A good crop this year.....

I abandoned the old tomato garden and just planted in the perennial garden this year, helter-skelter. It worked really well. Well, except for that night a deer came and ate all my pepper plants. I carefully covered everything with deer netting and checked it all the time - but somehow that night the peps were exposed, and munch! Gone, all of them, the next day.

But great tomatoes this year - lots of them, completely pesticide-free, and still coming. And basil, and sage. Have made sauce already, too....

Ewwwwwwwww!: The surprising moral force of disgust - The Boston Globe

Ewwwwwwwww! - The Boston Globe

“Two things fill my mind with ever renewed wonder and awe the more often and deeper I dwell on them,” wrote Immanuel Kant, “the starry skies above me, and the moral law within me.”

Where does moral law come from? What lies behind our sense of right and wrong? For millennia, there have been two available answers. To the devoutly religious, morality is the word of God, handed down to holy men in groves or on mountaintops. To moral philosophers like Kant, it is a set of rules to be worked out by reason, chin on fist like Rodin’s thinker.

But what if neither is correct? What if our moral judgments are driven instead by more visceral human considerations? And what if one of those is not divine commandment or inductive reasoning, but simply whether a situation, in some small way, makes us feel like throwing up?

This is the argument that some behavioral scientists have begun to make: That a significant slice of morality can be explained by our innate feelings of disgust. A growing number of provocative and clever studies appear to show that disgust has the power to shape our moral

judgments. Research has shown that people who are more easily disgusted by bugs are more likely to see gay marriage and abortion as wrong. Putting people in a foul-smelling room makes them stricter judges of a controversial film or of a person who doesn’t return a lost wallet. Washing their hands makes people feel less guilty about their own moral transgressions, and hypnotically priming them to feel disgust reliably induces them to see wrongdoing in utterly innocuous stories.

Today, psychologists and philosophers are piecing these findings together into a theory of disgust’s moral role and the evolutionary forces that determined it: Just as our teeth and tongue first evolved to process food, then were enlisted for complex communication, disgust first arose as an emotional response to ensure that our ancestors steered clear of rancid meat and contagion. But over time, that response was co-opted by the social brain to help police the boundaries of acceptable behavior. Today, some psychologists argue, we recoil at the wrong just as we do at the rancid, and when someone says that a politician’s chronic dishonesty makes her sick, she is feeling the same revulsion she might get from a brimming plate of cockroaches.

“Disgust was probably the most underappreciated moral emotion, the most unstudied one,” says Jonathan Haidt, a psychologist at the University of Virginia. “It’s become politically much more relevant since the culture wars of the 1990s, and so within the broader renaissance of moral psychology disgust has been a particularly hot topic.”

Psychologists like Haidt are leading a wave of research into the so-called moral emotions — not just disgust, but others like anger and compassion — and the role those feelings play in how we form moral codes and apply them in our daily lives. A few, like Haidt, go so far as to claim that all the world’s moral systems can best be characterized not by what their adherents believe, but what emotions they rely on.

CBC News - World - Pakistan floods leave thousands stranded

CBC News - World - Pakistan floods leave thousands stranded

Relief workers in Pakistan are struggling to reach hundreds of thousands of people who have been cut off by rising flood waters, the United Nations says.

The floods, caused by heavy monsoon rains, have washed out key bridges and roads in many parts of South Asian nation.

As many as 800,000 people in need of assistance can only be reached by air, the United Nations said.

Access has been particularly difficult in the Swat Valley of the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province and in the mountainous areas of Gilgit- Baltista, UN officials said.

Conrad Sauvé, the secretary general of the Canadian Red Cross, said reaching people in remote areas has been a major challenge.

He said relief workers are working alongside the government to deliver aid to camps and hard-to-reach communities, but he warned that the crisis is still unfolding.

"This is still an emergency situation, and unfortunately, with the flooding, new people arrive all the time because new areas are flooded," Sauvé told CBC News from Islamabad.

