The Wells Bequest

The Wells Bequest
by Polly Shulman
Recommended Ages: 12+

In The Grimm Legacy, we discovered the wonderful collection of fairy-tale artifacts housed at the New-York Circulating Material Depository: a place where, for a reasonable deposit (say, your sense of direction) you can check out seven-league boots. Now a new group of pages explores one of the Depository's other Special Collections: the Wells Bequest—as in H. G. Wells, the author who pioneered science fiction. In a basement room made larger on the inside than it looks on the outside (thanks to a bit of sci-fi know-how), the Bequest is home to the real gadgets, weapons, and vessels of exploration that Wells wrote about. Stuff like the tripods that attacked the Earth in War of the Worlds, and the anti-gravity element Cavorite that propelled The First Men in the Moon; and not just stuff from Wells' books, but from other writers such as Jules Verne. How did these amazing things make the jump from imagination to reality? That's a question of philosophy, a question this book does not answer. What happens when a teenaged villain and a teenaged hero, both attracted to the same girl, work out their differences with a time machine and a death ray? That's what this book is about!

It begins when Leo Novikov—whose aptitude for inventing imaginative gadgets makes him a disappointment to his family of brilliant scientists—meets a miniature version of himself from the future. Shrink-rayed, time-machine-straddling Future Leo tells Present Leo to read H. G. Wells' book The Time Machine, then disappears. By a series of happenstances, this hint leads Leo to the Circulating Material Depository, where he means to do research for a science fair project on the history of robots. And that's where Leo meets the girl of his dreams: strong-willed Jaya, who has also captured the heart of a British exchange page named Simon. In his desperation to win her, Simon makes an error in judgment that leads to even bigger and more dangerous mistakes, including (but not limited to) threatening to disintegrate New York with a weapon thought to have been lost in the fire that destroyed Nicola Tesla's laboratory in 1895.

Now Leo and Jaya have no choice but to travel back to 1895 to stop the death ray from falling into the hands of Simon's great-great-grandfather. Visiting a New York City from another era is fascinating and fun, especially when they meet historically important people such as Mark Twain. But they've been followed. Though their use of the time machine from H. G. Wells' story gives them the advantage of unlimited power to alter history, Simon still menaces them. And now it's mostly up to Leo, not only to prevent Brooklyn from becoming a briquette, but also to save Jaya and, if possible, to avoid erasing the bad guy (who isn't really all that bad, in Jaya's opinion) from existence. To manage all this will be a supreme test of this kid's remarkable ingenuity. Think of it as a test of Leo's fitness to be a page at a weird, wonderful library where people don't check out books, but objects in books. A place where anything, whether magical or mechanical, is possible—provided you can find it in the card catalog.

Like the book that went before it, this is a delightful adventure in a version of the real world where the barrier between reality and imagination is soap-bubble-thin. It's a world within our world—or overlapping the boundary between ours and the next world over—that operates on a whimsical logic somewhat comparable to the way Dumbledore ran Hogwarts. The adults who run the Circulating Materials Repository do not hesitate long before beaming two teenagers from New York to London via a matter-energy transporter, sending them secretly to take possession of a valuable artifact whose status—either as a rightful part of the Repository's collection, or as a British national treasure—is legally ambiguous. But remember, this is also a library where you can check out a one-of-a-kind automaton built by Leonardo da Vinci and play with it for a while before returning it to the stacks. It's a world where the rules for time travel depend on the story in which each device was featured... where there are several wacky ways to stop time without using any device at all... and where a pinch of light comedy, a dash of weird science, a splash of teen romance, a dollop of colorful and surprisingly authentic history, blend together to form something fun, exciting, and altogether new.

I don't know whether Polly Shulman plans any more sequels in this series. As I write this, the ink on The Wells Bequest is still quite fresh. But one may hope that the other Special Collections housed in the basement of the Repository are a hint of at least one or two things-to-come. A little Lovecraft, anybody?

36. Come, Lord Jesus; Come with Haste

Come, Lord Jesus; come with haste,
Lest Your image be effaced
Through the tempter's clinging mesh,
Through the weakness of the flesh;
Lest Your lifeblood go to waste,
Come, Lord Jesus; come with haste!

Will You find faith on the earth?
Struggling in the pangs of birth,
All creation groans and cries;
Yet mankind Your name denies.
Gift above all gifts in worth,
Will You find faith on the earth?

Burden of the church's song,
Even now, is: "Lord, how long?"
Must the faithful undergo
More than we can bear of woe?
Hated, ridiculed, disgraced,
Pray we rather: come with haste!

In Your root-stock we are graft,
Thirsting for Your lively draught;
Born again, though not by womb—
Slain, we share Your broken tomb.
At the font by You embraced,
We first bid You: come with haste!

Come! with Your absolving breath,
Blow into this world of death;
Kindle cleansing fire and light
In this generation's night;
Of Your Spirit let us taste.
Come, Lord Jesus; come with haste!

Flesh that bore our flesh's meed,
Now to us be bread indeed;
Blood once sprinkled o'er our sin,
Now true drink, our weal to win.
Lips whereon this seal is placed
Now entreat You: come with haste!

Come where many, come where few
Gather to commune in You;
Come where souls confess and pray;
Come to share our dying day;
And when earth's last heat is raced,
Come, Lord Jesus; come with haste!

Tacky Hymns 30

Continuing to poke irreverent fun at the hymn selection in Evangelical Lutheran Worship/ELW (see previous posts in this thread for more details)...

332 "I heard the voice of Jesus say" is a hymn by Horatius Bonar (1808-89) that I have seen in many hymnals, set to several different tunes. ELW is not the first to use Thomas Tallis' THIRD NOTE MELODY, also known as the theme of Ralph Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, which, in turn, is well known at least among fans of the film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. Actually, THIRD NOTE MELODY is by far the least tacky tune of the many to which I have known this hymn. It's a poignantly beautiful piece of Renaissance-era music, full of objective merit and all the more moving for it; whereas most of this hymn's other tunes are tacky little pieces of bland drivel, notable mostly for being among the two or three hymns in a given hymnal to switch from a minor key to a major key halfway through. The reason that type of tune so frequently pairs with this text is built into the hymn itself, in which each stanza begins with Bonar relating something he heard Jesus saying, and ends with him reporting what he (Bonar) did and the result. What makes this beloved hymn tacky, even when it isn't set to a particularly tacky tune, is the fact that what we're singing is essentially Bonar's testimony of his personal experience, and not a proclamation of God's promises or saving acts, except to the extent that the things Bonar "heard the voice of Jesus say" are valid interpretations of claims Jesus actually made in the gospels. If you want to push your interpretation of Bonar as far as he pushes his interpretation of the words of Jesus, you might conclude that the experience he reports is a valid and necessary outcome of receiving these promises of Christ by faith, and so they go some way towards being a proclamation of divine promises; yet still, in form, they are a narrative of what "I" (Horatius Bonar) heard, did, and experienced as a result. And so, formally at least, putting Horatius Bonar's words in the mouths of everyone at worship—good, bad, or indifferent—is a bit like encouraging people to confess a pious fiction. Just a bit.

333 "Jesus is a rock in a weary land," (a shelter in the time of storm) is an African-American spiritual, the type with a refrain marked off for "All" to sing, and three stanzas marked "Leader or All." The refrain is somewhat repetitive, but the stanzas deliver a surprising amount of content. The first stanza relates the raising of Lazarus from the dead (application: "No one can do like Jesus"). The second depicts the weakness of Jesus, as manifested in his washing of the disciples' feet. The third points out, "Yonder comes my Savior, him whom I love so well; he has the palm of victory and the keys of death and hell." So, not bad, all things considered. But the rhythm of the melody makes the "Leader" option much more feasible than "All," not just for the verses, but also for the refrain; unless by "all" we mean a select chorus with experience in singing this style of music.

