“No matter what sort of pain you are in, this ameliorates it.”
Well, maybe. With no criticism intended for the Christian faith of you or anyone else here, it got real old being told over and over what a wretch I am. That hymn is one of the things that drove me from the church.
edaddyNovember 4, 2017, 4:41 PM
Daniel K Day, if I was driven from the church by a hymn I sure wouldn’t tell the whole darn world. Sounds to me like you just preferred the “wages of sin” to “the gift of God”.
TerryNovember 4, 2017, 5:42 PM
@Daniel K. Day
This may help you. Mormons are not Christians. They carry a Holy Bible sometimes but they are not of the Christian belief system. Check it out for yourself.
Daniel K DayNovember 4, 2017, 7:20 PM
edaddy, I said “one of the things”. Telling the whole world our viewpoints is what a lot of us, including you and me, use the internet for.
As for what I prefer, you’re presumptuous.
Terry: Mormonism looks like a branch of Christianity to me, but they sure do have some non-Biblical customs. I’m not a Mormon. I don’t debate whether they’re really Christians or not, that’s an internal matter for Christians and none of my business.
Rob De WittNovember 4, 2017, 8:04 PM
Maybe you’ve just not had enough loss and brokenness yet. Some folks don’t.
As for me,
Through many dangers, toils and snares
I have already come;
‘Twas Grace that brought me safe thus far,
And Grace will lead me home.
Libertys_falconNovember 4, 2017, 9:06 PM
The view that even the lowliest human being, no matter his or her lack of usefulness to the elite, nor their dispproval of him, has innate worth nobody can deny comes from Christianity and nowhere else.
Western Civilization and individual liberty evolved across centuries from it.
If you God ever fails you, my sword and my shield stand between you and all the forces of Hell.
Deus Vult.
JoyfulNovember 5, 2017, 6:13 AM
Very hard to believe that beautiful woman was ever a “wretch”. Couldn’t even listen after that. That’s a song for the gravel-voiced. Afterall, it was composed by a slave-trading, sea-faring, stinker.
RichardNovember 5, 2017, 7:21 AM
Amazing Grace is among a select few songs that cause my eyes to immediately become misty. I relate. I’m the Prodigal who, after squandering my portion of my father’s inheritance, stand before him hoping to beg scraps of food. Instead, this man whom I considered to be dead; this man who yearned and watched for his troubled son’s return home every day, put rings on my fingers, dressed me in the finest robes, and killed the fatted calf to celebrate my homecoming. So yeah, I’m a wretch. To those who cannot or will not regard themselves in such a contemptuous term as wretch I say, congratulations on having lived a life so well as to have no regrets, no sleepless nights as a result of personal failures and injuries committed unto others. So as one empty barrel would have it: I’m a deplorable all right, but a REDEEMED deplorable at that.
JackNovember 5, 2017, 8:17 AM
The first 30 or so years of my life were lived without any regard for Jesus and I hated Him but then I had a couple of soul shattering experiences with Him that rocked my entire life. I immediately became a true believer and I embraced my new Truth but my sin, delusion and anger were deeply embedded and it probably took another 30 years for me to (finally) completely surrender everything in my life to him. That conscious act was indescribable and the weight of all of my sins and fury evaporated in a moment.
I have discovered more personal peace and happiness since then than I could have ever imagined and those discoveries didn’t arise from belief alone. They came from simple obedience and surrender, from realizing that I cannot control one second of my life and in reality neither can anyone else, despite all of their claims to the contrary. I’ve turned the whole shooting match over to Jesus and win, lose or draw I know that He will take care of me and those I love and see us through. 60 years or more to find it….I’d have never guessed.
Uncle MikeyNovember 5, 2017, 9:48 AM
A beautiful song for a fantastic year. Thank you Gerard
Dan PattersonNovember 5, 2017, 10:00 AM
Bravo. Details of churching aside.
And yes the lyrics and context are indeed amazing. But I do have a serious problem with the video and the singers:
There is no one in a wheelchair
No deaf singer
No singer of color
No professed lesbian
No trans or other gender
No singer standing strong against the power
So how can everyone relate?
Oh. What? None of that bullshit matters?
GordonNovember 5, 2017, 10:35 AM
They must have been standing in that creek for some time. Or, it was shot over a couple of days. Either way, it’s a beautiful piece.
Now that the Supremes have said that anyone can marry anyone, or anyones, I wonder if the official CJCLDS will now discover new revelations that explain how the revelations of the late 1800s that banned plural marriage were mistaken. There would be a whole lot of celestial kingdoms needing to be filled with gals like these.
ghostsniperNovember 5, 2017, 11:53 AM
“Now that the Supremes have said …. “Baby love, my baby love, I need you oh how I need you”
Dan PattersonNovember 5, 2017, 4:10 PM
Beat me to it.
I was going with “Come See About Me” but it’s all good.
bgarrettNovember 6, 2017, 7:48 AM
I’ve been listening to Amazing Grace for 67 years and have never heard this horrible version
I have heard many sects of Christianity profess many wonderful things and as soon as the church door hits them in the ass at Sunday Noon, they have not a smattering of ethics. And that goes for the Ministers, Pastors, Priests and any assorted claimed titles.