"When they think they have something under control, there's new people that are arriving, so it's a major challenge."

The World Food Program has said at least 40 more helicopters are needed to reach the people cut off by the floods.

Meanwhile, the flood waters sweeping down the Indus River in Pakistan are threatening new areas in Sindh province, forcing thousands of people to head for higher ground.

Rising waters have already poured through several communities in the southern province, and officials are now urging some 200,000 people to move out of the Thatta area of Sindh province, the BBC reported.

Saifullah Dharejo, the irrigation minister for Sindh province, said high tides were preventing the bloated Indus River from quickly emptying into the Arabian Sea as had been hoped.

The UN says more than 1.2 million homes have been damaged or destroyed since the flooding began. Roughly one million people have received tents and tarps, but an estimated five million people still need emergency shelter, the UN said.

At least 1,500 peole have died since the unprecedented floods began in in the north in late July.
Pakistani government must be accountable: USAID chief

The Pakistan government says about $800 million in emergency aid has been committed or pledged so far. But there are concerns internationally about how the money will be spent by the government.

Rajiv Shah, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), said the United States would continue to urge nations to donate.

"We are going to work at it, but these are tough economic times around the world and it will require a demonstration of real transparency and accountability and that resources spent in Pakistan get results," he said in an interview with The Associated Press late Tuesday.

Along with the government, local and international agencies and the U.S. military, a number of Islamist groups have been providing aid to flood victims. At least one of the groups is alleged to be a front for Lashkar-e-Taiba, a banned militant organization blamed for the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, India.

The government in the northwest issued an order Wednesday barring banned Islamist groups from operating relief camps, said Mian Iftikhar Hussain, the chief spokesman for the province.

But it was unclear whether any such camps had been shut down by Wednesday evening or how exactly the government was going about identifying them.

"A Case of Mental Courage"

David Brooks in the NYT today:

In 1811, the popular novelist Fanny Burney learned she had breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy without anesthesia. She lay down on an old mattress, and a piece of thin linen was placed over her face, allowing her to make out the movements of the surgeons above her.

“I felt the instrument — describing a curve — cutting against the grain, if I may so say, while the flesh resisted in a manner so forcible as to oppose & tire the hand of the operator who was forced to change from the right to the left,” she wrote later.

“I began a scream that lasted intermittingly during the whole time of the incision — & I almost marvel that it rings not in my ears still.” The surgeon removed most of the breast but then had to go in a few more times to complete the work: “I then felt the Knife rackling against the breast bone — scraping it! This performed while I yet remained in utterly speechless torture.”

The operation was ghastly, but Burney’s real heroism came later. She could have simply put the horror behind her, but instead she resolved to write down everything that had happened. This proved horrifically painful. “Not for days, not for weeks, but for months I could not speak of this terrible business without nearly again going through it!” Six months after the operation she finally began to write her account.

It took her three months to put down a few thousand words. She suffered headaches as she picked up her pen and began remembering. “I dare not revise, nor read, the recollection is still so painful,” she confessed. But she did complete it. She seems to have regarded the exercise as a sort of mental boot camp — an arduous but necessary ordeal if she hoped to be a person of character and courage.

Burney’s struggle reminds one that character is not only moral, it is also mental. Heroism exists not only on the battlefield or in public but also inside the head, in the ability to face unpleasant thoughts.

She lived at a time when people were more conscious of the fallen nature of men and women. People were held to be inherently sinful, and to be a decent person one had to struggle against one’s weakness.

In the mental sphere, this meant conquering mental laziness with arduous and sometimes numbingly boring lessons. It meant conquering frivolity by sitting through earnest sermons and speeches. It meant conquering self- approval by staring straight at what was painful.

