Christmas Issue - Pharisaios Journal

The Christmas issue of the Pharisaios Journal from the Diocese of Wenchoster is a joy to peruse. Unfortunately, because of time limitations, I can't do it the justice that I would like to. You must go there yourself and discover the riches. You'll find messages from the Archbishop of Canterbury, Queen Elizabeth, and, of course, from Bishop Roderick Codpecium, which I feel compelled to share in its entirety:

Hello! End complimints of the season to you awl! You know, this is the tame of many blissings, as will es the iteward trippings of Christmarss. The Pelace is full of decorat-i-ons this yar, more then in yars parst. The tree is quate splendid with presents arind its bottom, end I know that may hice-keeper will be preparing a spec-i-al goose for me on the natal day itself.

What narly spoiled may wick was an unexpected conversat-i-on with someone who said thet he was from the Southern Corn, or some such nonsense. To begin with he addressed me es “Beeshop” which did not go dine very well, end then went on to invate me to join his club. “Come and join us, Meester Beeshop – all the best Californian dioceeses are!” Of course I did not fully understend his thick foreign accent, but thought him a bit of a rum cove. It was when he started talking abite “chili” end “tequila” thet I put dine the phone. Chili end tequila et Christmarss? Thet is not the Englican way. I’ll stick with a nace plump goose, end recommend thet you awl do the same!

May the Bithlehim chaild glidden your hearts end laves!

Click on all the processions, and you'll discover more messages from those we've come to know and love, including the Dean and the head verger, Mr Grindle, and - surprise of surprises - a message from Presiding Bishop Katharine of the Episcopal Church. And Hymns! Un embarras des richesse in hymnody!

I do believe I'll post more from the journal, once the blessed holy day has passed, and I have more time. Go. You won't be sorry.

King's College - Nine Lessons And Carols

From a correspondent:

NPR will be doing a live broadcast of the
King's College Cambridge Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at 10:00
a.m. Eastern time on Monday (Christmas Eve). You might be interested in
passing this on.

I cannot find the link to the live broadcast at the NPR site. Check the schedule of your local NPR stations for the broadcast time in your area.

BBC4 will also broadcast live on radio, which you can access from their internet site.

Sirius on Channel 141 and XM on Channel 131 will broadcast live on satellite radio.

Picture from King's College, Cambridge.

O Christmas Tree!

Pictured is my Charlie Brown (sort of) Christmas tree. It's too overdecorated to be a truly sad looking tree. It's small, and best of all, I can leave the trimmings on the tree, carry it up to the attic, put a large bag over it to keep the dust off, and - Voila! - next year it will be ready to go on the table again. I love it. My grandchildren laugh at it, but it's what I do now.

Below is the first verse of my favorite carol - NOT:

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree,
Your branches green delight us.
O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree,
Your branches green delight us.
They're green when summer days are bright;
They're green when winter snow is white.
O, Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree,
Your branches green delight us!

Eh. Let's try the literal translation:

O Christmas tree, o Christmas tree
How loyal are your leaves/needles!
You're green not only
in the summertime,
No, also in winter when it snows.
O Christmas tree, o Christmas tree
How loyal are your leaves/needles!

No, I don't think so. Finally in German:

O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum,
wie treu sind deine Blätter!
Du grünst nicht nur
zur Sommerzeit,
Nein auch im Winter, wenn es schneit.
O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum,
wie treu sind deine Blätter!

I'll leave it to others to say if it's a gem of a carol in German. How did this one make it into the canon?

Literal English translation and German version from About.Com.

How I Believe

A favorite passage from one of my favorite books is the quote below from Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited.

Charles Ryder and Sebastian Flyte, two young Englishmen, meet at Oxford in the period between the two world wars. Charles is an unbeliever, and Sebastian is from an aristocratic Roman Catholic family. Once they have been friends for a while, Charles brings up Sebastian's faith and Catholicism. What follows is the dialogue between the two:

(Sebastian) “Oh dear, it’s very difficult being a Catholic!”

(Charles) “Does it make much difference to you?”

(Sebastian:) “Of course. All the time.”

(Charles) “Well, I can’t say I’ve noticed it. Are you struggling against temptation? You don’t seem much more virtuous than me.”

(Sebastian) “I’m very, very much wickeder,” said Sebastian indignantly.

(Charles) “… I suppose they try to make you believe an awful lot of nonsense?”

(Sebastian) “Is it nonsense? I wish it were. It sometimes sounds terribly sensible to me.”

(Charles) “But my dear Sebastian, you can’t seriously believe it all.”

(Sebastian) “Can’t I?”

(Charles) “I mean about Christmas and the star and the three kings and the ox and the ass.”

(Sebastian) “Oh yes. I believe that. It’s a lovely idea.”

(Charles) “But you can’t believe things because they’re a lovely idea.”

(Sebastian) “But I do. That’s how I believe.”

I love the passage, because Sebastian describes how I believe, too. It's very much the stories, the myths (not myths in the sense of something that's not true - myths in the sense of universal truths) that draw me into Christianity.