334 "Tree of Life and awesome mystery" has words and music by Marty Haugen, the apostle of banality. There is a hymn called "The Tree of Life with every good" in The Lutheran Service Book/LSB which, in spite of a tune that irritatingly reminds me of Billy Joel's "And So It Goes," runs circles around this piece of low-taste doggerel. Its first sin, right at the top, is using the words "Tree of Life" as a personal name for Jesus, which can only be confusing to folks who have been conditioned to expect it to mean either a certain tree in the Garden of Eden or (by a carefully prepared analogy) Jesus' cross. Yet here, suddenly, without any preparation, we are expected to understand it as a name for Jesus himself. The hymn's second crime against good taste is rhyming "myst'ry" with "hist'ry," which sets a low tone for everything that comes after. Its third crime is waffling about the historicity of Jesus' death and resurrection, claiming that He dies (present tense) "in all of history," only to "rise with every morn." Huh?? And that's only the first stanza out of—well, I'm not sure how many stanzas to say this hymn has. There are three that you're supposed to sing any time that you use it, and then there are six different options for the final stanza, depending on whether you use the hymn for "general" purposes or for any of the five Sundays in Lent. Among those stanzas are lines that I respect, though to appreciate them fully you need time to think about them (such as Stanza 2: "Every person lost and broken wears the body of our Lord"—which, now that I think about it, might not be as great as I first thought). There are lines that frankly make me scratch my head (Stanza 3: "We the river, you the sea"). And there is the depressing prospect that at some church, somewhere, people are having to sing these dubious stanzas again and again, throughout Lent.

336 "Lamb of God" (first line: "Your only Son, no sin to hide") is a CoWo anthem by Twila Paris, also inflicted on the Missouri Synod via LSB. O ditty, how do I ridicule thee? Let me count the ways! One: It takes Ms. Paris only one line of lyrics to forget who the subject of the sentence is. Two: She makes "sod" rhyme with "God," and though it's a "guilty" sod, we're not allowed to snicker. Three: The refrain asks the Lamb to "wash me in your precious blood," yet I can easily imagine this hymn being sung with gusto by a group that denies the power of Baptism and the Lord's Supper. Four: It's very much a solo torch-song to Jesus, not a congregational hymn. I forbear to discuss Stanzas 2 and 3 because—apart from understanding that they are an individual's anthem to Jesus—I find no cause of death in them. Let that at least stand as proof that I'm not just looking for ways to be mean. I have no interest in digging up buried tackiness. Why should I? Plenty of it is lying out in plain sight!

By this point in the book, I have skipped a couple of songs by Fanny Crosby because I already poked fun at them in earlier posts on this thread. Please do not assume that all of the hymns I am skipping over are free of tackiness.

341 "Now behold the Lamb" is by Kirk Franklin (b. 1970), the choir leader known for leading such "urban contemporary gospel" groups as One Nation Crew. This song's three short stanzas are arranged in close, three-part harmony, like a sort of gospel barbershop, and I think the harmony is more essential to the musical effect than the melody by itself. This, combined with the tricky pop-music rhythms, puts this song out of the reach of the average singing congregation and into the preserves of the choir or a trio of soloists. So why is it in a hymnal?

342 "There in God's garden" (stands the Tree of Wisdom) is a weird hymn, translated (I believe) from Slovak and set to K. Lee Scott's modern tune SHADES MOUNTAIN. The tree it describes sounds more like the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil than the Tree of Life, the tree whose fruits Adam and Eve were forbidden to eat; yet it is this tree of which stanza 2 says: "Its name is Jesus." This tree is further described as scarred by suffering and fed upon by "the tendrils of our human selfhood"; its foliage tangled with "thorns not its own"; starved by our greed and choked by our despite; yet reaching toward us, offering to take our sickness into itself. Stanza 5 responds, "This is my ending, this my resurrection... This have I searched for... This ground is holy." Stanza 6 concludes with the song of all heaven, thanking Christ for offering us healing and pardon through His passion. Overall, this hymn is a painful spectacle, partly because some of what it does is excellent, but that is all muddled with twaddle growing out of the embarrassing choice of which Tree to personify as Christ.

348 "Stay with me" is another Taizé Community/Jacques Berthier product: brief, primitively simple, and severely limited in its range of usefulness. Its full text, including repeats: "Stay with me, remain here with me, watch and pray. Watch and pray."

350 "They crucified my Lord" is the African-American spiritual in which every other line of all five stanzas is "and he never said a mumbalin' word." A helpful footnote explains that "mumbalin' = complaining." There is also a refrain that adds, "not a word," three times over. Apart from that and the opening line, the sum total of the song's content is: "They nailed him to a tree, they pierced him in the side, the blood came streamin' down, he hung his head and died." So, in broad strokes, it depicts Jesus' suffering and death. But it doesn't say anything about its significance. From this, the only application one gathers from Jesus' passion is an emotional response to it, emphasized by the reflection that he didn't complain through it all. For the gospel, however, you must shop elsewhere.

354 "Calvary" (stanza 1: "Every time I think about Jesus") is another African-American spiritual whose refrain, for sheer bloody-minded repetitiveness, beats everything I have seen so far into a cocked hat. "Calvary," it says, "Calvary, Calvary, Calvary, Calvary, Calvary"—and then at last—"surely he died on Calvary." Besides this refrain there are four stanzas, but you already know all the words to one of them; they all repeat one line of text three times before ending with, "Surely he died on Calvary." Stanza 2 asks, "Sinner, do you love my Jesus?" Stanza 3: "Don't you hear him say, 'It is finished!'" Stanza 4: "Jesus furnished my salvation." Based on these three lines, it actually proclaims more gospel than all five verses of "Were you there when they crucified my Lord" (hymn 353). But you really have to love this kind of thing to put up with it for the length of time it takes saying this much, especially when you factor in the refrain. I reckon that, in a full performance with all the repeats as marked in the book, you'll hear the word "Calvary" sung 35 times. Hear it, I say; because it's going to be sung not by the congregation, but by either a soloist or a select group of well-drilled singers.

358 "Great God, your love has called us here" is a fairly good, modern Holy Week hymn by Brian Wren (b. 1936), set to Norman Cocker's (1889-1953) beautiful tune RYBURN. I hate to bring it up, but some of this hymn's appeal to the specific needs of today's culture is based on imagery that, unfortunately, lets the air out of the sense of sacred space that mostly characterizes Wren's poetry. For example, in the middle of Stanza 2: "By social forces swept along, by pow'rs and systems close confined..." This is not the language of sacred poetry, but of newspaper editorials and bureaucratic reports. It's an almost perfect hymn, its depiction of Jesus washing the disciples feet so beautiful that it almost makes me want to cry, but for these two lines. It's the kind of thing that could be fixed if the author would take the text back and revise his work. He needed to spend more time on it. But ELW published it the way it was: a lovely picture with a smear of tackiness across it.

360 "Love consecrates the humblest act," by Silas McManus (1845-1917), begins with an example of the aesthetically questionable tactic of changing nouns into verbs that brings to mind a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon ("Verbing weirds language"). Line 2 of Stanza 1 says Love "haloes mercy's deeds." And lest you think McManus meant "hallows," he uses that word as well, in Line 4. Oh, well. Poeming weirds language too, I guess.

364 "Christ has arisen, Alleluia" (Mfurahini, haleluya) is an Easter hymn with five long stanzas and an equally long refrain, translated from Bernard Kyamanywa's (b. 1938) original Swahili and set to a Tanzanian folk melody. Musically, it is very much the kind of thing that has to be sung in parts, preferably by a choir trained to sing the way African choristers do, which is quite a different method of sound production than they teach in America. The text is solid in a rugged, rough-and-ready way. What sets off my tackiness alarms is the single stanza gratuitously included in Swahili: yet another symbolic celebration of our multiculturalism.