This emphasis on mental character lasted for a time, but it has abated. There’s less talk of sin and frailty these days. Capitalism has also undermined this ethos. In the media competition for eyeballs, everyone is rewarded for producing enjoyable and affirming content. Output is measured by ratings and page views, so much of the media, and even the academy, is more geared toward pleasuring consumers, not putting them on some arduous character-building regime.

In this atmosphere, we’re all less conscious of our severe mental shortcomings and less inclined to be skeptical of our own opinions. Occasionally you surf around the Web and find someone who takes mental limitations seriously. For example, Charlie Munger of Berkshire Hathaway once gave a speech called “The Psychology of Human Misjudgment.” He and others list our natural weaknesses: We have confirmation bias; we pick out evidence that supports our views. We are cognitive misers; we try to think as little as possible. We are herd thinkers and conform our perceptions to fit in with the group.

But, in general, the culture places less emphasis on the need to struggle against one’s own mental feebleness. Today’s culture is better in most ways, but in this way it is worse.

The ensuing mental flabbiness is most evident in politics. Many conservatives declare that Barack Obama is a Muslim because it feels so good to say so. Many liberals would never ask themselves why they were so wrong about the surge in Iraq while George Bush was so right. The question is too uncomfortable.

There’s a seller’s market in ideologies that gives people a chance to feel victimized. There’s a rigidity to political debate. Issues like tax cuts and the size of government, which should be shaped by circumstances (often it’s good to cut taxes; sometimes it’s necessary to raise them), are now treated as inflexible tests of tribal purity.

To use a fancy word, there’s a metacognition deficit. Very few in public life habitually step back and think about the weakness in their own thinking and what they should do to compensate. A few people I interview do this regularly (in fact, Larry Summers is one). But it is rare. The rigors of combat discourage it.

Of the problems that afflict the country, this is the underlying one.

"Converted by beauty: Art led me to Christianity"

Harriet Baber in The Guardian:

I got religion when I was 14, at Beaverbrook Music Camp. We were, most of us, instrumentalists—I played the violin—but all of us had to sing in Camp Chorus. Our major work, my first year at Beaverbrook, was the Schubert Mass in G—a warhorse for amateur choirs and one of the sweetest masses in the classical literature. The Benedictus is a Viennese waltz.

In musicianship class we learnt about the music we were playing and singing. We studied the Mass as a musical form and got the English translation, with commentary. Having been brought up unchurched, this was the closest I ever got to religious training. But it was more than enough: I fell in love with the church.

Six years later I was baptised in The Episcopal Church. I would have joined earlier if I'd known how. But I didn't even know that it was possible to join a church: I thought you could only get into a religion by birth or marriage. I never even had the courage to go to a church service: I was afraid I'd be identified as a heathen, embarrassed and ejected.

Joining the church wasn't an easy decision. I was an undergraduate and no one I knew was a religious believer. It was not done—at least not by people like us.

In any case, I didn't know whether I could buy in. Lying in bed I would recite the Creed to myself in Latin as a sort of checklist. "Credo in unum Deum." Did I believe that? Well I certainly didn't believe in any more than one God. But the story seized me—the grand, cosmic scope of all things visible and invisible, the drama of incarnation and ascension—descendit, incarnatus, ascendit—and the slam-bang ending, the power, glory and eternal dominion. Schubert was sweet but only Bach could do justice to the sheer immensity of it.

But did I believe it? I decided, as I then thought of it, to "bracket the God question" and join the church anyway. I just couldn't resist.

Since my music camp conversion experience, I'd sung lots of masses and other sacred music. I'd read T. S. Eliot and the Metaphysical Poets; I'd wallowed in Traherne's Centuries of Meditations lying on the summer grass in the quad when the corn, there in the American Midwest, really was orient and immortal wheat; and I'd discovered George Herbert on an acid trip.

I got religion in order to go to church—to be entitled to participate in the liturgy, to have the right to sing church music, visit church buildings and do philosophical theology.