These anointed individuals are the very ones who will declare you in a breach of orthodoxy, screech heresy and convene an auto dà fé, followed by a community picnic.
VanderleunNovember 6, 2017, 3:29 PM
“Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, “Don’t do it!” He said, “Nobody loves me.” I said, “God loves you. Do you believe in God?”
He said, “Yes.” I said, “Are you a Christian or a Jew?” He said, “A Christian.” I said, “Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?” He said, “Protestant.” I said, “Me, too! What franchise?” He said, “Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?” He said, “Northern Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?”
He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?” He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region.” I said, “Me, too!”
Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?” He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912.” I said, “Die, heretic!” And I pushed him over.” — Emo Phillips
Daniel K Day, if I was driven from the church by a hymn I sure wouldn’t tell the whole darn world. Sounds to me like you just preferred the “wages of sin” to “the gift of God”..
edaddyNovember 6, 2017, 8:03 PM
Gerard, you truly are a sorry bastard! It’s a good thing that Jesus and your momma loves you, cuz we been tryin’ for years. 🙂
In my humble opinion, your comment pretty much encapsulates the religion of my youth. Nowadays, though, it’s all good. Church is just guitars and cappuccinos so it doesn’t matter what anyone believes. Enjoy the church of your choice, cuz principles don’t really matter.
Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.
Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice.
With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress.
In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountains start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.
– – WH Auden
from “1054 AD”
Sometimes it seems I had a dream, and, as a dreamer woke immersed in mineral baths closed within a cool, dark chamber fed by streams flowing in from the center of nowhere.
Hanging from the granite ceiling a kerosene lantern cast shards of light through the pale steam rising from the surface of the pools.
Ripples radiated outwards from the edges of my body and tapping faintly on the rock revealed the edges of the chamber.
Outside I could hear the wind slide across the spine of the mountains, speaking in a language that I remembered but could no longer understand.
Steam filled my nostrils and heat penetrated my bones until, after a time, I had no body, only a sense of silence and distance and calm.
The steel mill sky is alive.
The fire breaks white and zigzag
shot on a gun-metal gloaming.
Man is a long time coming.
Man will yet win.
Brother may yet line up with brother:
This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.
There are men who can’t be bought.
The fireborn are at home in fire.
The stars make no noise,
You can’t hinder the wind from blowing.
Time is a great teacher.
Who can live without hope?
In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps, the people
march:
“Where to? what next?”
— Carl Sandberg
Camouflage
Sourdough Mountain Lookout
Down valley a smoke haze
Three days heat, after five days rain
Pitch glows on the fir-cones
Across rocks and meadows
Swarms of new flies.
I cannot remember things I once read
A few friends, but they are in cities.
Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup
Looking down for miles
Through high still air.
BY GARY SNYDER
Chimes of Freedom
Starry-eyed an’ laughing as I recall when we were caught
Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended
As we listened one last time an’ we watched with one last look
Spellbound an’ swallowed ’til the tolling ended
Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an’ worse
An’ for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
“From a student radical/hippie/leftist of the Free Speech Movement/Vietnam Day Commitee era and a full-on Democratic Liberal in the decades after, I think I’ve evolved a politics that is neither right nor left but is, in its elemental nature, draconian. In the last 20 years, I’ve taken apart my beliefs with a sledgehammer. Now I’ve got to put the surviving parts back together with tweezers and other ‘shabby equipment, always deteriorating’.”
Byzantium
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
– – W. B. Yeats, 1865 – 1939
De Breanski
VAN GOGH
Hillegas
To the Stonecutters
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Challengers of oblivion
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down,
The square-limbed Roman letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well
Builds his monument mockingly;
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart:
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained
thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems.
— Robinson Jeffers
Real World Address for Donations, Mash Notes and Hate Mail
Gerard Van der Leun
1692 MANGROVE AVE
APT 379
Chico, Ca 95926
from “1054 AD”
Sometimes it seems I had a dream, and, as a dreamer woke immersed in mineral baths closed within a cool, dark chamber fed by streams flowing in from the center of nowhere.
Hanging from the granite ceiling a kerosene lantern cast shards of light through the pale steam rising from the surface of the pools.
Ripples radiated outwards from the edges of my body and tapping faintly on the rock revealed the edges of the chamber.
Outside I could hear the wind slide across the spine of the mountains, speaking in a language that I remembered but could no longer understand.
Steam filled my nostrils and heat penetrated my bones until, after a time, I had no body, only a sense of silence and distance and calm.
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Comments on this entry are closed.
Thank you for sharing
“No matter what sort of pain you are in, this ameliorates it.”
Well, maybe. With no criticism intended for the Christian faith of you or anyone else here, it got real old being told over and over what a wretch I am. That hymn is one of the things that drove me from the church.
Daniel K Day, if I was driven from the church by a hymn I sure wouldn’t tell the whole darn world. Sounds to me like you just preferred the “wages of sin” to “the gift of God”.