A note about the nativity set in the picture: The figures were made from ordinary ceramic molds, which I've seen examples of here and there, but my mother made them and painted them some years ago, so I'm sentimentally attached. I have three large camels, too, but they crowd the table, so I left them out this year. I just now noticed that the baby Jesus is hidden in the picture. Shame on me.

I bought a digital camera, but I haven't taken it out of the box yet, because I know it will be a struggle to learn how to use it and upload the pictures to the computer. I'm actually afraid of it. I look at the box and glance quickly away. If I knew how to use it, I could arrange the figures differently and bring Jesus into the picture, Jesus in the picture seeming rather important at this time of the year.

Padre Mickey's Christmas Pageant

Give yourself a pre-Christmas, treat and visit Padre Mickey's blog to see his Christmas pageant. This is, no doubt, his masterpiece. You won't be sorry.

O Virgo Virginum

O Virgo Virginum (An Anglican Bonus)

O Virgin of virgins,
how shall this be?
For neither before was any like thee,
nor shall there be after.
Daughters of Jerusalem,
why marvel ye at me?
That which ye behold is a divine mystery.

O Virgo virginum,
quomodo fiet istud?
Quia nec primam similem visa es
nec habere sequentem.
Filiae Ierusalem,
quid me admiramini?
Divinum est mysterium hoc quod cernitis.

Luke 1:26-35

In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, ‘Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.’ But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.’ Mary said to the angel, ‘How can this be, since I am a virgin?’ The angel said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God.

Alas! I have not found music for "O Virgo", since this antiphon only appears in the Sarum (Anglican) Rite. The rest of the videos come from a Roman Catholic source.

Also, see the meditation posted by Vicki Black at Speaking to the Soul at the Episcopal Café.

Image from ChantBlog.

Text from Apostolcity.

O Emmanuel

December 22

O Emmanuel, our King and our Law-giver, Longing of the Gentiles, yea, and salvation thereof, come to save us, O Lord our God!

Latin

O Emmanuel, Rex et legifer noster, exspectatio gentium, et Salvator earum: veni ad salvandum nos Domine Deus noster.

Isaiah 7:14

Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman* is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.

See Vicki Black's s post on Speaking to the Soul at the Episcopal Café.


Video from YouTube. Antiphon sung by the Dominican student brothers at Oxford.

Text from Fish Eaters.

Ooooh, How Sweet!

Pictured above is the nativity set that belongs to Ann at What the Tide Brings In. Isn't it lovely? For other close-up pictures of the set, click the link to her blog.

Haiku Anyone?

Image from Wiki. "These characters are the ones used on chōchin (hanging paper lanterns), such as the ones you might see outside a yakitori stand in Japan."


If you choose to participate, write a haiku using the simple 5-7-5 rule for syllables in a three-line haiku. It's not necessary that the lines rhyme. There are all sorts of other complicated rules for writing proper Japanese Haiku, but that's not what we're doing here. The haiku should make some sort of sense, and extra points if you continue from the subject of the previous haiku. However, that's not a rule. If you'd like to move on to another subject, go ahead. The haiku can be happy, sad, funny, or whatever mood you choose.

I'll start:

Sad sound that I hear,
The wounded bird crying out.
Who will heed her call?

UPDATE: Feel free to nominate your favorites.

"Wishing You A White Christmas"

From Dangerblond, the femme formidable New Orleans blogger, who possesses major supersnark skills. If you're looking for politically correct, then move along, because it's not here.

You know, I’m kind of glad New Orleans is getting rid of all our black people. I really prefer Hispanics when it comes to menials. Have you noticed how they behave? They try as hard as they can to melt into the background and be invisible. This is preferable to the attitude of our former uppity negroes, who simply insist on being noticed and recognized as people. Let them assert their personhood somewhere else!

I appreciate the way the little brown people keep their eyes on the ground when they talk to me. It’s as though they instinctively recognize my blond superiority. Each time I interact with them, I am reminded of the movie “Mrs. Brown,” about Queen Victoria. In that movie, when the queen suddenly appears in the hallway, any servants who happen to be passing through there stop in their tracks and turn immediately to the wall. They stand there silently looking at the wall until the queen is well past them. This keeps the queen from having suffer the indignity of having a low class chamber maid look at her, or, god forbid, smile at her. This movie is a model of how the servant class should behave in the presence of their betters, and more people ought to do themselves the favor of watching it.

It’s also a very nice feature that the new Hispanic lower class does not speak much English. I speak a little Spanish, but I pretend not to, because one doesn’t like to waste one’s time conversing with the help. I don’t like to be bothered with tales of woe, of which poor people seem to have an endless supply. How tiresome. “Sorry, Emelda. No comprende!”

The new Latin servant class is not only properly humble, but they bow and scrape with appreciation for every crumb you throw their way. It truly makes my heart feel grand. I’ve seen them living in gutted out buildings with no electricity, driving cars that shouldn’t even be allowed on the road, and wearing absolute rags. Naturally, they don’t ask for much. All it takes to make them happy is some rice and beans, and what could be healthier than rice and beans?

With their frugal living habits and distaste for luxuries, you can get a Mexican for half what it costs to hire an African-American. Most of them are working in this country illegally anyway, so who are they going to complain to? Ha! It’s so nice for the rest of us when lower class people have no options.

Awesome!