Of course I could have had all that without signing on. But then my experience of Christian art wouldn't have been the same. The aesthetic character of a work of art goes deeper than the aesthetic surface because what we want in art, like what we want in most departments of life, goes beyond the sensuous surface. All other things being equal most of us would prefer a happy life in reality to a perfect simulation, as a brain in a vat. Those experiences are different, even if superficially indistinguishable, just as our aesthetic experience of an original work is different from our experience of a perfect fake.

The experience of church music in a liturgical setting is different from the experience of the same music as 'pure art.' And even in a liturgical setting, my experience as a Christian participating in that liturgy—even as a skeptical, agnostic Christian—is different from the experience of sentimentalists and Evensong concert-goers.

However skeptical I may be, I am a committed Christian. I came to the Church in what I suppose seems like a peculiar way. The Bible doesn't speak to me and, for me, the historical Jesus is a stumbling block. I would never have been one of Jesus' early followers: the Church that appeals to me is the Church of Constantine. But make no mistake: I am a Christian. However screwy my route into the Church may have been, that it what I am. And being a Christian changed my life.

"What's the point of Christian arts?" This is like asking what the point of pleasure is. Christian art is an end in itself.

Jupiter’s red spots in double act | Skymania News and Guide

Jupiter’s red spots in double act | Skymania News and Guide

Amateur astronomers could be forgiven for seeing double on Jupiter as the famous Great Red Spot closes in on a colourful rival. A second oval feature is running up against its bigger brother, giving stargazers two red spots to view at once through their backyard telescopes.

The spectacle comes just weeks after astronomers reported that one of the giant gaseous planet’s prominent dark belts had disappeared.

The smaller feature – dubbed Red Jr and big enough to swallow the Earth – used to be white. It formed from three oval storms in Jupiter’s atmosphere. Two merged in 1998 and the third was absorbed in 2000 to form a spot labelled Oval BA.

Alert observers noticed that its centre starting to turn red back in 2005 and it became more prominent the following year as it had a previous close encounter with the Great Red Spot. For most of the time, because different bands in Jupiter’s atmosphere rotate at different speeds, the two spots are widely separated. However, they come close together every two years or so, and this has created the present spectacle.

The pair of spots are clearly shown in the accompanying photograph by planetary observer Simon Kidd, of Welwyn, England, taken through his Celestron C14 at his home observatory.

Robert Parsons - Ave Maria

Link

Anglican Chant, the Fifth post

A lovely version of Psalm 91 from the Westminster Abbey Cathedral Choir.



The Coverdale translation:

Psalm 91: Qui habitat

WHOSO dwelleth under the defence of the most High : shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.
2. I will say unto the Lord, Thou art my hope, and my strong hold : my God, in him will I trust.
3. For he shall deliver thee from the snare of the hunter : and from the noisome pestilence.
4. He shall defend thee under his wings, and thou shalt be safe under his feathers : his faithfulness and truth shall be thy shield and buckler.
5. Thou shalt not be afraid for any terror by night : nor for the arrow that flieth by day;
6. For the pestilence that walketh in darkness : nor for the sickness that destroyeth in the noon-day.
7. A thousand shall fall beside thee, and ten thousand at thy right hand : but it shall not come nigh thee.
8. Yea, with thine eyes shalt thou behold : and see the reward of the ungodly.
9. For thou, Lord, art my hope : thou hast set thine house of defence very high.
10. There shall no evil happen unto thee : neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.
11. For he shall give his angels charge over thee : to keep thee in all thy ways.
12. They shall bear thee in their hands : that thou hurt not thy foot against a stone.
13. Thou shalt go upon the lion and adder : the young lion and the dragon shalt thou tread under thy feet.
14. Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him : I will set him up, because he hath known my Name.
15. He shall call upon me, and I will hear him : yea, I am with him in trouble; I will deliver him, and bring him to honour.
16. With long life will I satisfy him : and shew him my salvation.

