in Greek, not Hebrew or Aramaic. Greeks did not use the sound sh, so the evangelists substituted an S sound. Then, to make it a masculine name, they added another S sound at the end. The earliest written version of the name Jesus is Romanized today as Iesous. (Thus the crucifix inscription INRI: "Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum," or "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.")

The initial J didn't come until much later. That sound was foreign to Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. Not even English distinguished J from I until the mid-17^th century. Thus, the 1611 King James Bible refers to Jesus as "Iesus" and his father as "Ioseph." The current spelling likely came from Switzerland, where J sounds more like the English Y. When English Protestants fled to Switzerland during the reign of the Catholic Queen Mary I, they drafted the Geneva Bible and used the Swiss spelling. Translators in England adopted the Geneva spelling by 1769.

In contrast, the Old Testament was translated directly from the original Hebrew into English, rather than via Greek. So anyone named Yehoshua or Yeshua in the Old Testament became Joshua in English.

But there's another factor in separating Jesus from Joshua: Jesus isn't a Jewish name. Its a European Protestant form of the name. Joshua, on the other hand, sounds more Jewish. Joshua, or in its full form, Yehoshua, is a theophoric name that begins with the divine name YHWH. Perhaps in the 1st century this name carried the connotation of hope for divine deliverance from Roman oppressors.

The meaning of Christmas

There's some excellent reporting on religious even Christian themes on days like today. I've spent about 45 minutes reading articles on the web.

The St Louis Post Dispatch has an article "Silence is Holy on Christmas Day" that quotes The Rev. Clare McPherson's book, "Keeping Silence":

Theologians, scholars and pastors say silence is especially important during the holidays when the commotion and racket of the secular can distract from peaceful meditation on the true meaning of Christmas.

Silence "helps us get in touch with our deeper selves and build a stronger relationship with God," said the Rev. Mary Gene Boteler, pastor of Second Presbyterian Church in St. Louis.

"The Christmas tumult and noise that begins after Halloween pulls us away from that silence. It's as if we're afraid of what we'd discover if we were to move into that greater silence."

The sacredness of silence is a part of many religious traditions. It is often said that "Quakers have as many words for silence as Eskimos do for snow." Hindus and Buddhists value silence as a spiritual concept. Kenneth Kraft, professor of Buddhist Studies at Lehigh University, said the appreciation of inner silence is one of the most practical aspects of Buddhism.

"There is an inner chatter going on in our minds, and when we try to stop that inner chatter, we don't even know how to do it," said Kraft. "Meditation enables people to have that surface chatter quiet down, but without a loss of awareness or consciousness. In fact, quieting that chatter allows the deep mind to relate to experience in a very rich way."

Religious and literary figures have spoken and written about the value of silence. God "cannot be found in noise and restlessness," said Mother Theresa. "God is the friend of silence."

Just before Christmas in 2003, Pope John Paul II said silence was a key to the mystery of Christ's birth. Silence, he said, "is able to hear the singing of the Angels and the cry of the Babe, and does not let them drown in noise and confusion."

Shakespeare called silence "the perfectest herald of joy," and Herman Melville said all profound things "are preceded and attended by Silence." Silence, said Melville, "is the only Voice of our God."

The Rev. C.W. McPherson, an Episcopal priest and author of "Keeping Silence," says humans have not evolved far enough to handle the sheer volume of noise that exists in today's culture.

"The loudest noise our great-grandfathers heard was thunder," McPherson said. "Today we're assaulted with noise, and we've made Christmas congruent with that ... which makes Christmas too frenetic and too crazy."

Jubilant celebration at this time of year, with family, music, even gift-giving, is appropriate, even needed, McPherson said, but Christians should "deliberately build silence into their celebrations." He suggested a daily silent reading of the first three chapters of the Gospel of Luke — the story of Christ's birth.

The Charlotte Observer has an article, "Finding the light in dark times" in which the author presents a message from local clergy:

In that simple scene in Bethlehem, God showed how secondary material things are to him: He chose to enter the world not as an earthly king, but as a needy baby, born into a poor family, his first bed an animal trough. An angel announced Jesus' birth not to the rich and powerful, they say, but to lowly sheep herders, whose initial terror gave way to peace and joy.

“If you look at the manger scene, it's a place of great vulnerability – not clean, not a place of security, a borrowed shack,” says the Rev. Chip Edens, rector at Christ Episcopal Church in Charlotte. “But there's something powerful in all that. When we're vulnerable, we're more open. … Our needs become blessings and we're invited to get in touch with Christ and experience healing, strength and hope.”

All this has become real and personal to people as they see jobs vanish, homes go on the auction block, and 401(k)s plummet.

God “is saying to us, ‘These things you thought were going to take care of you? Well, they're not. But I will.'” says the Rev. Tom Stinson-Wesley, pastor of Pineville United Methodist Church. “Don't be afraid – that's God's message to us.”