374 "Day of arising," (Christ on the roadway) is another Susan Cherwien/Carl Schalk piece of mildly creative, moderately meaningful, modern devotional poetry, riffing on Christ's Easter-evening appearance to the Emmaus disciples. Stanza 2 takes this story's application into our own life-journey, where "Christ walks with us, ever awaiting our invitation: Stay, do not part." Oh, is that what he's waiting for? And that's up to us, is it? Stanza 3 does nicely confess that Jesus has promised to be with His church gathered, in bread and wine. Stanza 4 then relapses into banal cuteness with such lines as "Grant us your vision..."

375 "Alleluia! Christ is Arisen" (¡Aleluya! Cristo resucitó) is a 1974 Easter hymn by Luis Bojos, about whom I can tell you nothing, not even what country he hails from. In this book, you can sing all four stanzas in either Spanish or English—if, that is, you can manage the very Latin rhythms of the Bojos' tune SANTO DOMINGO, whose name leads me to guess that the author may come from the Dominican Republic. It would really be a good, usable hymn in an anglophone context if the tune were replaced with something in a conventional 9.8.9.8. meter. But as it is, this "hymn" will actually depend on the talents of choir and band, probably relegated to special celebrations of the church's Hispanic outreach or partnership with Latin American churches—if the personnel best equipped to sing it can be spared from attending a church that actually has a Spanish-language hymnal. For, as I have pointed out before, a few hymns like this do not make this a bilingual hymnal.

376 "Thine is the glory," (risen, conqu'ring Son) is an Easter hymn whose French author and English translator both died in the 1930s, set to the tune JUDAS MACCABAEUS, which I believe was adapted from G. F. Handel's oratorio of the same name. Amazingly, I haven't heard that oratorio yet; but I've heard this tune played by electronic carillon systems whose selection of hymn tunes ran the full gamut from Lutheran chorales to "The Old Rugged Cross." So, in my mind, this hymn tune is indelibly marked by associations with vanilla Protestantism, riding a quaint tandem bicycle with the hymnographically dubious mania to baptize themes from classical music as hymn tunes. The third layer of association one finds, after peeling these first two back, is a strain of quintessentially British pomp and circumstance that makes this tune arguably the English counterpart to Haydn's Austrian Imperial Hymn (a.k.a. the Deutschlandlied). It makes one think of men wearing imperial mustaches and jackets bordered with gold lace, doing their bit for king and country.

377 "Alleluia! Jesus is risen!" is Herbert Brokering's Easter hymn, set to David Johnson's tune EARTH AND ALL STARS. It would have to be a spectacularly good hymn to efface the tacky memory of the hymn originally set to that tune; but the text "Earth and all stars" was also by Brokering, so there seems to be little hope of that. And no more should there be. Already by the midpoint of Stanza 1, Brokering has become so swept up in the enthusiastic spectacle of Christ's resurrected triumph that he can hardly put a coherent thought together: "Splendor, the Lamb, heaven forever! Oh, what a miracle God has in sight!" This alternation between sentences and overwhelmed half-thoughts continues through five more stanzas, which would give most people plenty of time to calm down and get their thoughts in order, unless it is Brokering's purpose to keep people excited to the point of babbling. Stanza 2 applies Jesus' Emmaus Easter appearance to our worship time: "Breaking our bread, giving us glory: Jesus our blessing, our constant surprise." Stanza 3 drives the vine/branches metaphor of John 15 to the conclusion: "Gift of the future now flowing to me." Stanza 4 loses control of the moods of its verbs: "Weeping be gone; sorrow be silent: death put asunder, and Easter is bright." Is?! Not be?? Most of Stanza 5 disintegrates into a flurry of sentence fragments depicting "city of God... golden Jerusalem" among other dazzling but confused images, concluding: "Sing with creation to God the I AM!" Like Jaroslav Vajda, Brokering seems to have tapped into a well of pure imagery and unleashed a gusher, making only feeble efforts to cap it or control it through definite assertions. I'm not saying the hymn is all surface with no substance underneath; but the substance is swirling around in disconnected fragments, leaving it up to the reader's, hearer's, and singer's imagination to organize them into a meaningful whole. JUST what Lutheran hymnody needs!

379 "Now the green blade rises" is John MacLeod Campbell Crum's (1872-1958) Easter text, set to the French carol NOËL NOUVELET. Refrain: "Love is come again like wheat arising green." For four three-line stanzas, Crum struggles to use the biblical image of the dead seed sprouting to new life as a metaphor for Christ's resurrection. Yet he fails to make use of a prime opportunity to describe Christ as the "firstfruits from the dead," etc. In fact, the hymn applies Christ's resurrection to our lives not in the sense "because He lives, we will live also," but in a touchy-feely, psychological way: "When our hearts are heavy... your touch can call us back to life again," etc. Each time I re-read this hymn I hope to find more in it than is actually there.

388 "Be not afraid" is another brief Taizé/Berthier piece, running twice through the words: "Be not afraid, sing out for joy! Christ is risen, alleluia!" Kids' stuff, and not much of it.

390 "The risen Christ," (who walks on wounded feet) is an Easter hymn by Nigel Weaver (b. 1952), set to Walter Greatorex's (1877-1949) interesting melody WOODLANDS. (Some in the Missouri Synod may know this tune, though perhaps not by name, from a worship-supplement setting of the Magnificat beginning, "Tell out, my soul, the greatness of the Lord.") I read most of the first three stanzas of this hymn with great interest, and saw a good deal of merit in its depiction of Jesus' wounded feet carrying him through the closed door of the room where the disciples waited in fear, his wounded side being used to breathe the Holy Spirit on them, and his wounded hand breaking the bread that revealed him to the Emmaus disciples. What confused me about the text was the way its present-tense depiction of these Easter appearances seemed to suggest a broader application to Jesus' activity in general. And yet at the end of the Emmaus stanza, Jesus "quickly disappears"—not exactly something you want to apply to His presence in today's church. And it bypasses opportunities to explicitly point out Jesus' presence and activity in the rite of Absolution and the Sacrament of the Altar. Finally, in stanza 4, he adds insult to injury (the injury, that is, of saying nothing about Absolution or the Lord's Supper) by making the application of all Jesus' Easter appearances a matter of working for social justice. What a sadly wasted opportunity for a great modern Easter hymn!

396 "Spirit of gentleness" is a Pentecost hymn by James K. Manley (b. 1940). Stanza 1 tells the Spirit how He "moved on the waters... over the eons," suggesting a "theistic evolution" interpretation of Genesis 1 in which the second verse of the Bible describes an indefinite but vast length of time—contrary to the plain and simple sense of the words, "And the evening and the morning were the first day." In Stanzas 2 and 3 the hymn depicts the Spirit blowing through the Old and New Testament, in very general terms that stop short of, for example, naming Jesus. And then Stanza 4 rhapsodizes about the Spirit's present activity in the church: "Our women see visions, our men clear their eyes" (and that's why we have women's ordination); "With bold new decisions your people arise" (so ongoing inspiration is our excuse for rejecting the teachings of Scripture). It's a bizarre theology of the Holy Spirit, whose subject is not specifically breathed out by Jesus on the cross (a minor event in the scale of the hymn, compressed into half of a line), nor bound to work through divinely instituted means (which are never mentioned at all). It's as though anyone who chooses to feel inspired by the Spirit can teach or do whatever he wants, so long as it doesn't stand in the way of the bold new directions this church body's leadership wants to go.

397 "Loving Spirit" is a Pentecost hymn Shirley Murray (b. 1931), set to the early American shape-note hymn-tune RESTORATION. After Stanza 1 establishes that we are addressing the Holy Spirit, Stanza 2 begins: "Like a mother you enfold me" (because feminine imagery is obviously our opening move when discussing the work of a Person of the Trinity). It then prays that the Spirit would "feed me with your very body, form me of your flesh and bone." This sounds funny if you've been brought up on the idea that it is the Second Person of the Trinity, and only He, who has been made "flesh and bone" and who offers us His body to eat. Stanza 3 deepens the confusion by beginning, "Like a father you protect me." All right, it's suitably masculine imagery. But might it not be confusing to describe the Holy Spirit "like a father," when the analogy of fatherhood properly applies to only one Person of the Trinity (and guess which one)? The very next line, "teach me the discerning eye," is a prayer that, had it been granted to the author of the hymn, might have prevented this much from being written. Then it asks, "Hoist me up upon your shoulder, let me see the world from high." Ma'am, I suspect you were already high by then. The honor-roll of relationship-based metaphors continues with Stanza 4, "Friend and lover..." And Stanza 5 repeats Stanza 1 word for word. It's not that there isn't any merit in this hymn. But there is decidedly more mud than clarity in its waters.