@Daniel K. Day
This may help you. Mormons are not Christians. They carry a Holy Bible sometimes but they are not of the Christian belief system. Check it out for yourself.
edaddy, I said “one of the things”. Telling the whole world our viewpoints is what a lot of us, including you and me, use the internet for.
As for what I prefer, you’re presumptuous.
Terry: Mormonism looks like a branch of Christianity to me, but they sure do have some non-Biblical customs. I’m not a Mormon. I don’t debate whether they’re really Christians or not, that’s an internal matter for Christians and none of my business.
Maybe you’ve just not had enough loss and brokenness yet. Some folks don’t.
As for me,
Through many dangers, toils and snares
I have already come;
‘Twas Grace that brought me safe thus far,
And Grace will lead me home.
The view that even the lowliest human being, no matter his or her lack of usefulness to the elite, nor their dispproval of him, has innate worth nobody can deny comes from Christianity and nowhere else.
Western Civilization and individual liberty evolved across centuries from it.
If you God ever fails you, my sword and my shield stand between you and all the forces of Hell.
Deus Vult.
Very hard to believe that beautiful woman was ever a “wretch”. Couldn’t even listen after that. That’s a song for the gravel-voiced. Afterall, it was composed by a slave-trading, sea-faring, stinker.
Amazing Grace is among a select few songs that cause my eyes to immediately become misty. I relate. I’m the Prodigal who, after squandering my portion of my father’s inheritance, stand before him hoping to beg scraps of food. Instead, this man whom I considered to be dead; this man who yearned and watched for his troubled son’s return home every day, put rings on my fingers, dressed me in the finest robes, and killed the fatted calf to celebrate my homecoming. So yeah, I’m a wretch. To those who cannot or will not regard themselves in such a contemptuous term as wretch I say, congratulations on having lived a life so well as to have no regrets, no sleepless nights as a result of personal failures and injuries committed unto others. So as one empty barrel would have it: I’m a deplorable all right, but a REDEEMED deplorable at that.
The first 30 or so years of my life were lived without any regard for Jesus and I hated Him but then I had a couple of soul shattering experiences with Him that rocked my entire life. I immediately became a true believer and I embraced my new Truth but my sin, delusion and anger were deeply embedded and it probably took another 30 years for me to (finally) completely surrender everything in my life to him. That conscious act was indescribable and the weight of all of my sins and fury evaporated in a moment.
I have discovered more personal peace and happiness since then than I could have ever imagined and those discoveries didn’t arise from belief alone. They came from simple obedience and surrender, from realizing that I cannot control one second of my life and in reality neither can anyone else, despite all of their claims to the contrary. I’ve turned the whole shooting match over to Jesus and win, lose or draw I know that He will take care of me and those I love and see us through. 60 years or more to find it….I’d have never guessed.
A beautiful song for a fantastic year. Thank you Gerard
Bravo. Details of churching aside.
And yes the lyrics and context are indeed amazing. But I do have a serious problem with the video and the singers:
There is no one in a wheelchair
No deaf singer
No singer of color
No professed lesbian
No trans or other gender
No singer standing strong against the power
So how can everyone relate?
Oh. What? None of that bullshit matters?
They must have been standing in that creek for some time. Or, it was shot over a couple of days. Either way, it’s a beautiful piece.
Now that the Supremes have said that anyone can marry anyone, or anyones, I wonder if the official CJCLDS will now discover new revelations that explain how the revelations of the late 1800s that banned plural marriage were mistaken. There would be a whole lot of celestial kingdoms needing to be filled with gals like these.
“Now that the Supremes have said …. “Baby love, my baby love, I need you oh how I need you”
Beat me to it.
I was going with “Come See About Me” but it’s all good.
I’ve been listening to Amazing Grace for 67 years and have never heard this horrible version
I have heard many sects of Christianity profess many wonderful things and as soon as the church door hits them in the ass at Sunday Noon, they have not a smattering of ethics. And that goes for the Ministers, Pastors, Priests and any assorted claimed titles.
These anointed individuals are the very ones who will declare you in a breach of orthodoxy, screech heresy and convene an auto dà fé, followed by a community picnic.
“Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, “Don’t do it!” He said, “Nobody loves me.” I said, “God loves you. Do you believe in God?”
He said, “Yes.” I said, “Are you a Christian or a Jew?” He said, “A Christian.” I said, “Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?” He said, “Protestant.” I said, “Me, too! What franchise?” He said, “Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?” He said, “Northern Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?”
He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?” He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region.” I said, “Me, too!”
Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?” He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912.” I said, “Die, heretic!” And I pushed him over.” — Emo Phillips
Daniel K Day, if I was driven from the church by a hymn I sure wouldn’t tell the whole darn world. Sounds to me like you just preferred the “wages of sin” to “the gift of God”..
Gerard, you truly are a sorry bastard! It’s a good thing that Jesus and your momma loves you, cuz we been tryin’ for years. 🙂
In my humble opinion, your comment pretty much encapsulates the religion of my youth. Nowadays, though, it’s all good. Church is just guitars and cappuccinos so it doesn’t matter what anyone believes. Enjoy the church of your choice, cuz principles don’t really matter.