Thought for the Day (December 22): True Nativity

Thought for the Day by John Bell:

I don't believe that Mary would have ridden a donkey. What's more I don't believe that Jesus was born in a snowstorm. The average temperature in Bethlehem these days is around 70 degrees Fahrenheit.

Nor do I believe that the baby was laid in hay and surrounded by animals. I mean, it might have been 2000 years ago, but people understood the rudiments of hygiene even then.

What's worse. I don't believe in the innkeeper or his wife, in the cattle shed or in the shepherds bringing a lamb. What use would it be to a baby?

And to cap it all and risk accusations of atheism, I don't believe that either the baby or the little town of Bethlehem was silent.

And I don't believe these things because they are all understandable but fanciful accretions courtesy of Victorian carols, Christmas cards and school nativity plays performed for the benefit of parents' cameras. None of the things I disbelieve in appear in the Bible including the silent night. All we know about Bethlehem is that it was crowded out. People would have been drunk or partying or both.

What then are we left with? An almost single-parent mother giving birth to a boy in an alien village in occupied territory at a time when one in four women and one in three babies died at the point of birth. There was no one of importance in attendance, and the vast majority of the outside world, if surveyed, would have said that the event held no significance for them.

The risk of dying during labour, of being exposed to the elements and ignored by the public is precisely what Christmas celebrates. The presence of a God who relates to us not from the immunity of heaven but from the insecurity of earth. This is about the costliness of love, not the confection of sentiment.

copyright 2008 BBC

Time for Campbell's Soup

Time for us all to support Campbell's in their choice to include us in their advertisement for Swanson's Broth in the Advocate for November. Campbell's is standing firm in spite of criticism (good advertising also!) according to this piece in Advertising Age. Anyone know Ruth Reichl or Wolfgang Puck??

Finding Jesus in the Community

Maria McKay in Christian Today writes an article "Taking Jesus Into the Community" about an artist who created painted pebbles when he noticed that the community lacked a nativity scene (we are in the UK). The artist says:

“You’ve just got to take Jesus out into the community. You’ve got to get Jesus out of the building into the streets and that’s what I am doing.”

The small pebbles are just a couple of inches long and are left nestled in recycled hamster bedding on window ledges, benches and cash machines.

It’s for that reason that the mystery giver asks that Christians will leave the pebbles where they are so that they can be found by people who do not yet believe in Jesus.

“There are going to be people caught in a storm, lost at sea this Christmas, and they are going to be crying out to God for help. People who never in a million years thought they would be crying out to God for help are going to be crying out this year.”

He adds, “I’ve only been a Christian five years and for me to be doing this is a miracle in itself because if I can be saved anybody can be saved. This is my way of giving back. I won’t ever stop telling people what God has done for me.”

March 18, 2009: "Repentance, Renewal and Reconciliation: How One Demonination Has Come to Terms with its Anti-Judaic Heritage"

Repentance, Renewal, and Reconciliation: How One Denomination (the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) Has Come to Terms with Its Anti-Judaic Heritage

Lecture given by the Reverend Dr Franklin Sherman:
In 1994, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America issued a "Declaration to the Jewish Community" in which it repudiated Martin Luther's anti-Jewish writings, expressed its sorrow for their baleful effects in subsequent generations, and affirmed its "urgent desire to live out our faith in Jesus Christ with love and respect for the Jewish people." Why was the Declaration issued at that particular time? How was it received in the Jewish community, and what has been the follow-up in educational materials? Dr. Sherman, who chaired the committee that prepared the Declaration, will discuss these and related questions in his lecture.

March 18, 2009 Annual Lecture of the Center for Jewish Christian Studies and Relations: General Theological Seminary, 7.00 Seabury Auditorium.

King Herod: National Geographic December 2008

Tom Mueller writes on King Herod and his legacy for National Geographic:

An astute and generous ruler, a brilliant general, and one of the most imaginative and energetic builders of the ancient world, Herod guided his kingdom to new prosperity and power. Yet today he is best known as the sly and murderous monarch of Matthew's Gospel, who slaughtered every male infant in Bethlehem in an unsuccessful attempt to kill the newborn Jesus, the prophesied King of the Jews. During the Middle Ages he became an image of the Antichrist: Illuminated manuscripts and Gothic gargoyles show him tearing his beard in mad fury and brandishing his sword at the luckless infants, with Satan whispering in his ear. Herod is almost certainly innocent of this crime, of which there is no report apart from Matthew's account. But children he certainly slew, including three of his own sons, along with his wife, his mother-in-law, and numerous other members of his court. Throughout his life, he blended creativity and cruelty, harmony and chaos, in ways that challenge the modern imagination.