399 "O Holy Spirit, root of life" is another Pentecost hymn that confuses me as to which Person of the Trinity it is supposed to be addressing. Jean Janzen (b. 1933) loosely based her text on 12th-century writer Hildegard of Bingen; it is set to the Reformation-era chorale PUER NOBIS. Stanza 1 is mostly notable for the phrase "with lustrous movement of your wings," which is pretty in an impressionistic sort of way. Stanza 3 is also mostly OK, though when it invites this winged Spirit to "carry us, encircling all above, below, and through the world," it sounds like a more wide-ranging thrill-ride than I signed up for. But the real trouble comes when Stanza 2, without a clear transition to addressing a different Person of the Trinity, informs whatever Person it is speaking to that "you free us by your living Word, becoming flesh to wear our pain." In my opinion, the comma in the middle of that excerpt is damnable. Delete it, and the problem (mostly) goes away. Punctuation matters!

So much for today's excerpt from ELW. Stand by for more hymnological bitchiness, coming up in the 400s range of hymns. Till then, Lutherans, resist the allure of tackiness wherever it may be found—but especially on holy ground!

13 Treasures

13 Treasures
by Michelle Harrison
Recommended Ages: 11+

Being able to see fairies isn't all sparkly dust and tinkly bells. Tanya has been able to see them since she was a baby, and it's a living nightmare for her. Her parents are fed up with what they see as serious behavioral problems. And the winged creatures that visit her on moonlit nights do not bring wonder and enchantment, but threats and punishment when she doesn't do what they want. They aren't pretty. They aren't nice. There's no one Tanya can tell about them. And now, thanks to the fairies, Tanya must spend the better part of her summer at her grandmother's house in the country. It's anything but a summer idyll—a big, spooky, decrepit old place, with a grandma who isn't very warm and welcoming, a mad old man living upstairs, a garden bordered by a dark forest, and tribes of fairies, goblins, and other dangerous beings just waiting to make Tanya miserable.

But this summer, a dangerous magical adventure is added to Tanya's regularly-scheduled trouble with fairies. Part of it has to do with a girl named Red, who can also see fairies, and who is on the run from the law due to her self-appointed mission of returning changelings (children who have been swapped with fairies) to where they belong. Another part of it concerns the mystery of fourteen-year-old Morwenna Bloom, who disappeared when Tanya's grandmother was the same age, and who turns up in the woods fifty years later, looking not a day older. Tanya's allies are a boy named Fabian who doesn't believe in magic, a dog named Oberon who is no smarter than the average Doberman, and a gypsy woman whom many suspect of being a witch.

She will have to do with their help, because she can't trust the fairies. Far from having her back, they only add to her troubles. There's the day they put a spell on her so that she can't help repeating the last few words anybody says. There's the time they make her hair grow rapidly and uncontrollably. There's the book they enchant so that she can't read it. And there's the role the fairies played in the tragic life of one of Tanya's ancestors, perhaps a changeling herself. It is from that ancestor that Tanya inherits the bracelet with thirteen silver charms on it, representing the thirteen treasures that divided the Seelie and Unseelie Courts of Faerie. But whatever power the charms may have, they only seem to bring sorrow and death—either to Tanya's ancestor, or to the fairies of today. And whatever is going on in the woods around Elvesden Manor, it's going to bring death to some, madness to others, and to someone—perhaps Tanya herself—the danger of being lost forever in the faerie realm.

In her debut novel, Michelle Harrison turns her interest in fairy lore and children's literature to excellent use. What she writes here is not the expected novel of pretty fairies being glimpsed at the bottom of the garden, but a story of creepy mysteries, harmful magic, and lonely children in danger. Some of the not-too-friendly fairies turn out to be guardians of a sort, well-meaning but strict; others prove to be traitors with an evil plan in store for Tanya and her friends. While it's not a very cozy place, one can hardly imagine a more suitable place to have a magical adventure than an old house full of secret passages and hidey-holes, teeming with long-held secrets, whispering voices, and strange creatures. And though Tanya has a complete adventure in this book, it is welcome news that it is only the beginning of a trilogy that continues in 13 Curses and 13 Secrets. Harrison's other work includes a Young Adult ghost story titled Unrest.

Tacky Hymns 29

As we continue to address the burning problem of Tackiness on Holy Ground, through judicious ridicule of the hymn selection in 2006's Evangelical Lutheran Worship (ELW hereafter), please bear in mind that in my blog, grounds for being considered "tacky" in the context of a body of Lutheran hymnody include, but are not limited to: making a lukewarm or colder confession of Lutheran doctrine; suggesting, or leaving open to interpretation, teachings contrary to Lutheranism; throwing out valuable pieces of Lutheranism's hymnody heritage to make room for symbolic tokens of appreciation of other religious cultures; confusing multiculturalism for catholicity; confusing the simplistic for the simple; confusing law for gospel; giving subjective experience priority over objective truth; and giving the sensitivities of Special Interest Groups (political correctness) priority over continuity and conformity with the whole church everywhere and at all times.

Hymn 300 "The First Noel" (or Nowell, as the tune's title spells it) is the familiar English Christmas carol whose refrain repeats the word "Noel" four times in a row, before rhyming it with "Born is the King of Israel." To the best of my knowledge, Noel is a synonym for "Christmas" or "Christmas carol" that stems from an old French word for nativity, or birth. I explain this as a favor to generations of English-speaking kids who, no doubt, have wondered what the word meant while being called on to sing it over and over, until they finally gave up wondering about it and just went with the flow. Setting aside questions and concerns and going with the flow may, indeed, be a habit of a highly successful user of ELW. The five stanzas of this hymn, meanwhile, take their sweet time getting to the point. Stanza 1 gets no further than setting the scene of the shepherds lying in the fields, keeping watch over their sheep. Stanza 2 confuses the shepherds, who looked up and saw an angel, with the magi, who saw a star in the east. Stanza 3 forgets that we were talking about shepherds and tells us how the "three wise men" followed the star. Stanza 4 explains how the star did "both stop and stay" (very precise, that) "right over the place where Jesus lay." Stanza 5 repeats the misinformation that there were three wise men (the Bible doesn't specify how many) as they stoop to offer their gifts to Jesus, giving the word "presence" an accent on the second syllable and, in effect, making this an Epiphany carol rather than a Christmas one. And so the worship experts who edited this book make themselves look sloppy when they put this song under the heading of "Christmas." And for what? Why is it so important that a song you can find in any decent collection of Christmas carols, and that can well be sung at home or at any holiday social gathering, be in the hymnal and used in public worship? I reckon that to fit this song into the book, some less popular but probably more deeply edifying piece of hymnody, perhaps from the early church or early Lutheranism, had to be squeezed out. Was it worth it?

