WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
“In the Bleak Midwinter Long Ago” The world is too much with us and so…
byVanderleunonDecember 19, 2020
And so… … Pause… … and begin again.
In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan;
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago.
Our God, heaven cannot hold Him
Nor earth sustain,
Heaven and earth shall flee away
When He comes to reign:
In the bleak mid-winter
A stable-place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty —
Jesus Christ.
Enough for Him, whom Cherubim
Worship night and day,
A breastful of milk
And a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, whom Angels
Fall down before,
The ox and ass and camel
Which adore.
Angels and Archangels
May have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim
Thronged the air;
But only His Mother
In her maiden bliss
Worshipped the Beloved
With a kiss.
What can I give Him,
Poor as I am? —
If I were a Shepherd
I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man
I would do my part, —
Yet what I can I give Him, —
Give my heart.
One of the things I miss, after many years of non regular attendance of church services, is the power and beauty of congregational singing. Lovely.
grace clarkDecember 20, 2019, 7:36 AM
Oh, thank you. So beautiful!!
DennyDecember 21, 2019, 8:14 AM
“Give my heart”
I gave my heart in the year 1975. I was one of the first boomers, 30 years old, with a young family. It was impossible for me not to. Some Christians call it “Irresistible Grace”. The only regrets or misgivings I’ve ever suffered were why, in this obviously disgusting and deathly world, did I not do it sooner.
KurtDecember 19, 2020, 4:43 AM
The Great Gift, over 2000 years old and still new every year! In darkness, Light, in despair, Hope, in turmoil, Peace! And best of all, His Amazing Love, carried to us in the arms of a tiny babe, wrapped in rags and lying in a manger. Oh wonder of Christmas!
Beautiful old hymn. Merry Christmas all, it’s been a very strange and unendearing year.
(I may have just made up a new word).
Speaking of new words, I’ll recommend The Professor and The Mad Man with Mel Gibson and Sean Penn as a must see. Penn is out of his mind socially and politically but that guy is a fine actor.
Eric BlairDecember 19, 2020, 2:17 PM
fave Christmas hymn, and second greatest hymn in Christendom
I humbly propose Amazing Grace as the titleholder
Casey KlahnDecember 19, 2020, 6:43 PM
A favorite high church hymn; Merry Christmas to all.
Thank you, Gerard, as usual, you do not disappoint.
@Jack Thanks for the recommendation. I watched the trailer and was torn, cus the book is a favorite and I was loath to watch lest the story be “woke” up.
Casey KlahnDecember 20, 2020, 1:02 PM
THX, GvD.
Bill JonesDecember 20, 2020, 5:14 PM
For me the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at Kings College Cambridge was always the start of Christmas. In pre-interwebs years I forgave the BBC a lot for that broadcast (except for the institutionalized Pederasty).
I grew up singing in a choir just like this one.It save my life–my soul. This video is very old–sometime from the 1970’s I think. But it is a true reflection of who we were. I am so alone.
VanderleunDecember 20, 2020, 10:04 PM
YOu are not alone Anne. Never.
AnonymousDecember 21, 2020, 7:08 AM
Cradle Catholic who found himself faithless at ten years of age, five years later took an interest in Zen and ended up staying with it for now nearly sixty years, but never lost his love for the artistic joys and triumphs spawned by the Faith that made the West. The Christmas experience is emotionally and transcendentally inspiring and I’d sooner perish than see it denied to my grandchildren. The secular materialists can go pound sand on this one, and while they’re at it, can keep Kwanza and Hanukah among their own and stay out of the societal celebrations cherished by their hosts. Anyone who doesn’t derive pleasure and a sense of the transcendent from a carol such as this is depriving oneself of exaltation in a time when such is desperately needed.
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 Sandburg
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
ARTIST: CASEY KLAHN
Search American Digest’s Back Pages
from Preludes
His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o’clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.