Assumpta Est

Looking back over my blog(s) through the past few years, I realize I've posted something about all the Chant Propers for Assumption (i.e. for Episcopalians, "The Feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary"), which is this Sunday, August 15.

The traditional Introit, Gaudeamus (replaced around 1950 by Pius VII by Signum Magnum); Audi Filia, the beautiful Gradual (also used as the Tract at Annunciation during Lent); and Beatam me dicent, the Communion hymn.

All of them, that is, except for Assumpta Est, the text used for both the Alleluia (mp3 here):

Alleluia, Alleluia. Mary has been taken up into heaven; the host of Angels rejoices. Alleluia.

and the Offertory (mp3 here):

Mary has been taken up into heaven; the Angels rejoice, praising the Lord together and blessing him, alleluia.

Those translations from the Latin are at JoguesChant, and so are the mp3s. (Chant score for the Alleluia is from the Benedictines of Brazil.)

Obviously, these are extra-Biblical texts; the Assumption is nowhere to be found in Scripture. I'm not sure if they come from a particular source, or whether they are just from someplace "in the air" around the idea of Assumption. They are short, so probably pretty hard to pin down to any one originator.

There are lots of polyphonic versions of the texts around, though, you can be sure! Here's Palestrina's version, a lovely, heavenly-sounding thing (with lots more extra-Biblical content!) Can't embed it, or I would; go listen, though - it's gorgeous.

Here's a version of the Offertory sung by "Sr. Marjo and company" and "Dedicated to all Assumptionists"; no idea where the music comes from, but I like it:



Here's another; not sure whose music this is, either, but beautiful. And what acoustics!



Palestrina and Charpentier both wrote Missa(e?) Assumpta Est Maria (and so probably did others!). Here's the Kyrie from Palestrina, and here's the one from Charpentier (wonderful period instruments, too), respectively:





There's lots more stuff out there, too.

Wow, Wow, Wow!

Well, I have a serious dilemma for this Sunday, "The Feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary" (AKA Assumption):

St. Mary - or St. Thomas?
Mozart's Missa Brevis in C Major - or The Worcester Fragments (and check out the service leaftlet!)?
The St. Mary's Choir - or New York Polyphony?


Look at this musical lineup at St. Thomas!:

Sung by: New York Polyphony
Prelude: Ave Maris Stella I & II, from ‘Fifteen Pieces founded on Antiphons’, Op. 18, Marcel Dupré (1886-1971)
Prelude 2: Ave Maria, Ave Maris Stella, from ‘Trois Paraphrases Grégoriennes’, Op. 5, No. 2, Jean Langlais (1907-1991)
Service: 13th Century English Mass, from the Worcester Fragments (c. 1300)
Psalm: 34:1-9, Plainsong Chant (Tone VII2)
Anthem: Flors regalis, Andrew Smith (b. 1970)
Anthem 2: Beata viscera, Worcester Fragments
Voluntary: Magnificat primi toni, BuxWV 203, Dietrich Buxtehude (c. 1637-1707)

But then there's this, too, at St. Mary's:

The choral music on Sunday will be sung by Saint Mary’s Choir, accompanied by Mr. Timothy Brumfield. I will be director. The prelude is Fantasia in G Major, BWV 572 by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750). The setting of the Mass ordinary is Missa brevis C-dur, KV 259 (Orgelsolo) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791). An early work, this setting was probably composed in Salzburg in 1776. It is quite brief with a condensed setting of the text, as is the case with several of Mozart’s other masses of that period. This may be due to the views of the prince-archbishop Colloredo of Salzburg, who preferred simple and straightforward music during the liturgy. At the ministration of communion, the choir sings the motets Ave Maria by Robert Parsons (c. 1535-1571/2) and Maria virgo à 10 voci by Giovanni Gabrieli (c. 1554/1557-1612). Little is known of Parsons’ life, apart from the fact that he was a chorister in the Chapel Royal, and perhaps taught the young William Byrd. One of the most influential musicians of his time, Gabrieli represented the culmination of the Venetian school of composition. This motet features two choirs of five voices each.