The "Epiphany" section of the hymnal includes all of three hymns, 301 to 303, before passing on to the also fairly brief "Time After Epiphany" section—a renaming of the former Epiphany Season, part of this hymnal's persistent program of inventing new nomenclature for things that already have perfectly serviceable names. Of this "Time After Epiphany" section, four hymns (315-318) are specifically about Jesus' Transfiguration. I have no beef with these particular hymns, except to note that singers of some of the newer lyrics may need to do a bit of extra-curricular reading and thinking to connect clear thoughts to such poetic phrasings as "the birth of newness" and "we too will burn and brighten" (from 306 "Come, Beloved of the Maker" by Susan Cherwien); "till the full creation" and "global transformation" (from 307 "Light Shone in Darknesss" by Delores Dufner); "transform our pleasures" and "surprise our dullness" (from 312 "Jesus Come! for we invite you" by Christopher Idle). I can find good interpretations for most of these phrases (though the last stanza of Dufner's hymn still smells vaguely tacky to me), but it takes work and I hope the Lutherans who use this book are up to it. Really I only mean this paragraph to express my astonishment at the scant selection in these sections of the hymnal of the numerous excellent, historic Epiphany and Epiphany-season hymns that other hymnals have made familiar to me.

324 "In the cross of Christ I glory" has words by John Bowring (1792-1872) set to the tune RATHBUN by Ithamar Conkey (1815-67). It was also included in pretty much all the hymnals that I grew up with, so this isn't a new or unfamiliar tackiness. It is, rather, an old, comfortable, indulgently tolerated tackiness that I nevertheless own as tacky, even at the risk of implicating myself. The first stanza is nice, drawing imagery from Galatians 6:14 ("God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ") and generating some striking imagery of its own ("tow'ring o'er the wrecks of time," etc.). But the bad taste becomes impossible to ignore in Stanza 2, when the cross is depicted as one who "never shall...forsake me" (almost like a person), and as something that "glows with peace and joy" (the proof text for why a pink neon cross is just what your church needs to get its message out in the community—and I kid you not, this really has come up at church meetings I attended). Stanza 3 depicts the "sun of bliss" as "beaming light and love upon my way," and radiance streaming from the cross. Stanza 4 gives credit to the cross for giving holy meaning to everything in my life, whether pain or pleasure, etc. But all this sentimental waffle can only partially conceal the truth that "the cross" is coded language for something that the hymn never explicitly spells out. And while a right interpretation could be conceived for it, it seems at least equally likely that a bad interpretation will arise in people's minds—like, for example, "the cross" being code for my apprehension of Jesus as my Savior through direct personal experience, or pious imagination, or mystical meditation, or cheerful perseverance in either passive suffering or active service, or even conceivably through cherishing relics or images of the cross. It could be code for so many things, and "apprehending Christ through the sacramental means He has pledged Himself to" does not seem likely to rush the front of the line. American Lutherans would probably have been better off, spiritually, if they had taken "no" for an answer when their leading theologians counseled against using songs like this.

325 "I want Jesus to walk with me" is an African-American spiritual whose haunting, minor-key melody is titled SOJOURNER, at least in this book. Its arrangement, created for this book, implies part-singing (particularly when the alto line echoes the words "walk with me") and requires a certain rhythmic precision that won't come cheap in the context of congregational singing. In short, it's a choir number. And while a non-African-American choir might be excused for singing it on some basis like cultural diversity and the study of historic art forms, the only way it could be less tasteful would be to perform it in blackface. It takes all of Stanza 1 to say, "I want Jesus to walk with me all along my pilgrim journey." Stanzas 2 and 3 likewise make much out of saying little. And though what little it says is emotionally moving, it doesn't give anything like promises from God; it just expresses an almost hopeless wish that we had something like that. You know, like the gospel...

326 "Bless now, O God, the journey" is a Lenten hymn with words by Sylvia Dunstan (1955-93) set to the Welsh tune LLANGLOFFAN. Dunstan's poetry suffers from a strange tendency of words that have multiple meanings to suggest a meaning other than what the author had in mind at a crucial point. In Stanza 1, the hymnal puts a long-vowel sign over the word "winds," recognizing rightly (I think) that many people will mistake the verb for the noun. That would only be natural, because we've just been singing about a trail in the desert, where winds blow; it isn't until the end of the line ("and winds the mountain round") that you realize that the word describes not a desert wind, but a winding trail. Similarly, Stanza 2 has the phrase "while often we are bound," which in the stanza-wide context of "sojourners and pilgrims" might be seen as beginning to describe the destination toward we are bound; but actually, it means "bound" in contrast to the "freedom" mentioned in the previous breath. Stanza 2 is also weakened by an inexplicable switch from addressing the pilgrims in the second person ("you") and identifying with them in the first person ("we"). Stanza 3 gives us an eight-line poetic paraphrase of the old chestnut "It's not the destination that matters, but the journey"—though it suffers from an attempt to make "road" rhyme with "flow." But what I think puts this hymn decidedly in the realm of bad taste is its assertion that in our Lenten journey, the pilgrims themselves accomplish what matters: "Your hope burns through the terrors, your love sustains the day." Jesus, in contrast, is someone we meet on the road. Why? Because misery loves company?

328 "Restore in us, O God" is a brief penitential Lenten hymn by Carl Daw (b. 1944), set to the tune BAYLOR by church-choir-anthem maven Hal Hopson (b. 1933). The first flag that the text raises is in Stanza 2, where Daw actually chooses the word "unfurl" for the middle of a line, without needing it to complete a rhyme. As any struggling poet knows, "unfurl" is a word one only uses when one is backed helplessly into a corner; one doesn't voluntarily stick it into a line, especially in a way that leads to a strange, forced, and indeed mixed metaphor ("fruitless" at one end, "springtime bud and flow'r" at the other). Stanza 4 petitions the "Three-personed God" to grant that we may behold Him "when all our searching ends," which might suggest that there is a wide variety of ways (rather than one very narrow Way) to find Him. And while Stanza 1 could be interpreted as a prayer for forgiveness, it could also, and perhaps more easily, be understood as a prayer for perfect sanctification: "renew your image in our hearts," etc. This is part of what a penitent sinner asks of God, but it isn't the main thing.

On two facing pages are three relatively new hymns: 329 "As the sun with longer journey" by Benedictine monk John Patrick Earls, set to the tune NAGEL by Carl Schalk; 330 "Seed that in earth is dying," with a modern text and tune imported from Norway; and 331 "As the deer runs to the river" by Herman Stuempfle, set to the tune JULION by David Hurd. All these nice, shiny new texts and tunes have nothing wrong with them as far as I can tell, and I even rather like them. But sadly, I don't think they're going to get much airplay. They're not simplistic and tacky enough to seize the attention of today's "give us shlock or nothing" church. Worthy as these creative efforts may be, they just won't compete with songs that have a more conventional rhyme scheme, a more familiar tune, and a less meaningfully Lutheran text. It's a pity, but I predict that these will join the large number of newly-written hymns that will go down in history for being published in one American Lutheran hymnal, but will never make it into another. I've seen so many cases of this, spread across so many different hymnals, that they blur together into an effect related to tackiness, in that one senses a type of vanity involved in the decision to include a lot of untried, untested, unpopular new hymns in a book that is already struggling to squeeze in some of the church's most precious historic treasures. It pains me to admit this, since I myself have written many hymns, and I put a high value on the continuing work of contemporary hymn-writers. But out of many, many new hymns that flow like pieces of driftwood under the bridge of the church's never-ending hymn-selection process, and that wash out into the wide trackless sea, very, very few get pulled out and fashioned into anything useful and enduring.

And so, I am developing an idea that there might be a better way to bring hymns like these, that we would like to see becoming useful and enduring adornments to the church, before the hymn-singing and -reading public. Something that would not occupy hymnal space to the detriment of already-proven masterpieces. Something that would not over-expose the church to a commitment to preserve a thing of ephemeral value. Something like a journal or periodical in the form of a quarterly hymnal supplement, which can be reproduced for use in worship, archived, or binned as the Spirit takes you. Then more poets and composers can see their works field-tested, and perhaps by the time the next big hymnal comes out (if that ever happens), the selections to represent the present generation will more accurately reflect the direction in which our body of hymnody is growing.