— Eliot
Ferreya
Song of Myself
I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this
air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
— Walt Whitman
from Canto CXV BY EZRA POUND
The scientists are in terror
and the European mind stops
Wyndham Lewis chose blindness
rather than have his mind stop.
Night under wind mid garofani,
the petals are almost still
Mozart, Linnaeus, Sulmona,
When one’s friends hate each other
how can there be peace in the world?
Their asperities diverted me in my green time.
A blown husk that is finished
but the light sings eternal
a pale flare over marshes
where the salt hay whispers to tide’s change
Time, space,
neither life nor death is the answer.
And of man seeking good,
doing evil.
In meiner Heimat
where the dead walked
and the living were made of cardboard.
“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’.”
Hillegas
Real World Address for Donations, Mash Notes and Hate Mail
Gerard Van der Leun
1692 MANGROVE AVE
APT 379
Chico, Ca 95926
![That Was the Whopper Weekend That Was [Illustrated]](https://americandigest.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/welcometohell-150x150.jpg "That Was the Whopper Weekend That Was [Illustrated]")
Gerard Van der Leun
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
The scientists are in terror
Comments on this entry are closed.
One of the things I miss, after many years of non regular attendance of church services, is the power and beauty of congregational singing. Lovely.
Oh, thank you. So beautiful!!
“Give my heart”
I gave my heart in the year 1975. I was one of the first boomers, 30 years old, with a young family. It was impossible for me not to. Some Christians call it “Irresistible Grace”. The only regrets or misgivings I’ve ever suffered were why, in this obviously disgusting and deathly world, did I not do it sooner.
The Great Gift, over 2000 years old and still new every year! In darkness, Light, in despair, Hope, in turmoil, Peace! And best of all, His Amazing Love, carried to us in the arms of a tiny babe, wrapped in rags and lying in a manger. Oh wonder of Christmas!
Probably one of the prettiest hymn ever written.
Beautiful old hymn. Merry Christmas all, it’s been a very strange and unendearing year.
(I may have just made up a new word).
Speaking of new words, I’ll recommend The Professor and The Mad Man with Mel Gibson and Sean Penn as a must see. Penn is out of his mind socially and politically but that guy is a fine actor.
fave Christmas hymn, and second greatest hymn in Christendom
I humbly propose Amazing Grace as the titleholder
A favorite high church hymn; Merry Christmas to all.
I don’t know if this link will go through, but I have updated that painting of model Mallory:
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/110408628354944162/
Kind thanks, Gerard.
Thank you, Gerard, as usual, you do not disappoint.
@Jack Thanks for the recommendation. I watched the trailer and was torn, cus the book is a favorite and I was loath to watch lest the story be “woke” up.
THX, GvD.
For me the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at Kings College Cambridge was always the start of Christmas. In pre-interwebs years I forgave the BBC a lot for that broadcast (except for the institutionalized Pederasty).
It sums up the greatest civilization that ever existed and is being destroyed around us: Its buildings, music, core beliefs.
https://www.kings.cam.ac.uk/chapel/a-festival-of-nine-lessons-and-carols
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p005ftyb
I grew up singing in a choir just like this one.It save my life–my soul. This video is very old–sometime from the 1970’s I think. But it is a true reflection of who we were. I am so alone.
YOu are not alone Anne. Never.
Cradle Catholic who found himself faithless at ten years of age, five years later took an interest in Zen and ended up staying with it for now nearly sixty years, but never lost his love for the artistic joys and triumphs spawned by the Faith that made the West. The Christmas experience is emotionally and transcendentally inspiring and I’d sooner perish than see it denied to my grandchildren. The secular materialists can go pound sand on this one, and while they’re at it, can keep Kwanza and Hanukah among their own and stay out of the societal celebrations cherished by their hosts. Anyone who doesn’t derive pleasure and a sense of the transcendent from a carol such as this is depriving oneself of exaltation in a time when such is desperately needed.