Not a bad problem to have, I must admit....

Ideal conditions for Perseid fireworks | Skymania News and Guide

Ideal conditions for Perseid fireworks | Skymania News and Guide

Sky watchers will enjoy a spectacular natural firework show this week thanks to perfect conditions for the year’s finest meteor shower. The Earth has begun to plough through a river of debris dumped by an ancient comet which is producing a display of shooting stars called the Perseids.

The shower is one of the most reliable for astronomers in the northern hemisphere but 2010 is especially good because New Moon this week means there will be no overpowering moonlight to spoil the show.

Watchers with clear skies can look forward to viewing many of the bright meteor streaks as they burn up in the upper atmosphere. They are called the Perseids because they appear to stream in from the direction of the constellation of Perseus. However, they can appear in any part of the sky.

The meteor shower peaks between Wednesday and Saturday (August 11-14) and a single observer in perfect conditions might see up to 100 meteors an hour on Thursday night. There is no danger as the meteors are only the size of grains of sand and are completely vaporized.

Aseity (I Am That I Am)

This is from Merton's The Seven-Storey Mountain, which I've just picked up again after reading about halfway through last year. He's discussing his purchase of a book (The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy) at Scribner's on Fifth Avenue (just after having graduated from Columbia) which to his shock and disgust at the time included, in small print, Nihil Obstat....Imprimatur ("no obstacle") on the first page.

....you must understand that while I admired Catholic culture, I had always been afraid of the Catholic Church. That is a rather common position in the world today. After all, I had not bought a book on medieval philosophy without realizing that it would be Catholic philosophy: but the imprimatur told me that what I read would be in full conformity that fearsome and mysterious thing, Catholic Dogma, and the fact struck me with an impact against which everything in me reacted with repugnance and fear.

He counted it a "real grace" that he actually read at least some of this book instead of throwing it out, though!

And the one big concept which I got out of its pages was something that was to revolutionize my whole life. It is all contained in one of those dry, outlandish technical compounds that the scholastic philosophers were so prone to use: the word aseitas. In this one word, which can be applied to God alone, and which expresses His most characteristic attribute, I discovered an entirely new concept of God - a concept which showed me at once that the belief of Catholics was by no means the vague and rather superstitious hangover from an unscientific age that I had believed it to be. On the contrary, here was a notion of God that was at the same time deep, precise, simple, and accurate and, what is more, charged with implications which I could even begin to appreciate, but which I could at least dimly estimate, even with my own lack of philosophical training.

Aseitas - the English equivalent is a transliteration: aseity - simply means the power of a being to exist absolutely in virtue of itself, not as caused by itself, but as requiring no cause, no other justification for its existence except that its very nature is to exist. There can be only one such Being: that is God. And to say that God exists a se, of and by and by reason of Himself, is merely to say that God is Being Itself. Ego sum qui sum. And this means that God must enjoy "complete independence not only as regards everything outside but also as regards everything within Himself."

This notion made such a profound impression on me that I made a pencil note at the top of the page" "Aseity of God - God is being per se." I observe it not on the page, for I brought the book to the monastery with me, and although I was not sure where it had gone, I found it on the shelves in Father Abbot's room the other day, and I have it here before me.

This recent article at Slate - "The Agnostic Manifesto" - seems to be a good companion piece. There would be nothing wrong with discussing some of this stuff in our Adult Education classes, you know....

What collapsing empire looks like

What collapsing empire looks like, at Salon.com.