This may also be a good place to point out another shading of Tackiness on Holy Ground, which involves at least the Missouri Synod's Lutheran Service Book (2006) and perhaps this book as well: the idea of mandating equal representation for hymns of each century since the Reformation. I'm not the first person to point out what a colossal boner this is, but I just want to add my assent to those who have already said it. This rule gives equal time to the era of Lutheran orthodoxy, the times of rationalism and sentimentalism, and the past century's era of modernist and post-modern iconoclasm. It gives equal time to people who really understood how to write Lutheran hymns, people who are doing their best to restore that ideal but have only a sketchy idea of how to go about it, and several intermediate generations of people who were more or less deliberately revolting against everything that makes hymnody Lutheran. And in practice, this means pushing in greater numbers of hymns of questionable value and pushing out very deserving pieces of unquestionably Lutheran character. On the other hand, I don't approve either of the radical proposal some of my colleagues are making to correct this mistake—namely, to compile a hymnal in which no hymn from the Reformation period on will be included unless it's by a Lutheran author. Next time, dear church (if the Lord does not return first), heed my advice and let the merits of the text (and tune) decide each case. If that means lopsided representation by 16th and 17th century Lutherans, an embarrassingly high incidence of 18th-century hymns by the Bohemian and Moravian Brethren, Anglicans, and Wesleyans, virtually nothing from the 19th century except translations of older hymns, and no 20th- or 21st-century hymn that hasn't been published in at least two or three Lutheran hymnals, so be it.

That's enough for now. I've got other stuff to do today. Meanwhile, hang in there, Lutherans! I'm praying for you!

Doughnut

Doughnut
by Tom Holt
Recommended Ages: 14+

Theo Bernstein's promising career as a physicist blows up along with the Very Very Large Hadron Collider, apparently because he moved a decimal point the wrong way. Now he has lost his job, his fortune, his wife, and even his fleabag apartment. The only work he can find is hauling cartloads of offal at a slaughterhouse, where he also sleeps because he has nowhere else to go. Then Theo learns that his mentor, Dr. Pieter van Goyen, has died and left him the contents of a safe deposit box—which turn out to be an apple, a face-powder compact, an empty bottle, a letter offering him a job at a weird, run-down hotel... and a hint that these things are more than they seem. In fact, Pieter's letter promises that the bottle holds fun and danger, if only Theo can work out a math problem that could either blow up the universe or create a gateway to an infinity of universes. And in an infinite multiverse, not only is everything possible—it's inevitable.

So begins Theo's strange, exciting, and often funny odyssey through a series of possible (but unlikely) worlds. In one, cartoon animals from Disney movies have come to life and rebelled against their human overlords. In another, the Russian revolution never happened, the Roman Empire never fell, and the Pope's palace has been relocated to Sydney, Australia. And that's not even counting the "default setting" universes, where Theo learns to navigate among medieval villagers, Old West gunslingers, ray-gun-toting aliens, and policemen who carry silver bullets in case a werewolf needs taking down. For Pieter has left Theo nothing less than a revolution in entertainment: better than virtual reality, YouSpace makes it possible to visit an actual reality, where you can really experience what it's like to live under a different set of Laws of Nature. When things get a little tiresome (such as when everyone is trying to kill you), all you have to do to return home is look through the hole in the center of a doughnut. It could be amazing. It could make the shareholders filthy rich. The only problem is that Pieter died before he could complete the User's Manual. Or did he? Either way, it's up to Theo to work out how YouSpace works.

With the self-effacing put-uponness of the quintessential British comic hero, Theo goes on an impossible journey, spurred in part by clues that his late, ne'er-do-well brother Max may be alive somewhere in the multiverse, hiding out from some bad people he owes money to. Theo is torn between wanting to find Max (at least for the sake of their paranoid sister Janine) and wishing he would really be dead (particularly when the attractive Matasuntha turns out to be using Theo to get her true love back). While both Pieter and Max turn up, less dead than expected, in different universes, Theo is forced to smash all the rules of maths, logic, physics, and metaphysics, and put them together in new ways, over and over. All this just to escape from a series of increasingly escape-proof traps and dead ends in his madcap tour of far-flung realities. And just when you think he has figured out what is really going on, the multiverse confronts him with a new puzzle that will force him to defy the fabric of space and time.

This is the third Tom Holt novel I have read, after Little People and Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Sausages. And though there are many other titles by this author, this third book confirms for me a theory that seems almost as improbable as the mind tricks Theo performs in it: that Holt can somehow, consistently, tirelessly, sustain a flow of brilliant comedy while, at the same time, packing it with nosebleed-inducingly high-grade scientific theories and philosophical ideas. While I freely exercise my own judgment as to how much of this novel's worldview is in the same ballpark as the truth, and how much of it is either whimsical leg-pulling or dogmatic tripe, I nevertheless enjoyed Holt's writing with all my heart. From a grand design that challenges you to reconsider the narrative order of "cause and effect," to fine details like the sentence "If Time is a piece of cheese, the two seconds that followed were fondue," this book makes you think, then laugh, then grip your arm-rests with concern and excitement, over and over until its cleverly satisfying ending.

I look forward to reading more by this author, including his most recent book When It's a Jar and, coming in 2014, The Outsorcerer's Apprentice. For a convenient list of Holt's works, click here.

Tacky Hymns 28

Continuing to expose "Tackiness on Holy Ground" through the hymns selected for the latest ELCC/ELCA hymnal Evangelical Lutheran Worship (Augsburg, 2006), we proceed with the "Hymns" section of the book, properly so called, from Hymn No. 239 ff.

240 "Light one candle to watch for Messiah," (let the light banish darkness) by Wayne Wold, set to the Yiddish folk-tune TIF IN VELDELE, gives the theme of multiculturalism an early foothold in this book. The four brief stanzas begin with the above refrain, except that the number of candles rises from one to four. The second half of each stanza simply adds a snippet from the Old Testament prophecy concerning Messiah, without committing itself as to whether this has already been fulfilled in history. Advent hymns, generally speaking, are funny that way. They throw themselves so fully into the role of the Old Testament church awaiting Christ's first coming that you could interpret them either as anticipation of the approaching Nativity celebration, expectation of Christ's second coming, or even an expression of solidarity with our Jewish brethren who are still waiting for their Messiah. My question for the author of this hymn is: If the loan of a Yiddish folk-tune is meant to suggest that the third of these possible meanings is at least partly meant, are we really showing brotherly love to those who do deny that Christ has come?

243 "Lost in the night" (do the people yet languish) is a "Nordic" hymn, which (I take it) means the hymnal editors couldn't be bothered to distinguish which Scandinavian language Olav Lee translated it from. The tune is a Finnish folk melody. Together they do for Advent hymnody what a winter in Moominland did for Finn Family Moomintroll. It creates a beautiful atmosphere lit more by aurora borealis than by the sun, a spiritual outlook on life that is both lyrical and depressing. Don't get me wrong. I don't hate Nordic lyricism. I play Grieg often on the piano, and my interest in Scandinavian hymnody (growing out of my sojourn in a Norwegian-American church body) is so strong that one of my historical-theology profs, now president of the LCMS seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana, once publicly called me a "Norwegian wannabe." But let's be honest. Most of the people who will be interested in hymns like this will be avid preservationists of Scandinavian culture, with a higher-than-average incidence of co-occurring mood disorders. Another theme in Scandinavian hymnody that can be detected in this hymn—albeit within the context of a solid law-and-gospel message—is an emphasis on the "getting us out of this miserable place" aspect of our hoped-for salvation. Though this particular hymn doesn't take it too far, at times the Nordic hymnwriters seem utterly to despise the world we have been called to live in, in favor of an enticing vision of heaven that keeps them going from day to day.

247 "Come now, O Prince of Peace" (Ososŏ, ososŏ) is, I believe, a Korean hymn by Geonyong Lee. I like Korean music. But I enroll this hymn in my Catalog of Tackiness for two reasons. First, the single stanza of Korean text (transliterated into Roman characters) is the first of what will be many examples in this book of symbolic sops to one of the gods of our age, Multiculturalism. It isn't as though this hymnal will actually be of any use to a congregation that regularly worships in Korean. The only reason for that stanza to be there is to give us an opportunity to celebrate (i.e., feel good about) what we erroneously term our church body's "catholicity" (actually meaning "multiculturalism"), its missionary outreach and partnership with foreign churches, etc. The second reason is that each of this song's four stanzas in English is so similar to the others—in some cases differing by only four words—that, in my opinion, it wastes the opportunity to deliver four solid stanzas worth of content.

248 "People, look east," (the time is near) is a modern Advent hymn by Eleanor Farjeon, set to the lovely French carol tune BESANÇON. The four stanzas use poetic imagery to portray the expected Christ as Guest, Rose, Star, and Lord. But a lot of it seems to be occupied with outward preparations and culturally conditioned ceremonies, such as "trim the hearth and set the table," and perhaps secular observances such as New Year ("the crowning of the year"). And some of the imagery is so strange (particularly Stanza 2's analogy of soil, seed, and rose) that I suspect the meaning will be somewhat subjective.

252 "Each winter as the year grows older," with words by William Gay and an original tune (CAROL OF HOPE) by Annabeth Gay, is very openly a product of the disillusionment of an aging child of the 20th century. Stanza 1: "The verities we knew seem shaken and untrue." Stanza 2 laments the racial and social upheavals of the last century. Stanza 3 begins, "Yet I believe beyond believing"—does that mean "hope against hope"? Or does Gay mean this conviction about life springing from death is a conclusion he drew independently of the old verities revealed by sources of knowledge that our traumatic age has discredited? In Stanza 4, where the imagery of the sun "turning to journey to the north" reminds me of Tippett's A Child of Our Time, Gay concludes that "the living flame, in secret burning, can kindle on the earth and bring God's love to birth." Is he talking about Christ, or something more impersonal? Stanza 5 does address Christ as "Child of ecstasy and sorrows" and "Prince of peace and pain," but the hymn's conclusion seems leave open the question whether the hope it expresses is for a renewal of this world (i.e., a kingdom on earth), or the consummation in the next world when Christ returns to judge.

253 "He came down" (that we may have love) is a traditional hymn from Cameroon, a central African nation adjacent to Nigeria. The first stanza repeats the above text three times and finishes with the refrain, "Hallelujah forevermore." Stanzas 2-4 are identical except in changing the word "love" to "light," "peace," and "joy" respectively. The music is a fine example of the kind of rhythmic African part-song that works best when sung by a choir (especially one specifically trained to sing this style of music) and accompanied by rhythm instruments. It is, however, totally impractical for congregational singing in a typical white American church, owing to the unusual rhythm. At best, it represents a lot of work on the part of the music leaders who introduce it; and the payoff, in terms of the edifying and teaching content of the text, would be negligible.

258 "Unexpected and mysterious (is the gentle word of grace) is a hymn by Jeannette Lindholm (b. 1961), set to Calvin Hampton's haunting tune ST. HELENA, which is only slightly awkward compared to other congregational hymn settings because it requires a three- or four-bar instrumental prelude to each stanza. The thought-provoking lyrics meditate on the annunciation to Mary and her visitation to Elizabeth. Though some of it (such as the bit about "our longing to bring healing to the earth") may be open to interpretations that irritate me, the only part of the text that raises a flag is the line, "We are called... to embody God's compassion for each fragile human life." In itself this is not tacky. It only brings out, by way of contrast, the tackiness of the ELCA's position on abortion, which is that "An abortion is morally responsible in those cases" that involve rape, imminent danger to the mother's life, and severe fetal abnormalities; and in this last case there may even be room for considering late-term abortions to be OK. So much for embodying "God's compassion for each fragile human life."

261 "As the dark awaits the dawn is by Susan Cherwien, set to the original tune LUCENT by Carl Schalk. It's an unusual bit of Advent poetry in that it tries to convey the idea of expecting Christ without any Old Testament consciousness of sin, captivity, or death. So with pretty metaphors of light, and a tune that floats along airily without much concern for gravity, and a happy ending more about what we can do as conduits of God's glory into the world than about what God does for us, it seems to me to be decidedly on the weak side as Advent hymns go. And some of its poetic diction comes close to being too impressionistic to sit well in a repertoire of teaching, edifying hymns—phrases like, for example, "loving bright" and "shine your future on this place."

262 "Wait for the Lord" is another Taizé Community text set to music by Jacques Berthier. Here is the whole text: "Wait for the Lord, whose day is near. Wait for the Lord; be strong, take heart!" Full stop. No written-in repeats, though I imagine there may be some unwritten ones, depending on what liturgical innovation you build around it. It doesn't even make use of an obvious opportunity to rhyme, such as "be of good cheer." If you're going to re-order the church's worship life in the image of Taizé—minimalistic, unionistic Taizé—you might as well go all the way and sing nothing but Berthier's primitive, one- or two-line ditties. But don't expect me to go along with you.

266 "All Earth is Hopeful" (Toda la tierra) is Alberto Taulé's modern Spanish Advent hymn, presented with all four stanzas both in English and their original Spanish. So, like #247, it's a monument to multiculturalism—only with the added commitment of being able to sing the entire hymn in Spanish, because it's likely enough that there will be at least a few people in your church who know Spanish, at least as a second language. So there are degrees of triumphalism even within the multiculturalist creed. This is worth noting. I also want to point out that while some of the text's tackiness (such as the phrase "new protocols declared") originates in Madeleine Marshall's translation, the hymn's concluding assertion that Jesus' presence in today's world is seen in our neighbors (rather than in the Means of Grace) goes back to the source material.

271 "I am so glad each Christmas Eve" (Jeg er så glad hver julekveld) is Marie Wexelsen's fairly well-known hymn, translated from the Norwegian by Peter Sveeggen and set to its own tune by Peder Knudsen. It's a sweetly dancing number tailor-made for precious little children, provided that you can wrangle enough of them to sing it in this day of the dying Lutheran Sunday School. Unfortunately it skims very lightly over what Jesus did "to help a world in need," only mentioning that He listens to children's prayers from his dwelling-place in heaven, and that He "opens now for ev'ry child the palace of the king." Put in the right context, that's an awesome Christmas present. But will little ones immersed in the culture that has commercialized Christmas appreciate any gift they didn't see advertised on TV? Maybe if this hymn described the gift of Christ in more detail, it might be more useful toward that end.

280 "Midnight stars make bright the skies" (Mingxing canlan ye wei yang) is a Chinese Christmas carol originating in Hong Kong in the 1970s, its two stanzas and refrain given here both in Chinese (transliterated into Roman characters) and in English. So, again, a monument to multiculturalism—no two of which, so far, have been devoted to the same culture. Other than that, it's a nice enough song, only... Given what I observed about #266, it seems the hymnal editors anticipated a strong likelihood that a lot of parishioners in anglophone Lutheran churches would feel comfortable singing in Chinese within the life expectancy of this book. Should that alarm us?

284 "'Twas in the moon of wintertime" is a translation of a 17th-century French hymn (which I have seen elsewhere titled "Huron Carol"), set to the 16th-century French folk tune UNE JEUNE PUCELLE. Isn't it odd that, while this hymnal was published by the Ev. Lutheran Church in Canada, its multiculturalist agenda did not lean so far as to print even one stanza in French, which is spoken throughout an entire Canadian province? While that fact is not in itself tacky, the footnote at the bottom of the hymn points out something that is. Where Stanza 1 says, "God the Lord of all the earth," the footnote tells us the original words were "mighty Gitchi Manitou." You might know the name from Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha: the "Great Spirit" of the American Indian tribes mostly of the northeastern U.S. and eastern Canada. My guess is that this borrowing from Native American folklore was intended not so much as a syncretistic gesture, but followed the "contextualizing" impulse of Jesuit missiology that made it sometimes permissible to put pagan names on the God of Christianity. The editors of ELW would have been wiser to leave this footnote out and let the "alt." at the end of the text credits suffice. Because even understanding what I think I understand about the original reading of this hymn, it is now ruined for me forever. Okay, I'm being facetious. I never cared much for it. It carries its contextualizing agenda so far as to change baby Jesus' manger into a bark lodge; his swaddling cloths into rabbit skins; the shepherds into hunter braves; the magi's gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh into chiefs' gifts of fox and beaver pelt; and the concluding words "in excelsis gloria" (to any imagined audience who could only understand the gospel when it was so altered to fit their worldview) into perhaps magic words.