As we enter our ninth year of the War in Afghanistan with an escalated force, and continue to occupy Iraq indefinitely, and feed an endlessly growing Surveillance State, reports are emerging of the Deficit Commission hard at work planning how to cut Social Security, Medicare, and now even to freeze military pay.  But a new New York Times article today illustrates as vividly as anything else what a collapsing empire looks like, as it profiles just a few of the budget cuts which cities around the country are being forced to make.  This is a sampling of what one finds:

Plenty of businesses and governments furloughed workers this year, but Hawaii went further -- it furloughed its schoolchildren. Public schools across the state closed on 17 Fridays during the past school year to save money, giving students the shortest academic year in the nation.

Many transit systems have cut service to make ends meet, but Clayton County, Ga., a suburb of Atlanta, decided to cut all the way, and shut down its entire public bus system. Its last buses ran on March 31, stranding 8,400 daily riders.

Even public safety has not been immune to the budget ax. In Colorado Springs, the downturn will be remembered, quite literally, as a dark age: the city switched off a third of its 24,512 streetlights to save money on electricity, while trimming its police force and auctioning off its police helicopters.

There are some lovely photos accompanying the article, including one showing what a darkened street in Colorado looks like as a result of not being able to afford street lights.  Read the article to revel in the details of this widespread misery.  Meanwhile, the tiniest sliver of the wealthiest -- the ones who caused these problems in the first place -- continues to thrive.  Let's recall what former IMF Chief Economist Simon Johnson said last year in The Atlantic about what happens in under-developed and developing countries when an elite-caused financial crises ensues:

Two more for Transfiguration

First, Giovanni Vianini sings Tibi Dixit Cor Meum, which he labels as the Introit for the second Sunday in Lent ("Hebdomada secunda Quadragesimae"), but which is also given as the Introit for Transfiguration chez the Benedictines of Brazil.



The Brazilians say this comes from Psalm 27, vv 8-9, and 1, which are these:

8 My heart says of you, "Seek his [b] face!"
Your face, LORD, I will seek.

9 Do not hide your face from me,
do not turn your servant away in anger;
you have been my helper.
Do not reject me or forsake me,
O God my Savior.

1 The LORD is my light and my salvation—
whom shall I fear?
The LORD is the stronghold of my life—
of whom shall I be afraid?

Here's the score, from JoguesChant, which gives the translation as:

My heart declared to you: "Your countenance have I sought; I shall ever seek your countenance, O Lord; do not turn your face from me." The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?

Second, here's a pretty "early music" version of the first verse of Quicumque Christum queritis, a Transfiguration hymn for Matins and Vespers:



I've written about this hymn before; the words in Latin and English are at that link.

The caption at the YouTube page reads:

This video of a colonial Mexican song came from a performance of the Nashville Early Music Ensemble at Christ Church Cathedral in Downtown Nashville, TN on Tuesday, December 4. The Concert was entitled Feliz Navidad Canciónes de América Latina. The ensemble is designed to perform the vocal and instrumental music of the Medieval and Renaissance periods as well as traditional folk music from several world cultures. The twenty-member ensemble features musicians with diverse music backgrounds but all with experience in early music. The instruments featured in the concert will be viols, violin, rebec, lute, ud, guitars, psaltery, harp, recorders, and a wide variety of percussion. The director is Dr. Gerald Moore, a retired music professor from Lipscomb University, who taught music theory and directed the Lipscomb Early Music Consort for over twenty-five years. For more information on the NEME, visit their website at http://nashvilleearlymusic.blogspot.com

Matins for the Transfiguration of Our Lord

Something interesting here! These are clearly Orthodox (Byzantine?) chants - yet this video is labeled: Service of Matins, 2008 February 4: Monday, 12:00 AM, Concordia University Wisconsin, Rogate Chapel. Hmmm.

Well, I like these chants anyway, so here's the video; there are several that follow this one. Will try to find out more about what this is about.



Love that Venite!

Calling all New Testament Scholars!

Who in the patristic era is good on Romans? I'm especially interested in Romans 7 - and 7:7-11, to get really precise. I've found a million references online but need somebody who's actually read the stuff to separate wheat/chaff.

Thanks, you Greeks and geeks!