285 "Peace came to earth" (at last that chosen night) is a hymn by Jaroslav Vajda, set to the tune SCHNEIDER by Paul Manz, whom I wish I could hear playing it. Though Manz ended up in the ELCA by way of the Missouri Synod's Seminex struggle in the 1970s, he was the organist at the Minneapolis church in which my father grew up and so, in a distant way, he is a musical ancestor of mine; I have great respect for his music. And I also want to feel kindly toward Vajda, who toward the end of his life received a certain amount of pastoral care from the same pastor in whose care I was at that time. It's a small world, eh? But I can't help but be reminded of Vajda's "Song of the sparrow" piece in All God's People Sing. His four stanzas end in a total of eight varied repetitions of "Who could but gasp: Immanuel!"—the difference between each variation being the verb used in place of gasp. The other words used, including sing, sigh, shout, see, thrill, pray, and praise, are mostly evocative of subjective feelings. Stanza 2 likewise focuses on the power of the direct experience of Christ: "Who could be the same for having held the infant in their arms, and later felt the wounded hands and side...?" Stanza 3 pulls the tone up somewhat by at least pointing out that in Christ, God "in flesh and blood... bore our griefs and pains" and now visits us "in bread and wine." But no sooner do I acknowledge how pleased I am with this one stanza, than the hymn wraps up with another set of parallel sentences: "How else could I (have known/have loved/embrace) you, O my God!" It's so touchy-feely that it makes my skin creep. And it smacks of a creative artist who just isn't trying very hard.

292 "Love has come"—(a light in the darkness) is a hymn by Ken Bible (cool name!) in three stanzas, set to the tune of the French carol "Bring a torch, Jeannette, Isabella." It repeats the word "Love" a lot and stresses, with almost annoying single-mindedness, that love is the reason God sent His Son into our world. Like a lot of Christmas carols, to which I tend to give a pass because of their venerable vintage, it seems to invite the Christian to visit the manger scene in a world of pious imagination, keenly observing details such as the glow in Mary's eyes and even listening in on the thoughts of her heart and the whisper of her lips (unrecorded by either Matthew or Luke): "Love! Love!" All in all it's a likeable little piece, though like the above-named French carol its prolix text and rapidly flowing melody can make it a bit of a mouthful. I just wish, as I find myself so often wishing these days, that the song did a better job of specifying how "Love is Jesus within and among us." I mean, how does He get there? In what sense is He present? I believe an important task in both preaching and hymn-writing is to give clear answers to those questions before they are even asked. Otherwise it is quite likely that the answers people supply in their own minds will lead them astray.

293 "That boy-child of Mary" (was born in a stable) is the late Tom Colvin's hymn, set to his own adaptation of a Malawi folk-tune called BLANTYRE. (Malawi is that long, skinny African country squeezed between Zambia and Mozambique; its second-largest city lends its name to the hymn tune). The song consists of a refrain followed by six short stanzas which, for the most part, do a good job of reducing the Nativity gospel to terms a child can follow. But it parcels out the information rather slowly, taking two stanzas to inform us that the child's name is Jesus, and then mixing up the translation of the name Jesus with that of Immanuel ("God ever with us"). The hymnal editors had a chance to catch it and alter the text to read "God sent to save us," or something like that; but they didn't. I also think the hymn's answer to the questions "How can he save us, how can he help us" is a bit on the weak side: it simply asserts that as our brother through Mary, and yet "one with the Father, he is our Savior, heaven-sent helper" etc. Without more unpacking of the significance of these lines, this could come across as begging the question.

294 "In the bleak midwinter" is Gustav Holst's lovely setting of Christina Rossetti's sentimental poem, which make for delicious reading and choral singing. But I frankly doubt that they make, between them, a hymn. It spends the whole first stanza setting a scene which would make sense if Jesus was born in England during late December, but given where he was born and the fact that the Bible doesn't specify when, it all adds up to so much poetic fluff, drawing significance from details not supported by evidence (which here means "divine revelation"). In Stanza 2, Rossetti tortures her poetic meter into confessing that He whom heaven and earth cannot contain, made his bed in a stable (though, technically, that detail is not divinely revealed either). Stanza 3 ponders what I, poor thing, can give Him. The shepherd's gift (also not revealed by Scripture) is mentioned. The wise men's gifts (though in fact specified in the Bible) get only a general mention. And the hymn's conclusion: "Yet what I can I give Him—give my heart." To be sure this is a lovely sentiment, brings tears to the eyes and all, but even as a response to what God gave us that winter night(?), it still assumes that we know information that the hymn doesn't give—like, anything that Jesus did for us, to which our response of love should respond.

297 "Jesus, what a wonderful child" is an African-American spiritual arranged by the late Jeffrey Radford. Its single stanza, in full, says: "Jesus, Jesus, oh, what a wonderful child. Jesus, Jesus, so holy, meek, and mild; new life, new hope the child will bring. Listen to the angels sing: 'Glory, glory, glory,' let the heavens ring!" In a very simple condensed way (though perhaps a bit simplistic), this text does deliver fairly good Christmas-carol content. But the music, with gospel-anthem part-writing and swinging rhythms and long rests filled with instrumental cues, strongly appeals to be sung by a choir—preferably one specializing in this style of music. It simply has no practical place in the repertoire of a congregation, unless and until you have drilled the whole congregation (or what is left of it by then) to be the choir.

298 "The bells of Christmas" (chime once more) is an altered form of C. P. Krauth's translation of N. F. S. Grundtvig's Danish hymn Det kimer nu til julefest, which I have elsewhere seen published as "The happy Christmas comes once more." Actually this is an exceptionally good Christmas hymn. I merely list it in my Catalog of Tastelessness because, once again, the editors saw fit to print the first stanza—only one verse out of six—in the original Danish. Which prompts a thought that I also had at #271: Why does a church body that, in large part, is culturally descended from Scandinavian Lutherans, only get the option of singing one stanza of a hymn in their mother tongue, as opposed to entire hymns in Spanish and Chinese? Token multiculturalism is sad enough. But such a poor token of pride in heritage is just... well... TACKY!

299 "Cold December flies away," translated from and sung to the tune of the Catalonian carol LO DESEMBRE CONGELAT, is almost irrelevant to the Christmas season of which it purports to be a hymn. By its second line we're already singing about April. And in the second half of the hymn, the notes fly hard and fast enough to keep you from really paying attention to the words (for while it's a nice tune, it works better as a theme for variations on the organ than for singing in church). Nevertheless the words, if you have time to read them, give you the impression that the story is about a tree with red roses blooming in "love's own garden," whatever that means. Stanza 2 moves the story more onto the basis of hope dawning in a sin-darkened world, including a play on the words "sun" and "Son" that could not conceivably be native to the Catalonian original. Then Stanza 3 comes and the bud has become a fragrant lily which spreads, like an invasive plant, to cover the world with sweet-smelling beauty. Heavy on metaphor (and mixed metaphor at that) and light on substance, the hymn also has the defect, in the latter half of each stanza, of sounding excited to the point of stammering (e.g. "...brings unending joy, brings the endless joy of our hope, highest hope, of our hope's bright dawning..."), quite possibly to ludicrous effect. For example, as I hear this song being sung in my mind's ear, the scene is invaded by a memory Chester the cartoon terrier asking Spike the bulldog, "Can I? Huh? Can I? Huh?" until Spike swats him down and snarls, "Shut up!"